Keeping a clean home is something most people strive to do. Cleanliness around the world is important, and many people have developed their cleaning habits and even cleaning tools over the years to ensure that their households are up to their standard of cleanliness.
In different households, let alone different countries, you will find people adopting varying cleaning habits. While you might be familiar with some of these habits or even have adopted some for your routine, you will certainly be surprised by a few of them.
Related Read: 7 Fascinating Facts on Cleanliness from Around the World
Facts About Cleaning Habits
1- Keeping Clean Floors
If you are ever invited over into a friend’s house, you might just go in without taking off your shoes. While this is not really insulting in some countries, it can be a sign of disrespect in others. Quite understandably, in some countries, including Japan, people do not want you stepping on their clean floor with shoes that you wore outside. More often than not, they will offer you a pair of home slippers when you visit. It is a tradition that actually helps the Japanese maintain clean floors. There are also specific bathroom slippers you can wear so that the floors are hygienic.
2- Spring Cleaning
In North America, the concept of spring cleaning is very common. Families will thoroughly clean their home’s interior, and de-clutter to start spring on the right note. There are similar cleaning habits all over the world, but instead of being done at the beginning of spring, they are usually scheduled right before a new year or another important holiday, depending on the culture. For example, in China, deep cleaning of one’s home is necessary before the New Year to eliminate all the negative energy before the year starts. Another fun fact to know is that the Chinese believe that sweeping their home at the start of the year can remove all the positive energy and luck of the year.
3- Snow Carpet Cleaning
Carpets are really hard to clean regularly. They require quite a bit of drying time, and they need to be properly dried if you do not want them to have a bad odor. In Russia, one of the weirdest cleaning habits they have is that they clean their carpets using snow. It is usually done by the New Year to ensure a fresh start. The carpets are taken outside and laid down in the snow. People then shovel more snow on top of it and scrub away all the dirt accumulated since the carpet was last cleaned. They spend the entire day cleaning carpets, and children are even included in the cleaning process.
4- A holiday for Cleaning
Can you imagine having a national holiday for the sole purpose of cleaning your home? This is exactly the case in Thailand. In this Asian country, there is a two-day holiday called Songkran where people celebrate by deeply cleaning their home in an effort to cleanse their spirit from negative energy. During this holiday, families will visit each other and help make their homes as clean and fresh as possible. Generally, Thais are quite concerned with cleanliness, and you should not be surprised that they have very extensive daily cleaning habits. For example, some of them make it a point to thoroughly clean their kitchens daily and even mop the floors after dinner.
5- Tidying Up Before Cleaners Arrive
This can seem quite illogical and redundant to many people around the world, but quite a few people make it a habit to clean their homes before the professional cleaners they hire arrive. Mainly, it is to avoid having the cleaners judge the state of their home or cleaning habits, but it defeats the whole point of hiring a cleaning service in the first place. The professionals behind Thecleaningadvantage.com stress that you should at least avoid doing a chore that the cleaning service will already cover. After all, if you want to hire a cleaning service, you should relax and not clean the same things they will be cleaning before they arrive. Also, cleaning before a cleaning service arrives is a waste of money.
6- Birthday Chores
In Germany, depending on gender, you have to do a chore on your birthday. This may be shocking to non-Germans, but when a single person is approaching their thirtieth birthday, they have to perform a specific chore on their birthday to signify that they are still available. Women usually have to clean their doorknob with a toothbrush while men have to sweep the stairs in a public place; this informs others that they are still looking for a partner.
7- Cleaning Graves
In Argentina and many other South American countries, to prepare for the celebration of the famous day of the dead, not only do people start cleaning their own homes and cooking up a feast, but they also go to their loved ones’ graves to clean them and sweep away any debris. It is a well-known tradition in Latin America to ensure that the dead are prepared for the celebration, and it also helps maintain the state of the graveyard.
8- Death Cleaning
Not to be confused with the previous point, death cleaning is done in Sweden; a person does this cleaning habit, and it usually involves de-cluttering one’s home. You might be wondering why a simple de-cluttering is called a death cleaning.
The purpose of de-cluttering is to save their loved ones from the burden of cleaning up after the person de-cluttering dies. Getting rid of belongings that are not in use ensures that their relatives do not have to collect tons of stuff and deal with copious belongings when the person is gone.
These different cleaning habits are interesting, to say the least. Learning all you can about other countries’ noteworthy cleaning habits will help you if you ever get the chance to visit these countries. More importantly, you might feel that one of these habits can work for you and adapt it to your cleaning routine.
