Studies have shown that reorganizing a space has proven to be surprisingly beneficial. In this article, we are bringing you 3 positive effects that rearranging a space can have on the human body and brain.
Our memories form in various environments and they have the ability to linger in that space. In order to break free from old attachments or refresh ones we are fond of, we need a new environment. When we rearrange our space, we experience a feeling of renewal and freshness. This change provides us with something new in our day-to-day life, an added or completely new layer of comfort in the place where we can be the most free and honest with ourselves.
According to Carrie Barron, a psychiatrist and director for the Creativity for Resilience Program at Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas, rearranging furniture can increase your energy and put you in a good mood. “An impact on the environment lifts mood, provides concrete satisfaction, and instills a sense of effectiveness,” she wrote in Psychology Today. “Inner and outer harmony happen when pieces are placed in a way that makes sense for you".
Another way to heighten this new experience is by burning incense or candles. A new and pleasant aroma that greets you at the door is a great way to brighten the mood, as smells are also linked to positive sensors in the brain.
Not only will rearranging a space provide you with a new and refreshing space to get comfortable in, changing this space about is also a great way to work in a decent workout! Between moving pieces of furniture such as heavy couches and/or beds, you will find yourself working up a little sweat. In the middle of moving pieces of furniture around, you may find yourself needing to clean. This cleaning can involve wiping down tables and chairs, or vacuuming in once hard-to-reach spots such as an area that was once covered by the couch or bed.
These cleaning tasks also add to the workout that moving furniture has created. For example, vacuuming on and off around the house during a deep cleaning day for 30 minutes allows your body to burn around 94 calories. If you were to engage in cleaning a home for almost an hour then it will burn the same amount of calories as half an hour of gym. There are also some rigorous cleaning activities that burn more calories. Some examples include the infamous cleaning of the shower, mopping, sweeping the floor with a broom, and washing the dishes by hand. Instead of spending time and money on a gym, why not start cleaning for good health. This is a very good exercise for your health.
Cleaning has been used to help in fighting depression. There’s a reason why so many of us are captivated by cleaning videos on social media platforms such as Tik Tok, Youtube and/or Snapchat that are labeled as “satisfying”. We experience joy in watching things and environments being transformed from a dirty state to a clean one. Cleaning does an incredible job at distracting our minds from invasive thoughts and channeling them to the task at hand, whether that task be cleaning the shower or the guilty pleasure in making sure those carpet lines in the living room from the vacuum are perfect! This is a great way to help us sign out of our social media accounts and to focus on the task of bettering ourselves through improving and refreshing our environment.
Cleaning is also a great way to improve concentration. When it comes to cleaning, there’s no true form of multi-tasking. When cleaning, you don’t run back and forth from the kitchen to clean the dishes to the bathroom to scrub the shower; each task is completed one at a time and this helps boost our concentration. As pointed out in our first paragraph in this article, our moods are linked to our environment. Having a cluttered space is no way to alleviate a cluttered mind. Turning cluttered rooms into a refreshed and newly arranged space can help us wipe away the negative thoughts and feelings we had consciously or unconsciously associated that space with.