How do you do a clean?

This is advice coming from a hoarder from a family of hoarders; it's not perfect but works for me. It's my Emergency Cleaning Program, with 9 neat phases; he first few days are going to be tough because the amount of work, but after the circuit is over mainentance is fairly easy to remember. i do everything in 20 minute chunks, with 10 minute breaks between them.

Start small and take breaks.

• Phase one: make your bed and clean a surface next to it. This will be homebase.
• Phase two: Tidy up homebase. Start the day by taking everything that is trash out of your room, but don't touch any drawers yet: plastic bags, water bottles, takeout containers, stuff like that, and put it on the trash. take trash out. Then take the dishes to the kitchen.
• Phase three: Tidy up homebase. Take out any trash and dishes that you may have (which won't be a lot, since you did this yesterday). if you can find some boxes it will help a lot this next step, because you'll be sorting the stuff on the floor, surfaces and shelves. if you find anything that's trash it goes in the trash. keep these boxes for day 4.
• Phase 4: Tidy up homebase, take out trash and dishes, then work on drawers, cabinets, and closed spaces. empty a drawer, sort contents in those boxes from yesterday, wipe it with a mix of 1/3 vinegar 2/3 water and let it dry. Empty one of the sorting boxes into the recently cleared drawer and congratulations, now you have a Drawer of Stuff. Everything you find everywhere else in your room that is in the same category of Stuff goes in the Drawer of Stuff. Take as many days as you need to do this with every single drawer, but don't try to do many at once; one or two a day, three tops, to avoid burnout. I don't worry in getting things pretty while inside the Drawer yet, as long as they are in the drawer and not around it, and you should save some for your clothes.
• Phase 5 is Laundry Day. Start a load of laundry, tidy up homebase, take out trash and dishes, toss anything yours that found itself into your room into its respective drawer; wait until laundry is done and you can start sorting: separate it into Stuff That Hangs and Stuff That You Can Put In A Drawer. Put the things that go in a drawer in their places.
• Phase 6 is Day of the Verticals. Tidy up homebase, take out trash and dishes, toss anything yours that found itself into your room and out of place into its respective drawer, and put any laundry to do in its place. Take out the stuff that is cluttering your closet/wardrobe. Clean the space with the same mixture of vinegar and water as before, let it dry, then hang all the clothes that need to be hanged. Use this time to sort things into Keep, Donate and Trash piles; hang what you will keep, trash goes in the trash and you can put the stuff you want to donate in a bag, then ask someone to drop them off somewhere if they can, or do it yourself the next time you go out. Do the same thing with shoes and other stuff you keep with your clothes, put stuff that has a Drawer in the designated Drawer, then call it a day. or many days, as many as it takes to organize everything; i have a wardrobe with three main divisions, and i usually do one a day.
• Phase 7: Day of Fuss. Since everything would be reasonably clean and sorted in the places you want them to be, start by cleaning up homebase, taking out trash and dishes, tossing the stuff that is cluttering your room in their places, hanging any clothes that need to be hanged, and putting laundry away. Then you can go back to your drawers and get busy with the details: folding clothes, rolling socks into a ball, sorting and neating in general. Again, work in small chunks and don't push yourself too hard. take as many days as you need.
• Phase 8: Clean the Surfaces. As usual (and by then by habit, hopefully) start by cleaning up homebase, take out trash and dishes, toss the stuff that is cluttering your room in their places, hang any clothes that need to be hanged, and put laundry away. Grab some rags and fill a spray bottle with the same water and vinegar mixture, spray it in all your surfaces, then wipe it with a damp rag. wash it every once in a while because it gets nasty, and open your window to air a bit. it should be relatively quick, because you're smart and don't have too much stuff on your surfaces. (this is also when i get the crumbs out of my keyboard and wash my makeup brushes).

Phase 9 is Mainentance. It can be daily or weekly; Daily mainentance, as you might have suspected by th repetition, is making your bed, cleaning the surface next to it, putting everything in their places (drawers, closets, shelves, trash, laundry room); it takes me like five minutes before bed, when i have everything else right, to do it, and like 40 seconds in the morning to straighten my sheets, fold the blanket, fluff the pillows and sorta put the plushies in something that resembles order. Weekly mainentance is doing laundry, folding and putting it away, then wiping/dusting the surfaces. Sometimes instead of water and vinegar i'll boil water with an orange peel, cinnamon and clover, so my room smells nice for the day and it feels more rewarding.

I also try to take advantage of association; nowadays, Marina and the Diamond's Electra Heart album gives me the almost unbearable urge to wash my dishes because that's the album i listen to while i am doing the dishes, and listening to welcome to night vale while not checking my surfaces is almost sin, because i listen to night vale to help me relax before i try to sleep.

 

Aah, there is so much good advice here, I don't even know how to reply to it all! Thank you all so much! I'm going to copy all of this into a doc and refer to it when I get stuck and/or overwhelmed! Thank you all so much! =D

I'm generally okay at doing laundry because I want to wear the clothes that I like all the time so I so washing every 1-2 weeks (possibly not often enough? I have no idea!) but everything else is kinda... I am just so forgetful =.= But anyway! Yes! There is a lot of wonderful advice here, so thank you all so much!

