The Science of Spring Cleaning
Last week, I decided to paint my bathroom.
It seemed like a simple enough project. It’s the smallest room in the house, so it couldn’t possibly take long, I reasoned, to clean out and organize its cabinets and closet, then scrub, spackle, and sand the walls. And a fresh coat of paint would make it feel so clean: the pay-off was huge.
Days later, I’m still working on it; for such a small room, it really has been a disproportionate amount of work. But I’m doing myself a favor, and not just because at the end of it all I’ll have a new and improved place to shower.
I’ve leaned into this year’s spring cleaning itch with a vengeance, and I’m feeling what Katherine Milkman, behavioral economist and Wharton School professor, calls the “fresh start effect.”
Spring is what Milkman refers to as a “temporal landmark” — a time when people are most motivated to set and achieve goals. In a study, Milkman and her fellow researchers found that temporal landmarks get people moving on things that will better them or their lives because the landmark represents a line between a person’s past and their future. There’s a near universal desire for the future to be better than the past.
There are other temporal landmarks, too. (New Year’s is a big one, hence all the resolutions.) But there’s a reason people tend…
