Buying more time is an excellent alternative to buying more stuff, and hiring some housekeeping help is no different. We don’t need to feel guilty for outsourcing some tasks during challenging seasons of life so we can focus on other priorities. (Mr. Money Mustache would disagree.)

But we get something out of cleaning our own home. We become intimately acquainted with our space and the objects we keep within it, in a way that generates feelings of ownership, responsibility, gratitude, pride, and care.

This sense of ownership is why some schools task children with daily cleaning instead of hiring janitors. If we are the ones mopping the floors, we’ll be more likely to wipe our feet, to pick up after ourselves, to encourage thoughtfulness and care in the people sharing the space with us.

We demand so much from our homes: shelter us, store our possessions, entertain our guests, keep us comfortable, connect us to a neighborhood community, offer us a retreat from public life, on and on. In caring for our home ourselves, we can even up the exchange.

If cleaning our homes feels onerous, it forces us to contend with our excess: we are responsible for more space than we can comfortably care for, and/or we are responsible for more stuff than we can comfortably care for.

When our homes are decluttered and right-sized, we eliminate friction associated with cleaning. It’s less burdensome, and maybe even enjoyable, because we are caring for spaces and objects we lovingly use.