1. Ensure that all your furniture is clear of any misplaced items to make it easier to kick back and relax – When you have things piling up on various surfaces of your home, it can become challenging to lay down and relax. You either have to do an impromptu organizing session, or you may have to shove things to one side just to give yourself a place to sit or to lie down. At any rate, coming home ceases to be the relaxing or restful prospect that you were hoping it to be. Research has found that levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) were higher in mothers whose home environment was cluttered. Imagine going from a high-stress environment (work) to another stressful environment (a home that’s dirty and/or cluttered). No wonder that something as seemingly innocuous as a pile of dirty dishes in the sink – or clothes strewn all over the floor – can be a huge source of conflict between couples or parents and their kids. Turns out that messiness can be a flashpoint for a lot of people who already lead busy, high- pressure lives. If peace and harmony among family members is important to you, and being able to relax after a long day of work, then you may want to consider keeping your place neat and tidy 24/7. After all, one reason people love to go to a nice hotel while they’re on holiday is to enjoy a place that is organized well as attractive to look at. So why not make your home into a place that you’re excited to come home to rather than avoid?
2. Sleep better by clearing your room of any surface clutter that makes it harder to get a good night’s rest – I remember a friend that has a difficult time keeping their house clean. They have kids’ toys strewn all over the floor, reading material laid out on their coffee table and sofa, and all sorts of clutter laying down on their kitchen table. It’s as if a grenade had just exploded or a thief had just ransacked their home. When people live like this, it becomes easy for the situation to become the normal state of things, such that they (1) fail to even see anything wrong with their cluttered space or (2) develop avoidance strategies for dealing with their messy lives. In fact research has shown that cluttered bedrooms can cause you to eat more snacks and gain weight. According to one study, people who live in cluttered homes can be 77% more likely to be overweight. Another interesting study found that cluttered homes made people eat twice as many cookies than participants who lived in a very organized environment. Eating more unhealthy sugary foods, as you know can lead to health issues like diabetes. And when you have more sugar in your system it becomes much harder to sleep. In fact studies show that eating close to bedtime makes it much harder to enjoy a night of uninterrupted sleep. And overeating can cause other problems like acid reflux and sleep apnea. So for the sake of your health, keep your bedroom neat and tidy like the space pictured below to avoid unnecessary food cravings that lead to weight and other health issues.
3. Choose simple ceiling light fixtures and tabletop decor that are to easy to clean – Do you like nice chandeliers that feature a dozen or more bulbs, several arms, and fancy crystal dangling down from the fixture? They are very nice indeed, except they can be a nightmare to clean. Cobwebs will develop quickly and dust will cover every single component of that light fixture. Imagine running a feather duster or Swiffer dust-cloth along each element of the chandelier? Not a very exciting prospect is it, not to mention you might even damage something unless you carefully wipe down each and every part of the light fixture with a soft cloth, spray the light fixture directly with a liquid cleanser, or remove each piece of crystal to clean them individually by hand, which can take an hour or two of your precious time. Imagine doing that when your light fixture is hanging eight feet or more from the ground and having to use a ladder to reach it, or having to hire (and pay) a professional cleaner just to get the job done. It can be costly and time consuming to maintain a complicated light fixture, which is why I typically suggest to clients to save themselves time and money by getting an interesting-looking light fixture or decorative table accessory that isn’t a nightmare to maintain. Avoid getting porcelain figurines, fancy glass vases, or intricate sculptures which can be time consuming to clean. And before you install a new kitchens with open or exposed shelving like in the one pictured below, keep in mind that you’ll have to dust everything that you put on display there every single day (or week).
4. Enhance your home’s visual appeal (and resale value) by removing any allergy–causing wall-to-wall carpets and replace them with easy-to-maintain materials – One of the things that I love to have around the house is carpet. Unfortunately, I do have dust allergies so I try to limit them to just the living room, where I use a small wool area rug (which is hypo-allergenic) as an accent piece. Everywhere else, I tell clients with health concerns to just install hardwood. You can certainly put wall-to-wall carpet in your bedroom if you like walking on your bare feet on plush carpet and hotels do put them into rooms as they look and feel cozy and luxurious. The problem with carpet is that they really do attract dust and they require more effort to clean. Hardwood floors are much easier to dust with the use of a Swiffer dust mop while carpeted areas do require more time and effort to vacuum. Plus they can attract some nasty stains that are hard to remove while you can easily wipe off any liquids that accidentally fall on a wooden floor. Plus carpets do suffer from wear and tear much quicker than hardwood and need to be replaced after 15 to 20 years while you can keep a hardwood floor for many decades so maintenance and replacements costs are lower over time.
5. Reduce health issues by removing dust-collecting fabric curtains and using low-maintenance roller shades instead. Or better yet use zero window treatments – Want to lessen the amount of cleaning that you have to do on weekends? Replace those vertical or old-style venetian office blinds that you have which required constant dusting and opt for more contemporary roller blinds which require zero maintenance. Curtains made of plain or printed fabric certainly add a nice touch and soften up a room except they do accumulate dust and odors pretty easily that will require regular dusting and washing. Consequently, they can exacerbate allergy problems for people around your house. Another problem with fabric curtains is that cooking smells tend to stick to them quite easily. Ever enter a house where you can tell that the occupants are into deep fried or spicy food? The odor that sticks to their curtains will be a dead giveaway for this. If you don’t want to have a smelly house use roller blinds, which are usually made of synthetic (i.e., vinyl-based) material that don’t retain smells the way cotton or polyblend fabric curtains do. And dust mites have a harder time sticking to roller blinds due to their flat and slippery surfaces compared to fabric curtains which have ample folds for dust particles to hide.
