I know that exercise can improve my mood and it's one of the best stress management tools I have, but I can't say that scrubbing the bathtub has ever had me jumping for joy. But that's what the authors of a recent study were trying to determine -- just how much physical activity is necessary for better mental health. It doesn't take as much as you would think. Their study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, reveals that as little as 20 minutes of mild activity such as house cleaning can boost your mood. So get out that vacuum, polish the furniture, and chase away all the dust bunnies -- it's time to give your mental health a little spring cleaning.

I was glad to see that the study went on to say that, while mild activity was effective, greater mental health perks were realized with more intense and more frequent activity. I'm not a big fan of the articles and programs that tout cleaning house as physical activity. It's active, it's good for you, and everybody needs a clean house... but let's not fool ourselves. 20 minutes of vacuuming is not the same as 20 minutes of real exercise. So take it up a notch -- if 20 minutes of mild activity will boost your mood just imagine how great you'll feel when you exercise (for real) every day!

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Hello, my name is Maggie and I'm a neat freak. My house is far from perfect, but everything has a place and that's how I like it. But the other day I got an itch to spring clean and I ventured into (cue scary music in the background)... the basement. Eew. It may look relatively neat down there, but I found boxes that haven't been moved in ages. There were dust bunnies that were mutating into dust elephants. By the end of it all, I was slightly disgusted at what was lurking in the unseen corners of my basement, but I was happy to have all that dust and dirt removed from my house.

While it's, of course, important to keep your home sanitary and clean year-round the spring cleaning ritual is a great time to get into all the spots you may overlook during regular house cleaning. Some ideas:

• Have your mattresses steam-cleaned.
• Empty closets/pantries and scrub down the shelves and walls.
• Vacuum underneath furniture.
• Move your fridge and scrub the back of it and vacuum any gathered dust.
• Wipe down tops of door frames and other places where dust can collect.
• Steam clean your carpets and furniture.
• Remove and wash drapes.
• Wipe down window blinds.

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A new study of more than 200,000 women suggests that doing household chores like dusting, mopping and vacuuming was significantly more cancer protective than playing sports, or having a physical job.

While it's long been known that physical exercise lowers the risk of breast cancer -- most likely due to the resultant hormonal and metabolic changes -- housework is the only physical activity that's been shown to have positive effects on both pre- and post-menopausal women.

This isn't to say that there's something inherently cancer protective about the act of mopping itself, but rather that moderate physical activity, like housework, may be more effective in reducing a woman's risk of breast cancer than more rigorous, but less frequent exercise.

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