Posted on July 29, 2008 - by Lance Ong

Cleaning for Success

Welcome back!

When you’re bored or have excess energy and you don’t feel like sitting still, you should clean the house. Housework is one of the best forms of therapy available. If you’re an office worker, you’ve already spent the whole day stuck to your chair, flexing your brain and while your body goes idle. When people get home, most of them slump into their couch and turn on their TV. Much of the time, it’s not their body that’s tired, but their mind. Isn’t it silly to tax your eyeballs with TV when you’ve already spent your whole day staring at your computer screen?

This is unhealthy.

You should do the opposite and activate your body while relaxing your mind. Housework is the perfect activity because it doesn’t take much brain power and it exercises all major muscle groups in your body. Let’s compare this with sport because I know there are people who would rather play squash than clean the house. In any ball game, the objective is clear. You’ve got to score a point. In housework, the objective is also clear – you’ve got to make the area clean and organized. In sport, the motions are repetitive, like running, bouncing the ball, or teeing off in golf. In housework, the motions are also repetitive – scrubbing, sweeping, folding.

In many ways, housework is just like sport. But better because you get to savour the results of a sparkling clean and efficiently organized home. Old people know that housework is great for relaxation. You see them pruning their gardens, painting their fences, and tidying up the place; always with a smile on their face.

A clean house will sustain a healthier body and lifestyle. Get your black belt in killing germs, dust mites, fungus, mould, and mildew. Steam-vacuum your floors and carpets, scrub your toilet bowl, sink, and shower; rinse the dust mites from your sheets and curtains. Did you know that ringworms can live inside your socks? Kill the bastards before they give you this:

[ Don't sleep on your socks. ]

When your home is neat and beautiful, you can be proud to entertain your friends and relatives there. Show them that there is a civilized person living in this house. They would surely be impressed by your fastidiousness.  And if you ever have to entertain a business client at home, the cleanliness and organization says something about you. Plus if you’re single, the first thing your potential partner will notice is whether you live in a dump or a residence.

“But I have a maid…”

Stop letting your maid have all the fun…. Even if you’re not doing the sweeping or scrubbing, take an active interest in organizing your living area. Arrange and set things up to suit yourself. Toss out old clutter which is cramping your space. Surely your maid can’t decide what to throw out. By removing useless stuff and organizing useful stuff in a clever way, you make items easier to access and your increased speed makes you more productive.

Here are three easy and powerful de-cluttering tips:

• Take an empty plastic bag and fill it up with junk you don’t use or need anymore. Throw out or give away one bag a day.
• Dig into your cupboards and wardrobes for all the clutter that is hidden out of sight. Because we can’t see it, we don’t notice its existence. But it’s there taking up space and blocking the way for storage of useful items.
• Reduce the amount of stuff you buy. Economic and scientific research has shown that we don’t use a lot of the items we own. And in Buddhist philosophy there is a saying that less possessions is best because more possessions results in more items to mind, more worries and things to take care of. Then it would be the case of the possessions possessing the owner rather than the other way around.

May I add that doing housework is good character training and will create a disciplined mind.

Clean for Success and win the battle for your life.