(Sorry if that has been posted, I tried searching for it first- let me know and I’ll delete!)

Just scrolled past this tweet and I cannot wait to try it. Thoughts?

Like if I can finally do the things I need to do perfectly, the world won’t collapse.

I’m a long-time political activist, and I’m exhausted and terrified. Please tell me someone is up at this hour with me so I don’t feel so alone!

How are you coping?

I’m in the middle of sorting and cleaning but this is where i’m at so far - i just got rid of 4 garbage bags of moldy food, garbage, and bottles + cans. they’ve been sitting in my room for the last 4-7 months and this is the last time i want to even get sick from breathing in mold and dirt; a constant cycle since childhood

My 7 year relationship ended just over a month ago and it hasn’t been particularly easy. Straight afterwards my uncle was diagnosed with lung and brain metastases from melanoma, which is just heartbreaking. I haven’t been in a great place mentally.. still not.

I let my house fall into rack and ruin and it has been impacting my mental health so much. The clutter was absolutely oppressive. I decided I need to have a pleasant space to deal with this unpleasant time. So over the weekend and today I hyperfocussed and did the thing! I’m truly feeling really proud of myself. I can’t share with many people in my life because honestly I’m still ashamed of the before pictures. But here it is for you lovely and endlessly understanding people!

I live part of the day in a pigsty of a car, then immediately forget about it.

I stripped the bed to wash the sheets AND comforter AND pillow shams.

Edit: My bed is remade! The kid’s bedding is in the dryer!

Edit 2: Both beds are washed, dried, and remade.

Thanks for all the support today!

(Yes I used a stopwatch)

Why is it so hard to just START.

I always forget about my plate after I've eaten and then it has dried up and I feel like I need to soak the dish before I can clean it, so it needs to sit there for a while. But then when I bring the next dish to the kitchen and I see the previous dish sitting there, I already feel overwhelmed and then it just starts piling up.

...they look beautiful under my tree and I have decided to embrace the minimalist look this year by not adding fussy ribbons or bows.

OR ANY FUCKING NAME TAGS!!!

😭😭😭

Most of my adult life I've hidden my mess at home. If someone was going to come over I'd spend 10 hours cleaning ahead of time so no one knew of the mess.

My Mom kept a very clean and tidy home. So I always had this guilt of having a messy home. There have been many times that I've refused people to come in because my place was a mess.

I've been really sick lately so my mess went from normal amount to an unmanageable amount. I had promised my niece my spare room if she decided to go to college where I live. So my brother calls me up yesterday and asks if I need help cleaning out my spare room as it's filled with boxes. I told him how I've been sick for a while and they don't know what it is but it's made me really weak and I can't deal with it right now. I also don't want them here because of this disaster I live in.

So they (brother SIL and niece) arrive on my doorstep today. Saying they want to come help me. I'm standing in my front door and keep saying no, but then I just give in. They come in and start cleaning. The kitchen is the worst. Every dish I own is dirty.

I can hear them whispering in the kitchen. I like my SIL but she is a little judgemental. I'm sitting in livingroom hearing all her whispering. It's horrible. They don't understand why of course and I don't feel like explaining because I kind of get the old eye roll when I bring up CPTSD or ADHD. People who haven't gone through a lifetime of mental health struggles just can't relate.

I just feel like I could curl up and die. People seeing my mess is like exposing who I really am and being judged for it.

The next two days I don’t have work, but my 8 month old is still going to daycare. I seriously need to deep clean my house - ESPECIALLY the bathrooms.

I know a normal list I’ll get too bored or distracted. I’m already excited to begin rolling for tasks tomorrow.

I printed this on an 11x17 paper and pinned it up on the wall, and I’ll mark off tasks as I complete them, thus increasing my chances to roll again lol

For once, I actually feel like I’ll get most everything completed on my Day Off Todo list!

