The motivation to clean comes easily for some, and less so for others. If you fall into the latter category, you can try to drum up some energy, perhaps by using a simple reward system for yourself, but the truth is that we all need a little push sometimes to really get things going.

I don’t just say that. It’s a well-known law of productivity, the Yerkes-Dodson Law. I’ve written about it before, mostly in relation to its usefulness in tackling a to-do list or work project, but you can apply it to cleaning as well.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law, created by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson, states that you are most productive when you have just the right amount of stress to push you into action. You can’t have too much, or you’ll spiral downward. You can’t have too little, or you’ll have no sense of urgency and will procrastinate.

What this boils down to for our purposes is timing. If you have too much or too little time to do something, you will find that your performance will suffer. You need a fairly tight schedule, but enough time to clean. You need a looming deadline.