If your house was filthy? And I mean BAD.

[utterfilth]

Name changed for this. I'm so ashamed.

Over the last few years I have had problems with depression and anxiety which have had a terrible impact on my motivation and housekeeping skills. I don't clean or tidy and my house smells.

The wooden floors are dirty, there are cobwebs. Unpacked boxes from a move two years ago. Clutter everywhere. I manage to keep the kitchen clean for the health of my teenage kids.

I am overwhelmed and feel ill at how much I have to do. I can't cope. I can't have anyone visit.

I would never ask a friend to help me - it's that bad. They would be shocked and disgusted at how bad it is.

I know the answer is to start slowly and if I was able to get my head together I would roll my sleeves up. But I just want to get in bed and sleep.

I don't know what I'm asking here for - maybe just a magic motivational kick up the arse?

Do a little bit each day. Empty one box today and then tomorrow maybe clean the bath etc. Little and often will make a massive difference to the house and how you feel.

If you want a friendly chitchat and a slow steady cleaning routine(plus slow decluttering in your own time if you don't fancy having anyone in your space) hop over to housekeeping and come join the flybaby cleaning thread
Lots of us struggle with our clutter and we are a very chatty bunch so if you just need a bit of company/moan about parenting/life etc we burble on at that too

Op, if you fancy it, come and join us on the fledgling Flylady thread here. Many people on it are struggling in various ways and the Flylady system (little and often) really helps! We don't follow it strictly and the thread is really supportive!

If it has taken a while for your house to get cluttered, then realistically it will take a while to get on top of it again. But that's ok. As long as you do 5mins or 15 mins or 30 mins or however much you can manage, every day, things will improve slowly.

There's the everyday cooking/washing/cleaning.

Then there's tidying/organisation and routine cleaning.

Then theres decluttering (which is not the same as organising).

Try and do something towards each of these three categories daily, even 5 mins of focused work will make a difference!

Good luck

Closets Zoo you beat me to it! (Waves!).

It's not hard to get into this position. And it must be daunting. Definitely get a reputable cleaning company to blitz it for you and then start as you mean to go on. They won't judge, and you could always say its your mad old aunts house! Haha!

Closets??

That was meant to read "ditto"!

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH.

I agree with a PP.
Choose one room, empty it completely. Clean the empty room, then start sorting through the stuff you’ve taken out. Chucking what isn’t needed and putting everything else in its relevant room.

You’ll then see instant progress in that room and it’ll spur you on as opposed to overwhelm you with the task ahead. Do an easy room first, like your living room or bedroom.

Keep us posted with your progress, you can do this and you’ll feel so much better once you get underway

If I could afford it I would pay someone to come in and do a one off deep clean but before this I would spend a day (with my teens helping too) to clear all the clutter and get rid of anything you don't want/need. You can pay for rubbish removal also if you can't face going to the tip yourself.

Do the teens help a lot round the house? If not perhaps I would give them a couple of chores to help out and again if you can afford it get a cleaner to come in every week or if you can't afford that perhaps every month just to tackle the harder jobs.

This was me. It's not insurmountable, I promise. I had undiagnosed ADHD and as a result of this anxiety and depression and I just couldn't cope. But it is doable - you just need to take it one step at a time.

Various things which have helped me at different times:

The FLYlady baby steps. I remember reading "Lesson one: Shine your sink" and I almost closed the website straight away because I thought how the fuck is that supposed to help? But for some reason I read it anyway. Step one was "Take all of the dirty dishes out of your sink". I cried because no other advice had ever understood the level I was at before. FLYlady is a bit sickly sweet but it is gentle and kind and nonjudgemental and it was what I needed at a certain time.

The book The Mother Trip by Ariel Gore - has a section on what she calls "The Mama Blues" which is not really PND because people think PND only happens to women with tiny babies. There is a part where she wrote about how sometimes it was all she could do to get out of bed, and said if all you can do is get out of bed, just get out of bed. That's enough. That's okay.

An international move. This is a bit drastic but bear with me, because it wasn't the move that helped, it was the act of getting a set of boxes and going through every room, every single item that I owned and choosing whether to pack it in a box to keep, whether to sell/donate or whether it was rubbish and could be thrown away, and in throwing stuff away, giving myself permission to just take it all to the tip and screw what could be recycled and what could not because it was a one off. The key was only being able to take the bare minimum because it was so expensive to pack and ship what I wanted. That really seriously helped to pare down my stuff and was a useful exercise. It also completely empties out rooms so that you can deep clean them. It might help to see each room as a mini project and perhaps put some effort into freshening it up once it's been cleaned - changing the paint colour, rearranging furniture, updating wall pictures, anything like that? Get your kids to help. And once the room is re-done you all agree to respect it and treat it nicely.

Along the same lines - the KonMari method. (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying). She encourages you to look at what you have and decide which items you love/which bring you joy (and there's joy in utility as well - you might not love your dustpan and brush but you probably enjoy the convenience of being able to brush up small spills rather than picking on your hands and knees)

I like the 3 box method

One to keep, one to bin/skip, one for the charity.

