The Japanese do their massive home cleaning at the end of the year—which makes perfect sense in the context of starting fresh with a new year. It’s called osoji (“the big clean-up”), and it’s done to purify the home, to get rid of all traces of trash and useless items. Overall, osoji lets you welcome the new year in clean surroundings.
Here are 4 life-changing benefits you get when you give your home a thorough year-end cleaning:
1. It helps lessen your chances of getting sick.
Other than being the holiday season of giving, winter is also the sneeze and sniffle season. With the pandemic, we are even more apprehensive about getting sick because of the weather, especially since we will have little choice but to stay indoors most of the time. With a home that’s clean from top to bottom and in every nook and cranny, you and your family stand a better chance of getting through the cold and flu season without getting sick.
2. It will improve your mood.
Dirt and disarray in the home can easily get in the way of planned activities in the home and dampen your mood. Studies show that homeowners’ stress and anxiety levels are influenced by the level of organization and cleanliness in their homes.
A clean and organized space invites you to sit back and relax. It allows you the luxury of slowing down and tuning out the everyday noise and chaos of the day.
3. It will improve your sleeping pattern.
The relationship between sleep and depression has long been established: lack of sleep can bring on depression, and depression results in sleeping problems.
To avoid depression, turn your home into a restful space that restores your energy after a busy day or week at work, dealing with family responsibilities, sorting out personal errands and projects, etc. For example, the simple move of changing your sheets or replacing your old bed with a carefully chosen new bed can make a significant difference in the quality of your sleep. This will then improve your ability to focus and enables you to successfully carry out your duties, as well as pursue your interests and personal projects.
4. It motivates you to develop new, and healthier, habits.
A cluttered space can be distracting, and ultimately energy draining. On the other hand, a clean, fresh-smelling home is both restful and invigorating. For a lot of us, that’s great motivation to start new healthy routines or improve on old good habits.
The commitment it took you to accomplish osoji can push you to go on to accomplish more practical and empowering goals for yourself, your family, and your home. And you know what they say about momentum . . .
Whether you’re also preparing to put your home on the market sometime next year, or even if you’ve just recently moved in, osoji would do wonders for your property—including help increase its resale value or dramatically increase your home’s value for you in terms of your experience living in it.
Contact Team Clancy today if you need expert solutions with your listing and pre-listing activities (e.g., home inspection, home cleaning, staging, etc.).
See you in 2021!