Photo by Zac Gudakov on Unsplash

by andrew lemieux, guest contributor

A recent survey found that almost 80% of American homeowners believe there is a connection between their mental health and the cleanliness of their houses. Roughly three-fourths of these people said they feel more stressed than usual when the interiors of their homes aren’t clean, while right around 70% of them said they feel more stressed than normal when the exteriors of their homes aren’t clean.

Have you been experiencing your fair share of stress lately and suspect your messy home might be to blame? If so, there are steps you can take to make your house shine and put yourself in a much better frame of mind in the process. Here are a few useful house improvement tips for a sparkling home.

Schedule Pressure Washing for Your Home’s Exterior

When you pull up in front of your house each day, do you like what you see? If you don’t love the way your home looks from the curb, it won’t matter how hard you work to keep the inside clean. It’s going to be difficult for you to take much pride in it when the exterior isn’t up to your standards.

For this reason, it would be worth exploring the idea of scheduling pressure washing for your home’s exterior. It’ll allow you to get everything from your driveway and walkways to your siding and other surfaces on the outside of your home clean.

The right pressure washing company will make maintaining the cleanliness of your home’s exterior so simple. They’ll do all of the heavy lifting when it comes to getting the outside of your property as clean as it can be. It’ll make you fall in love with how your home looks from the outside all over again.

Take Your Shoes Off Before Entering Your Home

When you make it a point to have the exterior of your home pressure washed, it’ll get rid of a lot of the dirt and other debris that surrounds it. But just because the outside of your home will be much cleaner than it was before does not mean you should start walking around in your house with your shoes on after being outside.

A recent report revealed that about two-thirds of Americans remove their shoes before entering their homes. If you fall into this group, you should keep doing what you’re doing. However, if you’re someone who wears shoes in your house, you should work on putting an end to this practice. Otherwise, you may end up tracking everything from dirt and dust to dangerous bacteria like E. Coli throughout your home.

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

Start Vacuuming Your Home at Least Once a Week

Taking off your shoes before you walk into your house after being outside will help limit the amount of dirt, dust, and debris that’s able to make its way inside. But even still, you’re inevitably going to find dust gathering in your home. The average American home collects more than 40 pounds of dust per year.

If you don’t do anything about this dust, it has the potential to make you sick. It can also start to cover many of the surfaces inside your home and make them look unsightly. It may even work its way deep into any carpeting you have in your home and stay there until you decide to do something about it.

To avoid having these things happen, you should make it your mission to begin vacuuming your home at least once a week. It’ll reduce the amount of dust that you have in your home, and it could also make cleaning the rest of your house easier. You won’t need to worry about doing things like dusting as often when you stay on top of vacuuming.

Work on Decluttering Your Home as Often as Possible

In the past, studies have suggested that many homes have upwards of 300,000 items stuffed inside them. There has been some debate over the accuracy of that number. But regardless of whether or not it’s true, the simple fact is that lots of people have too many things in their houses. If this sounds like you, decluttering should be near the top of your to-do list.

By decluttering your house, you’ll be able to eliminate at least some of the things that might be making a mess in it now. You’ll also be able to make it so much easier for you to keep your house neat and tidy inside. This will result in you taking more pride in your home as a whole, and it should also bring your stress levels back down and improve your mental health in no time.

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