One Area You Should Clean When You’re Too Sad to Clean Anything

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, forcing yourself to clean the house can feel overwhelming, and the resulting clutter and disorganization can make you feel worse . It’s a nasty cycle, made all the more nasty because the clutter just won’t go away. A clean and hygienic home is important not only for your safety, but also for your mental well-being. If you’re in a bad mood, you don’t need to put full Martha Stewart all over your apartment, but you should try to clean something up. And this something, in particular, should be your living room. That’s why.

Cleaning can actually improve your mood

There is a link between cleaning and feeling better. Clinical psychologist Dr. Don Potter explained on the 2021 Cleveland Clinic podcast that having a clean home can make someone feel better. There are also benefits to doing physical work. There’s no shortage of research that concludes that physical activity reduces symptoms of depression and improves quality of life overall , but when you hear this, you’re probably thinking of the endorphin boost you feel after going to the gym or walking . . Working out and exercising is great, but don’t forget that cleaning also requires movement and effort – and that counts towards the recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity per week.

If you clean something, make it your living room.

When you feel overwhelmed, you may fret over the mess and then not know where to start. Start in the living room or the most visited area in your home. The goal here is to maximize your results with the minimum amount of motivation you have. You will feel most successful if you choose an area that will bring the most value to your time, such as the floor where your kids play or the coffee table where you sort your bills. Having a clean space to spend time in can actually give you the boost you need to move on to other areas, but even if you take some time to get to the rest, you’ll have a clean shared living space.

Where to begin

Now you just need a plan to keep you on track. We recommend these three:

• The Five Things Method , created by a licensed therapist, recommends breaking each cleaning task down into five parts so you don’t feel overwhelmed: trash, laundry, dishes, things that have a place, and things that don’t.
• The June bug method , whereby you identify one central spot (such as a coffee table) and keep coming back to it over and over again until it’s clean, no matter how distracted you are by other tasks.
• The FlyLady method , which involves scheduling the cleaning of “zones” of the house over a month or so. It may be best to try after you’ve used one of the other methods to get to the living room, but the benefit of this method is that you only dedicate 15 minutes to the zone you’re in each day, which is much more manageable overall.