Clean Up Your Act

Those who know me will attest that I am never going to be in the running for any "housekeeper of the year" awards. Cleaning is not my thing -- never has been. But that's not to say that I don't like a clean house, and when called for I will roll up my sleeves and get scrubbing (with only minimal grumbling along the way).

So it always amazes me how some people who have a choice can just choose to happily live amid filth. OK, cleaning may not be that much fun, but let's face it people, it's just a necessary evil.

We moved into a subletted one-bedroom apartment on Saturday and spent most of the weekend cleaning. It looked neat on the surface, but it was by no means clean. Certainly not clean enough for us to feel comfortable putting our stuff away or using the kitchen. Two of us, working steadily pretty much all day yesterday still didn't get the job done.

Living in a clean home is not just a hygiene issue. Clean environments -- or at least the illusion of a clean environment -- may even have an impact on our behaviour. Research conducted last year found that people behave more generously and more fairly when they are in clean-smelling environments.

Participants in the study were given several tasks; some worked in unscented rooms, while others were set their tasks in rooms sprayed with a citrus-smelling cleanser. According to the Toronto Star:

Given $12, they had to decide how much to keep and how much to return to a partner who had trusted them. Those in the clean-smelling rooms gave back an average of $5.33, compared with $2.81 from the no-smell rooms.

Another experiment, looking at charitable behaviour, found those in the lemony-fresh room expressed more interest in volunteering for a service project and donating money. Twenty-two per cent said they'd like to give money, compared to 6 per cent of those with unteased nostrils.