Focus on one part of the room e.g your chest of drawers/wardrobe. Go through each item and be ruthless and put it in the correct box. Anything that needs binning or going to the charity shop, do it THAT DAY! Then it's out of the house for good and you can start on the next bit.

I know it's hard OP but try and think of the bigger picture when the negativity creeps in - how lovely it will be to have a nice clean shiny house that you can be proud of

I'm in pretty much the same boat, OP.
I feel I could maintain it, once it's done, but don't know where to start.
It's not so much the thought of cleaning that's overwhelming me - it's the tidying that needs doing before I can even begin the cleaning. And only I can do that bit. I'd love to get professionals in, but can't until the clothes, toys, paperwork, etc is all out of the way.

Could we maybe do it together? As in, identify a job, both go off and do it, then report back?
I also need a kick up the bum.
I called Surestart, but I don't have a young enough child. Could that be worth looking in to, OP?

Ditto here to the little-and-often method.
Set a timer for 15 mins and just start. You'll be surprised what you can achieve, and then you have a choice to re-set the timer and do more, or to go and have a lie-down.
And more from me. It's ok.

Yes agree Flylady language is barftastic in the extreme, but underlying system (once adapted to suit yourself) is sound!

Another book recommendation: Decluttering at the speed of Life by Dana K White. Really good with detailed instructions for every area.

I work with a company that does commercial cleaning . We would be happy to come in and sort out your house and wouldn't judge . It wouldn't be cheap though . I think they charge £20 and hour pp. we are good though 🤗🤗

Unfuck Your Habitat is particularly good for people with depression or chronic illness or other real-life problems. It talks about depression and cleaning in this post, but the entire website (and its associated Tumblr) is worth browsing.

www.unfuckyourhabitat.com/the-depressionmessy-house-cycle/?pagenum=1&category=life-happens

Seriously a cleaning company will NOT be phased.

I saw a thing on tv where professional cleaners get called out to do one off cleans for reclaimed squats that have been used as a drug den for years.

Your house will be a doddle.

I’ve worked as a holiday Apartment cleaner , and the utter shit pit some people can make of a clean tidy room in A matter of a few days. NOTHING would surprise me. And as a cleaner, you don’t judge. You just clean.

Are you in London Hendricksy ???

Please don’t be ashamed, been there and so have many others. It’s quite usual in depression. I like unfuck your habitat, flylady is good too, if a little sentimental. (I mean a lot sentimental).

The cleaning company will have seen it all before - and much worse. But do your teenage children not help out? Surely they could be given chores to assist you? I agree with all the great help and advice you have been given, it's so easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task but if you tackle a teeny wee bit at a time ... someone once gave me this advice, imagine if someone gave you a giant pie or cake and said 'here, eat this'. You'd balk at the size of the task and think 'oh I'll never manage all that'. But if you take a tiny slice, and then later another slice and so on, you will eventually finish the pie/cake (cleaning up). Good luck, let us know how you get on.

There's a small cleaning firm near me that specifically mentions that it does cleaning for people who have been unwell or who are struggling to manage. My best friend got them in for her mum when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and they were lovely (and even made her mum a cup of tea, etc. during their visit) and never made my friend's mum feel embarrassed about the condition of her home, etc.

If you can afford it, I'd really recommend getting in a friendly local company or couple of individuals. Just tell them you've been unwell (no need to go into details) and things have got away from you and you need some help. Most people will be entirely sympathetic. Then once it's in good shape, you can start a new regime to maintain it.

There is a thread on here "I am a cleaner ask me anything" they really do not mind. Remember they are called in by family when an elderly loved one dies and find far worse. I have cleaned out a house like this, found 48 dusters, dozens of bottles of bleach and other cleaners so many pairs of marigolds and you needed a haz mat suit to go in there it was so grim.

utter my DMum is a lifelong hoarder and untidy ( throughout all my childhood) I think she had un-diagnosed depression, now I know a lot of the hoarding stems from her childhood.

Are you prepared to throw things out ? Its a massive block when I try to help her clear, she wants to keep every bit of bloody tat.

When we were young , we'd ask her what she wanted for Christmas/Birthday/Mothers Day , the answer was always "A tidy house"
But what she meant was "I want a tidy house but I don't want to tidy it. And I don't want anything thrown out. And you can't have friends round but if you tidy , its just because it suits you (the DC) . "
And when we did tidy, 24 hours later she'd have emptied a cupboard or a drawer, onto the carpet or sofa , then left it.

It is much easier to do a WideScreen scan that to focus on one thing. So its like look at the room, see what jumps out at you and get in with a binbag.
Lose the clutter first , be ruthless,
You can DO it

Could you get your children to help? As teenagers they should help with the cleaning, make it fun so that they can find things etc

If you still have things in boxes from two years ago, do you need those things? Unless they are things with sentimental value like photographs, could most of what is in the boxes go straight to a charity shop? That's where I would start, then do a major declutter, set a goal to fill a bag or a week or similar. I would get a cleaning company in once most of the clutter is gone.