Skip House Cleaning. Play These Cleaning-Themed Video Games Instead.

When you fire up A Little to the Left for the first time, you see nothing but a pink wall and a crooked painting of a cat. The game offers no tutorial to move through, but if you immediately feel compelled to straighten out the painting, then you don’t need one—you’ve already solved the first of the many puzzles themed to tidying up. A Little to the Left features a series of tableaus made up of basic household items lying in some sort of disarray against a colorful, minimalist backdrop. Some puzzles feature a set of colored pencils that require reordering, for example, while others might have marked-up sticky notes that you arrange to form a cohesive picture. You need to use your intuition to succeed, but you also have to stay wary of the little white cat paw that might pop into the frame at any moment to sabotage all of your hard work. Cats always keep us humble.

It’s hard to say why virtually cleaning other people’s houses is so satisfying, but the original House Flipper was successful enough to warrant a sequel, and the second game is just as comforting. In House Flipper 2, it’s up to you to turn rundown houses into livable spaces by scrubbing off stains, junking old furniture, and sprucing things up with new fixtures and fresh paint. What would be a daunting task in real life is utterly laid-back in this world, as you have no constraints on how quickly you work—or even how pretty you leave the place. You can spend all day organizing pantries in a way that would make Marie Kondo proud, or you can stage chaotic scenes unlikely to grace the pages of interior-design magazines. You have certain baseline tasks that you must complete before you walk away from a job, but beyond washing a few windows and sweeping up some dust bunnies, only you can determine how to spark joy.

Minami Lane is my favorite cozy game of the year so far, and not just because it has cats that you can pet. This adorable game about managing idyllic, Japanese-inspired streets looks like a simple construction simulator, but it’s just as much about cultivating a thriving community as it is about placing buildings and making them look pretty. In Minami Lane, you fix up and expand a tiny neighborhood by repairing shoddy houses, cleaning garbage off the street, and building new hangout spots for your villagers, such as ramen shops, bath houses, and parks. But it’s not enough to plop down a boba stand and call it a day: Creating the perfect neighborhood also means crafting the perfect boba recipe, according to your locals. It also means waving at cyclists passing through, petting cats that wander by, and paying attention to how your residents feel about the curb appeal, prices, and amenities you establish. You can play through the entire game in under five hours, but the wholesome blend of strategy, creativity, and laid-back maintenance tasks may invite you to replay it for years to come.

There are two types of people in this world: those who play Stardew Valley, and those who take it on as a part-time job. This game has a particular magnetism for spreadsheet fanatics and meticulous planners, but you can enjoy it casually, too. We’ve recommended Stardew Valley time and again as one of our favorite cozy games of all time, and now it’s better than ever thanks to the major update it received earlier this year. This update adds a wealth of new content, such as new crops, animals, recipes, and events, as well as a new farm and multiplayer support for up to eight people. At this writing, the new update is available only for PC players, but the original base game provides enough pastoral chores and wholesome quests to keep you hooked on any console you may have.

If you’ve moved in the past five years, let’s be honest: You probably still have some stuff in boxes. We’re not here to judge, or even to tell you to deal with those things, but if you’ve ever wondered what it might feel like to properly finish a move (without the trouble of actually doing it), developer Witch Beam’s Unpacking offers a sweet view into one person’s life as told through post-move vignettes. As you remove things from boxes throughout each apartment and put them in their place, you figure out what goes where, and how the main character’s life has changed in the process. Unpacking is an often poignant game that goes places you might not expect, but it remains a relaxing and almost meditative way to exercise that organizational urge, all without dealing with several years’ worth of moving-related dust bunnies.

Sometimes cleaning is just the prelude to rebuilding your space from scratch, and My Dream Setup gives you the chance to skip the cleaning and the rebuilding and get straight to the beautiful new space. My Dream Setup allows you to set up a custom room configuration and then start filling it with lights, furniture, and other gamer gear to build cozy gaming hideaways, hardcore command centers, and plenty in between. Plus, developer Campfire Studio has just introduced optional add-ons for custom bathrooms and kitchens, and even pets, for just a buck each. If you’ve ever spent hours building your perfect space in any of the Sims games, My Dream Setup is a must-buy.

If you’ve ever used a power washer, you get it: Blasting off disgusting, built-up grime, dirt, mildew, or non-specific grossness is incomparably satisfying. But not everyone has a power washer—or super-dirty yards, cars, or old houses to aim it at. That’s where developer FuturLab’s game PowerWash Simulator comes in. PowerWash Simulator puts you in the rubber boots of a new power-wash business trying to build a clientele and buy ever more powerful washers and attachments, but to get the bag, you have to do jobs, which escalate from the manageable (such as your old, grease-covered business van) to the almost inconceivable. PowerWash Simulator involves some problem-solving, sure—you have to figure out which settings and tools can effectively clean things like layers of mold or scum off specific surfaces, because sometimes a detergent does what hot water can’t. But really, PowerWash Simulator is designed to satisfy the Make Things Clean desire inside so many people, and it’s available on basically every platform.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Signe Brewster.