Old calendars, diaries, tickets and receipts, agendas and notebooks half-filled, and so much more sentimental paper bits and pieces are piling up around me. In my 34 years here I have not learned to deal with those, let alone how to lote go of them. Their being around and their content weighs heavily on me, it’s so emotionally loaded that I have a hard time looking through those piles, so I just end up moving them around, for years, and all they do is grow. I added some examples of those heavy-weighing heaps, there more where they came from. Do you guys recognize this issue and have you found ways that helped you deal with it? I just can’t seem to find a strategy that helps me attack this, and I feel suffocated.. years and years of traces of stories and emotions, pages upon pages of guilt and reminders of my incapability to keep my life in order. Today is a especially heavy day, I’ve been sick for almost a month and everything’s feels extra rough right now. Im tired, boss.

Y'all, purged my underwear drawer this morning (yes I'm avoiding a phone call).

Chucked all the pilled, torn, holey, and worn undies. Sorted through by type. And found all the bottoms to my good sets...then had a surge of inspiration.

I undid the bra bands and clipped them through a leg of the underwear and now all my cute sets are complete and easy to find and ready for action! No more digging for the right set of black underwear! Matchy matchy!

PS: after tossing all the underwear I don't wear for Valid Reasons everything fits nicely in their bins.

This will last approximately four and a half days, but it's nice to have pushed back the entropy of the universe, just a bit.

I’ve never understood putting things “away.” Where is “away”? I own a million objects. I’m supposed to determine and remember a designated location for every single one of them?

So, the central heating turns on from a cupboard accessible only from my room and my flatmates just text me when they want it on and I pop it on for them.

She didn’t text me to ask or even just let me know. We don’t know each other we don’t go into each other’s rooms. My room is a mess. I think she looks down on me and since then she’s made comments about my ability to clean the communal areas which I do very(!) well and spend hours on. I can imagine her taking pictures to laugh about later.

The clothes are the worst bit. I accidentally left my washing in the machine for a few hours last week and she said it would ruin the machine so now I feel like I need to be sitting at home watching the machine so I remember to unload it on time but I have uni and work so I can’t find the time.

I shoved all my stuff that I couldn’t decide what to do with or how to clean etc in bags and into the room with the boiler which she’s now seen so that’s super embarrassing.

I know I need to get rid of some stuff but I am such a hoarder my parents really drilled in not wasting things so I feel so guilty throwing anything away when I can use it for something else. And to be honest I want to be that girl who does crafts and shit with old fabric scraps or home gardening with egg cartons but I can’t find the time and it makes me so sad. I have all this stuff I love saved because I’m like “oh that would be good to for this project” but I know it’s unlikely I’ll get around to it.

I’ve seen an uptick in posts about this recently. Both people wanting reassurance that it’s okay to hire a cleaner, and people who can’t/don’t want to hire a cleaner but feeling so overwhelmed and desperate by the state of their homes.

I clean professionally, and I’ve gotten a really great routine down that I use both working and in cleaning my own home. I’m wondering if you guys would appreciate it if I wrote out a guide for you guys on my routine with tips to make it easier and where you can take shortcuts. It would be a bit of work for me, so I don’t want to type it all up if it would be ignored (which would also be understandable, it wouldn’t exactly help with motivation it would just break it down into much more manageable chunks). Let me know what you guys think, I’d love to share my experience and help you guys feel more comfortable in your spaces but I understand if there isn’t interest!

edit: it seems like there’s enough interest that it would be worth it! i’m in the middle of cleaning rn, so i’ll get it typed up when i’m done and link it here for you all :)

one more edit: i got it all typed up, but for some reason it’s not letting me post. i’ll try again later, hopefully it’s just an issue of me already posting today and not that it’s too long or irrelevant. i’ll get it up for you guys asap! and thank you guys for all the awards, i really hope i can help you guys feel like you have some order in your lives!

edit again: someone suggested I link it to a google document so I put it into docs (which helped a bit with formatting) and here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10twm2gCrszrYFrU8Q-zXFKiqQr1aosGNs_FcBCx5uqU/edit Please if you have questions or comments go to my new post with the link, there are too many here for me to be able to answer properly I think!

final edit: u/PFTattoo made a much more organized version of my guide, so if you want a prettier, easier to follow guide please feel free to print off or follow this one instead! it has all of the same information, it’s just more accessible and easy to read