Can household chores help us relieve stress?

Is it the sound of running water? The smell of the dishwasher? Or maybe the texture of the sponge? No. In fact, it is the mechanical and almost automated movement with which you scrub the dishes, then rinse them and place them on the corresponding rail to dry them, while you start the action again with the next dishes.

Can you feel how you relax, how the stress goes away and you enter a kind of meditative state in which the conversation you have with your head is finally pleasant and harmonious? Do not? Well, you’ll have to complain to the researchers and their studies –as one of Florida State University – who claim that washing the dishes leads to a higher degree of awareness and mindfulness, improves mood, increases inspiration and relieves the mind of psychological ailments, such as stress or nervousness.

And not just the dishes: the results suggest that the mindfulness it could be cultivated through a series of simple activities, such as watering plants, ironing, folding clothes, or tidying up the house; that is, taking care of household chores. Here we remember his childhood, especially the fights that broke out when your mother sent you to clean the room. Probably something, in that motherly instinct, let her know that this annoying, harsh, boring order was “for your good.”

David Robson, science writer and author of The Expectancy Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Lifefits in a column in the BBC that household chores can replace meditation. “It can be helpful because it occupies the mind so that we spend fewer resources on things that concern us.”

For her part, clinical psychologist Joan Black assures us that certain daily activities involve sensory components that connect us to pleasure. “Water, soft and warm, smells from the kitchen or hands on the floor are sensations that connect us to more primal and early issues, which can calm us on levels that are not just verbal” , he argues. Like when grief invades us. “There, you want to wrap yourself in something soft and drink something hot; these are sensations that rock us, put us to sleep and make us feel good, ”explains the specialist.

How many times have you been stuck rewatching that conversation that didn’t go well and where you couldn’t find the right answers at the right time? Or you’re waiting for relevant information, but because of anxiety you’ve run out of fingernails to eat or neurons to keep burning. The next time this happens to you, try to devote your time and mind to a simple household task, like sweeping or vacuuming, maybe watering the plants or, why not, taking care of the pile of dirty dishes you have accumulated since the previous night. .

“When we are faced with something we cannot control, or a situation in which we do not know how to act, we can often find calm in these activities, which have the advantage of putting us in an active position. in front of the world. Because there is something we can do: command and with that ensure, even if it is not directly linked to what happens to us”, explains Black.

What lies behind is the need for control, the one that was lost at the start of the pandemic, when little was understood of its magnitude or what was happening, to the point of blurring the idea of ​​the future. and immerse ourselves in a cloud. of uncertainty. What happens when you’re not in control? Increases psychic discomfort: there is more anxiety, stress and even anguish, which depending on the case can lead to disorders such as depression.

According to Mental health thermometer in Chile , a study by the Pontifical Catholic University and the Chilean Security Association in 2021—at the height of the lockdown period—33% of those surveyed had symptoms associated with mental illness, up 6% than the previous measurement. Of this percentage, 46.7% are related to depression.

An emblematic segment of these complexities around the world is the healthcare staff who had to deal with patients who flooded emergency rooms during the pandemic. A study from the academic journal Frontiers in Psychology demonstrated the positive effect that involvement in certain domestic activities had on many of these workers, helping them to cope with and somatize the anxiety and stress accumulated in their daily activities.

Work also projects that getting involved in activities on a routine basis can be a good way to unwind from any type of work. , sex or those that are surely the favorites on this list: cleaning, which includes cleaning and tidying up the house, but also preparing delicious feasts.

Joan Black says routine gives us temporal and spatial support. “For example, when there are ideas that make us ruminate or we have problems that agitate us, returning to everyday life brings us calm and security.”

For our psyche, having certain certainties is of the utmost importance. It gives us that degree of control we need so that we don’t feel completely helpless in the face of the endless possibilities that can arise. Therefore, ordering and cleaning our home can give us some of that feeling.

Christian Ovalle, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in training at ICHPA, says that our brain somehow automates the effort and mechanical work behind these household activities, making them so simple. But he warns that although these can “considerably reduce the discomfort generated by a situation that interferes with our psyche”, it would be a mistake to consider it as a solution, since it is only “a replacement”.

Perhaps, after all, the ad isn’t lying when it shows a person clutching the detergent to their face, in a most peculiar emotional outburst. Washing the dishes and other household activities can give us relief when, as Joan Black puts it, we feel that “now is not the time to stop to feel, think, and act on what afflicts us.”

However, it is not that the time to face what afflicts us will magically disappear. This one is postponed and therefore in a minute he will have to come back. What afflicts us will be there in a hidden way, “sometimes as a result of physical discomfort or in the form of so-called stress,” Black explains.

This would show that, despite the sense of relief that tidying up the closet can provide, it does not necessarily have a therapeutic effect. At least that’s how Cecilia Artigas, psychoanalyst and full member of ICHPA, thinks. For her, “these activities are not therapeutic in itself. They can cause another effect, serve as a distraction to change the focus of attention, but not for a therapeutic process, which above all involves thinking about what hurts us”. What domestic activities like doing the dishes provide is “a false sense of relief, in the sense of distraction and escape: I stop thinking about the problem.” A kind of placebo.

“There is something very real”, says Christian Ovalle: “Insofar as we clean and tidy the house, perhaps we also put our heads in order”. Having a neat space where we live or our workplace gives us psychic relief. In this way, we structure our environment and the elements that compose it so that our mind is not saturated with stimuli that compete for our attention. Thus, our head works in a more focused and faster way and with a sense of control involved. Which for many, in addition, can be a source of pleasure.

“It is no coincidence that physical space is a reflection of our psychic space,” adds Ovalle. Joan Black goes in the same direction when she argues that the way we do domestic activities and the place we give them in our lives “says a lot about us and our present”. If you’re not one of those people who enjoy ordering or washing dishes, don’t be afraid, because that doesn’t mean you have a problem.

“There’s nothing wrong with being stressed out about household chores,” says Black. Sure: we live with high levels of work demands, so tidying up the house can get “super overwhelming”. According to the psychologist, these tasks “can be quickly dissociated from their primary meaning, which is to take care of our home. They also involve work, requiring unpaid and rarely rewarded time and physical and mental effort.

So if folding ironed clothes or cleaning windows can be stressful for some and also has no therapeutic effect, what’s the point? It’s simple: know yourself. It’s not that simple, but at least it helps to know yourself enough to know which activities provide a sense of stress relief.

“For these types of tasks to go in this direction, you have to be connected with yourself and know that certain things can give you relief when you need it,” says Black. The important thing is that these activities aim at the care of the person, “to inhabit or take care of the space in which we live, either by ordering, creating or personalizing the environment”.

You already know this: if you’re stuck without knowing how to solve this problem that worries you, give yourself some space to relax your head and, probably, with a more rested mind, you can find better solutions. Where to go? Maybe pay attention to Mr. Miyagi and, incidentally, learn one or another thing more. Don’t forget: “wax and remove wax”.