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I don't like to refer to myself as manic; it seems almost self-deprecating and wholly a word used as a misogynistic slur.

But in saying that, it is the only word suitable to describe my cleaning style. 

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Now, I'm a clean woman. A woman who spends what feels like (and very probably is) a disproportionate amount of time scrubbing, polishing, wiping, washing and tinkering.

But I'm also a woman who looks around her tidy, well-kept home and sees unplumped pillows, black scuff marks on walls, dust sheets cascading the spines of old books, coffee cup rings on side tables and watermarks streaked across faucets. It's a never-ending curse.  

Yet, this meticulous attitude is limited to the confines of my own home.

Rest assured, I do not enter others' homes and judge them with the same hypercritical eye that I would my own. Much like we look in the mirror and see flaws in ourselves that we would never see in our friends.

I am also someone who is adamantly and unapologetically feminist. Yet seemingly my ideals are far from those of the feminist mind.

Do I see cleaning jobs as mine? Yes. Would I trust my male partner to clean? No (or at least not to the standards that I expect). And so it seems I exist as a 50s housewife, bound by the conforms of a domineering patriarchal society.Although you could argue in this case, it is entirely self-inflicted. 

And looking back to my life as a child, this might make a bit more sense if I was an utter neat freak.

But quite the contrary, you'd have done well to find a square inch on my floor which was not strewn with clothes, and the only sure fire way to make me clean my room was with cold hard threats.

Which begs the question: where did this obsessive cleaning habit come from? 

The cleaning propaganda.

Alike with all behavioural psychology, you first have to understand the past to understand the present.

Cleanliness has always been deemed as "morally superior", with the past dictating that an unclean woman is a "bad woman".

Much like it also dictated that women should maintain the home, and that an untidy house was reflective of an untidy mind. 

You only have to look at old propaganda and ads from the early-to-mid 20th century to understand the psychological influences women were (and probably still are) subject to.

Think of women who were depicted as being pathologically obsessed with cleanliness, smiling while hoovering under their disengaged husband's feet, or equipped in washing-up gloves and covered in suds. 

In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find an ad for a cleaning product with a male figure (unless they are listlessly pictured in the background reading a paper or something else, equally as enthralling).

And so, we can understand the cleaning expectations and standards women have been subject to for decades.

But can this age of propaganda explain the disproportionate amount of household tasks that some (and I would argue most) women are still subject to?

And surely this is not an explanation for the inexplicable and undue stress that women like myself associate with cleaning and an untidy home?

The link between clutter and anxiety.

Now don't get me wrong, I know not all women are afflicted with the debilitating curse of being 'manic cleaners'.

But from my experience of women (of whom I know a lot), I can attest to the fact that most find themselves in the same never-ending cycle that I do. 

If we look at cleaning as a need for control, it can explain a lot. For example, when I find myself at the mercy of life's unpredictability, the first thing I find myself doing is cleaning.

Maybe because this provides a sense of control, transforming my chaotic surroundings into an ordered and peaceful space.

In the same breath, clutter and mess can cause stress, and they have the power to overload our body's fight or flight response.

As such, they are nagging reminders of unfinished tasks, unmade decisions and the chaos of life that surrounds us.

In a primitive sense, mess creates a visual overload that sends our brains into overdrive and results in a manifestation of anxiety.

And, while it may not be apparent to our conscious brain, a barrage of objects and tasks in an environment can cause a sensory overload, again elevating anxiety levels while your brain attempts to make sense of all the chaos. 

So, in an effort to decrease clutter (and surely stress), we find ourselves in a catch-22, more stressed by what we uncover… And alternatively, if we resist the urge to clean, we may find ourselves distracted and irritated, consumed by the mere thought that there are dishes to be cleaned and that simply must be done before all else. Sound familiar? 

The psychology of cleaning in women.

Now, there's a science to this.

In a previous study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that women who described their homes as more cluttered and messy had flatter cortisol slopes (which are a marker of poor health) alongside an increased depressed mood over the day…which sounds about right!

And conversely, women who found their homes calming and restful, had steeper cortisol slopes (indicative of good health), with lower depressed moods.

So we might infer, mess equals stress.

And unsurprisingly, the link between messy home environments and stress in women was not seen in men. Which begs the age-old question… Why? 

Why does mess equal stress in women but not men.

Why are there sex differences in response to clutter? Let's throw to philosophers Tom McClelland and Paulina Sliwa on "gendered affordance perception": the idea that men and women perceive different tasks and responsibilities within the same environment.

They argue that women often "see" household tasks such as a bin that needs emptying, while a man instead may just see a full bin.

Or how women look at an unmade bed as needing to be made, and men just see an unmade bed… you get the gist? 

So, due to these gendered differences in the perceptions of household tasks, as well as societal norms, women's "affordance landscapes" are riddled with domestic jobs, while men do not associate mess with jobs to be done.

And, as such, it is plausible that women end up doing a greater share of said cleaning tasks.

Are men just lazy? 

Now, it would be very easy to go on a man hunt here, and jump onto the 'men are useless' diatribe. But like most things in life, there is not one simple "why?". We can dwell on the past, the propaganda, the societal norms, or we could assert some accountability. 

As we understand it, societal and gendered norms shape our affordances (how we view tasks). But, McCelland argues that men can resist gendered norms by improving their sensitivity to domestic tasks, and notice what needs doing by thinking rather than seeing. 

He writes: "A man might adopt a resolution to sweep for crumbs every time he waits for the kettle to boil, for example. Not only would this help them to do the tasks they don't see, it would gradually retrain their perception so they start to see the affordance in the future."

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But what we may also consider, is our response to mess as women. Maybe, just maybe, if we as women address mess, clutter, grime, whatever it may be, with a little less urgency, we may see our male counterparts start to appear.

And maybe we should try our best to adopt an affordance perception with that of the male gaze… maybe a surface full of crumbs is just a surface full of crumbs. Maybe then, we'll be less stressed. Or maybe it's just how we're wired.

Feature image: Getty