Cleanliness starts at home
As you drive around the city, you can’t help but notice the excessive amount of litter and rubbish all around. We all walk past it, drive by and complain about the mess and unsightliness of it all. Yet this mess is caused by people.
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While inadequate facilities and lack of education are probably contributory factors, one cannot deny that personal habits is a major factor.
Who drops the plastic bags by the roadside after drinking sachet water?
We all walk by and shake our heads in disgust.
One plastic bag here, another there, one after the other and you have a mountain of trash and it all begins to look like an insurmountable condition.
How can one person make a difference? Perhaps the question to ask is “Is cleanliness practised in our homes?”
When it comes to keeping healthy, there are many obvious aspects that I know won’t come as a surprise to you. Of course, nutrition plays a major role, as does getting exercise.
Personal hygiene is important, as is staying mentally stimulated, but one thing we don’t often think about is the relationship between our health and keeping a clean environment. A good environment is essential for our health and wellbeing.
The importance of cleanliness cannot be overemphasised when it comes to being healthy. In all the cities around the world, a major factor for residents being happy is the quality of life they have. Many factors contribute to a quality life and cleanliness and hygiene is one of those.
While you may not have full control of what goes on in your external environment, the one place you have control over is your immediate environment, which is your home and the area around it. The saying “Be the change that you want to see”, comes to mind.
Think about it. If you are a person who takes pride in keeping a clean house and a clean compound, are you likely to go out and act otherwise?
Obviously, there could possibly be a few exceptions. Generally speaking, people who care about their homes and surroundings would hesitate to dirty other areas. Whether you agree or not, a clean house says a lot about who you are.
If cleanliness of your home environment is important to you, you will ensure that it is kept clean all the time. Doing so over and over eventually becomes a habit that will extend to how you treat the areas outside of your home. The habit of maintaining cleanliness becomes entrenched in your personality.
How can we complain about the litter and garbage in the city when we fail to keep our immediate surroundings clean?
If we can all begin the step to maintain a clean environment in our homes and areas around our homes, we would be taking a step in the right direction and the issue of litter and waste everywhere would cease to be an issue.
The right steps include disposing of garbage appropriately, not throwing rubbish in the gutter, not littering
A healthy environment is important if we want to stay healthy.
Living in a home that is clean means that you and your family members are likely to be free from unwanted illnesses because, believe it or not, dirt is what attracts pests, which are responsible for causing many diseases. Therefore, the most effective strategy against the spread of disease is to make cleanliness a top priority.
Of course, standards of cleanliness are not the same for everybody and people grow up with varying concepts of cleanliness. What one person might classify as clean might not necessarily be the same for another. Nevertheless, we can all agree that cleanliness means the absence of dirt. As you walk into your house, what do you see?
A clean environment contributes to a quality life and a healthy lifestyle. It all begins with what we do in our homes. Which brings me to the title of my article for today, “The habit of maintaining cleanliness starts at home.
The writer is a Lifestyle Coach & Author of The Seduction of food’[email protected]