Life can be very overwhelming at times with situations that range from the daily stresses to overcoming a loss or a separation. It can get to the point that we can feel lost without direction in an angry sea of our own thoughts and emotions. A few months ago, I passed through one of those moments where I felt so overwhelmed with all the situations that my train of thought became broken and I became restless. Then as I talked to my mother about it, she gave me a piece of advice: “When you feel down and overwhelmed with thoughts clean”. My first thought was how is cleaning going to help me to feel better? However, once the conversation finished, I decided to do so because even if it didn’t succeed in making me feel better at least my house would be clean. To my surprise as the day passed and I went from one chore to the next I began to feel better and the thoughts that had plagued me all week seemed to let up. Although cleaning is a weekly priority it was the first time that I realized how truly therapeutic it can be.
Here are a few ways that cleaning brought me a sense of peace:
- It keeps us in the moment- Even though it’s easy to get lost in thought at one point or another we have to concentrate on the task at hand to do so properly.
- A sense of achievement- Once the cleaning is done there is a satisfaction that we completed what we set out to do.
- One thing at a time- Although many people pride themselves in being able to multitask the truth is that most of our cleaning is best done when we do them focused on one single task at the time. This is also true about situations in life we have a tendency to try to resolve everything at once and becoming so overwhelmed that we end up resolving very little or nothing at all.
- Everything can be resolved- This one might seem out of place here but think about it when for some reason the chores have accumulated we don’t know how to go about it or where to start but as soon as we begin we realize everything has solution weather its cleaning up, organizing or throwing things out in the end the mess is never as big as we made it out to be and we were able to resolve. We get so caught up with every situation big or small that we can many times end up not knowing where to start or if it can be solved, resulting often in making it worse in our heads than what it really is.
Cleaning has many clear benefits from maintaining our surroundings hygenic to allowing us to become more organized, but looking at all the little lessons it can give us while doing so its safe to say it can also give us peace. So just as my mother very wisely said a few months ago I tell you if you feel down and overwhelmed clean. Go ahead give it a try you might find a few enlightened moments of your own.