Is spending time outdoors good for your mental health?
Yes! Many positive impacts on mental health are associated with spending time in nature and outside, including improved focus, decreased stress levels, improved mood, and a reduction in the risk for mental health conditions. Green spaces can help reduce anxiety and provide opportunities to be social and spend time with family and friends. Sunlight provides vitamin D and releases serotonin, which gives a boost to your mood and improves your sleep cycle. Spending time in nature also helps the mind and body relax and decompress from the sensory overload of work and urban environments, improving focus and reasoning abilities. While many mental health experts encourage spending time in parks or forests, away from a more urban environment, to maximize the benefits, even spending time in your own backyard will provide the same benefits.
What if my outdoor space stresses me out because it hasn’t been maintained?
We get it. Life is hectic, juggling work and family, especially if kids’ activities keep everyone constantly on the move. There are only so many hours in the day, and often taking care of your lawn and landscaping must take a back seat to the many other responsibilities being thrown at you. The weekend comes along and even if you do have a little bit of free time, do you really want to spend it outside mowing the lawn and weeding the landscaped beds? And if you don’t, leaving the grass a little too tall and the landscaping a mess, it isn’t really the most relaxing environment. What do you do if you want to enjoy those benefits of spending time enjoying your outdoor space but going outside just brings the stress of realizing some work needs to be done before it is ready to be enjoyed?
Can outsourcing some household tasks be good for your mental health?
In the corporate world, outsourcing refers to having another company handle certain business functions because it is less expensive or more efficient or both, rather than performing the functions in house. The same thing can apply to your personal life. What is your time worth? If you want to dig into that question more, read one of our earlier blogs, “The Cost of Maintaining Your Own Lawn and Landscape”. You certainly could do household chores yourself, but what would you do with more time? Society is beginning to embrace the importance of work-life balance, and many employees are looking for ways to protect that balance, so they work to live, not live to work. But do you bring the same thought process to your home life? Do you want to spend your limited free time mowing the lawn and keeping your landscaping trimmed and weeded and mulched? Or would you rather outsource that task so you can spend that time enjoying your outdoor space with your family and friends? Not only does that allow you to remove a source of stress, but it also gives you (with your loved ones) a little more time to soak up the vitamin D and release the serotonin, breathe the fresh air, and allow your mind to take a vital rest from screens and artificial lighting.
Outsourcing can be a great way to help reduce stress if you hire the right company to perform the task for you. Quality of work is important, as you want to make sure you get the result you are aiming for when you hire someone else to perform the task. But it is not the only factor that helps reduce your stress. While considering options to ensure the contractor is knowledgeable, also consider their reputation for factors like honesty and communication. Outsourcing will add more stress if you have to chase the contractor to get any information and hope they will actually show up to perform the work. Taking the time to find a contractor who has the expertise to perform the work and the support staff to provide proactive communication is not always easy, but an important step to make sure the process of working with the contractor is stress-free.
So, what is improving your mental health worth?
Can you mow your own lawn and take care of your own landscaping? Of course you can. But what could you do with that time instead? What is your mental health worth to you? What benefits would you gain from more time spent enjoying the outdoors with your family and friends? What benefits would your family gain from more time spent outdoors? Is it worth the cost of hiring a professional landscape contractor who can perform the work much more efficiently?
Four Seasons Landscape & Construction Services is a woman-owned and certified Small Business Enterprise (SBE) company with the goal of providing reliable and knowledgeable property maintenance to allow our clients to spend more time enjoying their outdoor space. Our clients know they are hiring a family-owned and operated business with deep roots in the community, allowing Four Seasons to develop long-lasting relationships with our clients built on trust. The Four Seasons maintenance contract makes it easy for you to customize your contract with the services you need and combine all services throughout the year into an even monthly payment. Knowing you won’t have any surprise charges means it is easy for you to plan your budget and enjoy a well-maintained yard all year.
