6 Mindful Cleaning Hacks To Reduce Stress and Keep Your Home Clean

January 25, 2024 | Cleaning Tips, Get Organized

Meditation instructors encourage people to use cleaning tasks as a way to destress, even though many people consider them taxing. Finding ways to be mindful and take care of our mental health helps each and every one of us live happier, longer lives. So, let’s review some easy ways to clean that will help you move towards mindful living and keeping a cleaner house. Here are six mindful house cleaning tips & organization tips to help you create a peaceful sanctuary in your mind and your home at the same time.

1. Doing the Dishes

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Art of Mindful Living, one of the first ways he suggests practicing mindfulness is by doing the dishes. To provide some perspective, he tells the story of a woman he met who lived the majority of her life without access to clean, running water. When she was gifted an apartment with a sink, she spent the entire first day washing and rewashing dishes purely out of joy.

Most of us don’t think of running water as a luxury, but it is! Next time you wash your dishes, practice gratitude for your dishwashing setup. Here are a few ideas to help you enjoy the experience even more:

Use soap scented with soothing aromas, like lavender or eucalyptus.
Scrub dishes with the highly effective Scrunge^® Non-Scratch Sponge.
Use Playtex^® Living^® Gloves to keep your skin protected and comfortable.

You can make it a truly mindful experience by focusing on your senses, one at a time, while you scrub, rinse, and dry. Listen to the trickle of water down the sides of the sink. Inhale the aroma of the soap. Enjoy the warmth of the water on your skin.

Watch the soap bubbles slide off your plates as you rinse. This is especially helpful for deep cleaning your kitchen — take the extra time to wash, dry and appreciate the special-occasion dishware that you might not use regularly. Doing the dishes can be more than just a chore!

2. Sweeping

Taking a little time out of your day to clean your floors goes a long way. Try bringing a little mindfulness into your sweeping by letting your thoughts and to-do lists drift away while you focus on every sweep of the broom and watch every bit of dust and dirt go into your dustpan. The more often you sweep, the more time you can spend enjoying dirt-free floors.

Instead of dreading sweeping, give yourself peace of mind with the broom that gets into every groove and corner: the PowerCorner^® PetPro Broom and Step-On Dustpan. This innovative broom is specially designed to clean pet hair in one sweep, while the step-on dustpan eliminates bending.

3. Deep Cleaning

If you like your home tidy, you most likely set aside regular time to clean. But how much do you notice when you deep clean? The next time you need to dig in deep, go beneath the surface in multiple ways by doing it mindfully. Slow down and focus on the movements of your hands as you clean. If you notice your thoughts drifting, like what you’re going to do next or what you’re going to have for dinner, just acknowledge those thoughts are there and refocus on the act of deep cleaning. You can even pay attention to how you maneuver your favorite cleaning tools in your space.

Find more ease with cleaning tasks by using tools that require minimal physical effort, like our EasyWring^™ RinseClean^™ Spin Mop System.

4. Decluttering

Clutter has a tendency to accumulate fast, which is unfortunate because it can have a major effect on our focus and ability to relax. It can quickly become overwhelming, and as you figure out how to declutter, it’s important to learn which organizing method works best for you. Especially if you work from home, this kind of distraction can interfere with your ability to be present in meetings and complete your tasks as efficiently as you’d like.

Some easy ways to declutter are:

Having a “home” for everything, and always putting things back where they live when you’re done with them.
Providing yourself and anyone else who lives with you a place for “junk,” like a drawer or basement closet.
- Schedule a monthly reset for this “junk” area to intentionally sort through it, and keep it from getting out of hand.
- If you don’t use it, donate, recycle, or give it to someone else!

It can help to set aside some time every week for decluttering. Go room by room, shelf by shelf, and be mindful about your choices. Pause with each object in your hand, think about whether it belongs, and make an intentional choice about where it’s going to go.

5. Doing Laundry

We wear clothes every day, so it’s just a given that there will always be laundry to do. But figuring out how to do laundry in a way that adds to your peace of mind instead of taking away from it is key. Our best laundry tips involve shifting your mindset, too.

First, take the pressure off of this task by getting specific about what needs to be washed and what doesn’t.
Remember your “why.” Do your laundry to restock your essentials, eliminate the pile on the floor, and enjoy the feeling of freshly cleaned clothes.
Liven things up by putting on your favorite music or movie while you fold.

When you follow our laundry tips and bring some awareness to your laundry routine, you can create a system that fits into your day-to-day schedule much better. Once you get your system down, laundry can become one of your favorite cleaning tasks.

6. Take Sundays to do a Full Reset

While ideally you can stick to a standard cleaning schedule to help you maintain a clean space and a level mind, it’s also a good idea to set aside some time each weekend to follow up on tasks you may have missed, and do a full reset to set yourself up for success in the week to come.

Let this bonus tip remind you to take that time. Make sure all dishes are washed, but also dried and put away, and take an extra moment to move your countertop appliances and wipe underneath them.

Check in on clutter and laundry that you worked on earlier in the week – was there anything you’d set aside and intended to come back to? Take care of it now.

For more inspiration, check out these Sunday reset videos from O-Cedar #CleanSquad ambassadors Cat and Brandon.

If you didn’t get to mop this week, pull out your Spin Mop and Bucket System and O-Cedar PACS Hard Floor Cleaner and let the dynamic duo go to work. PACS contain powerful enzymes to clear your hard floors of any built-up grime. Pause a moment to take a deep breath – with 97% naturally derived ingredients and no harsh chemicals, you can enjoy that “just cleaned” moment as long as you like.

Clean your way to a stress-free home

As you can see, whether you look forward to or dread cleaning tasks depends heavily on your mindset. You are cleaning because you choose to take care of yourself, your family, and your home. With a little bit of intention behind each cleaning task and some effective cleaning tools on hand, cleaning can become an activity that reduces your stress rather than adding more to your to-do list.

Whether you are considering Spring cleaning tips or simply everyday cleaning tips and tricks, our 6 tips for mindful cleaning will help you shift the tasks at hand from onerous to meditative.

Lavender O-Cedar® PACS

Take the guesswork out of cleaning your floors with perfectly portioned Lavender O-Cedar^Ⓡ PACs. Mixed with water, each PAC has enough deep cleaning power for every hard-surface floor in your home. Once you drop an O-Cedar^Ⓡ PAC in your bucket, you’ll see the bubbles and smell the light, floral scent. Then, it’s time to mop. Enzymes dissolve stubborn dirt and grease for a streak-free, thorough clean you can see– without the addition of harsh chemicals.

For more videos and how to’s, check out our Use & Care page.

Buy online at The Home Depot, Amazon, Walmart, Target or Lowe's.

Crisp Citrus O-Cedar® PACS

The perfect cleaning companion to your O-Cedar^Ⓡ mop bucket is finally here! Concentrated O-Cedar^Ⓡ PACS are packed with the deep cleaning power of enzymes to make floor cleaning a breeze. Simply drop a perfectly portioned Crisp Citrus O-Cedar^Ⓡ PAC into your bucket to tackle the toughest messes. And with refreshing notes of lemon and lime, your senses get a pick-me-up while you clean.

For more videos and how to’s, check out our Use & Care page.

Buy online at The Home Depot, Amazon, Walmart, Target or Lowe's.