I have attempted this, like I tell them that I legitimately don't notice when things are messy a lot of the time, I am not trying to be lazy or not pull my weight around the house, and I essentially get told, "Well maybe you should try noticing it more," and no that is nOT HELPFUL ADVICE, PARENTS. Same with telling them that I forget things. "Well then just try to remember!" ALSO NOT HELPFUL ADVICE.

Listening to music and breaking my room down into sections sounds like a good start, yes. Okay! I will do my best. Thank you again everyone!

 

mostly seconding what @boyacrossthestreet (seriously, are you me) and @witchknights said.

For me, stuff usually accumulates until the Tidy Virgo stereotype kicks in in regards to my living/bedroom (yay for 1-room-apartment ::D), or until the dishes migrate to the second sink in the kitchen because the first is full, or there are no more forks/spoons/knives/bowls/plates/pots/whatever left over and I have to do the dishes.
I am lucky enough to get bout of energy that I can allocate to cleaning.

My tactic usually is:
0) put on Welcome to Night Vale, because I need something to keep my brain busy while I do stuff that does not require it doing anything)
1) Throw everything that is not trash, dishes, or laundry on the bed to make space on the floor.
1a) trash goes in the respective trash bags
1b) dishes go in the kitchen, in the sink if possible. fill sink with dishsoap and hot water.
1c) laundry goes in the laundry basket. if the laundry basket is full, put laundry in washing machine and start it.
2) sweep and wipe kitchen
3) while the kitchen floor dries, move assorted furniture to hallway, and sweep and wipe bed/livingroom
4) by now the kitchen should be dry. clean counter, and do the dishes.
5) by now the livingroom should be mostly dry. move furniture back, and clear out bathroom
6) sweep and wipe bathroom
7) sort the stuff on the bed into their respective folders, boxes, and places.
7a) put on new sheets
8) sweep hallway, take trash down
9) wipe hallway, and while the hallway dries and the laundry is still in the washing machine, chill on bed

that being said, my laundry usually hangs on the drying rack until the next batch is ready since about half a year. .._.."

 

GOD, fuck unfuck your habitat. UYH is not only awful in that regard but like, some of what they consider things Required to Cleaning really aren't required by my brains at all. And so those things just make my anger at their whole spiel intensify.

God, unhelpful advice parents 100% of the time here too. For me it's "there is gunk cooked onto the stove" - no, mom, I DON'T see that it's messy until you point it out, and NO I am NOT going to expend my energy cleaning a thing that only bothers you. Grimy bathrooms are like this too, but at least she understand that I don't see dirt there.

 

Ughhh. Yeah, I've dealt with that. For me it's, "Try to be more mindful." Like to the point where the word "mindful" fills me with irrational rage and anxiety. It only really settled down once I had A Serious Discussion with my parents with my therapist facilitating.

For stuff like this I also have the problem of failing to interpret gunk cooked onto the stove as a problem rather than just a fact claim. Particularly since living by myself on limited spoons, where some kinds of mess are accepted as Inevitable Because I Need Spoons To Eat Instead.

 

Huh, I see! That would make sense. It's kind of amazing that that's a skill that people possess, because I just can't fathom it. One day maybe I too will have this superpower.

 

I can sometimes kinda do the "try to remember" thing. When it's been between 1 and 5 hours since I took a dose of adderall and I'm having a good day in general. It's not something that I could explain how to do or something I can reproduce outside of a medicated state. I think people without ADHD don't instinctively grasp that a thing their brain does for them, something they don't even consciously learn, is something other people's brains can't do. So they assume that it's a matter of "you should run this program and you're not doing it" rather than "this program isn't even compatible with my operating system."

For example, to my non-ADHD spouse, it seems natural that when I finish working on my knitting for the day, I should put the knitting away, and it confuses him that I don't when I obviously care a great deal about keeping the yarn clean and not letting the cats take my work apart. And it would indeed make logical sense that I would put the thing away when I was done with it. Except I don't usually know that I'm done with something until well after the fact. I might fully intend to continue knitting and just need a bathroom break, but the fact that I was knitting at all is gone by the time I get to the bathroom. Or someone strikes up a conversation with me about something and I have to whip out my phone and google some related information and then it's been four hours of talking about the appeal of horror games and the yarn still sitting in the next chair over when I go to bed. Or I realized I needed to go move the laundry and then I never came back to the room the knitting was in afterward. My spouse can't wrap his head around this (though he tries very hard). It's not that I don't want to take care of my knitting projects. It's that things stop existing in my brain as soon as I stop interacting with them, sometimes to the point that I can lose objects up to the size of a small cat just by setting them down. Conversely, I had no idea that other people usually made conscious decisions to switch activities until I was almost 22.

But yeah, what Seebs said: they're trying to be helpful. They just think your problem is something completely different from what your problem actually is, and they're giving you advice meant for a problem that you don't have. It isn't surprising how poorly that can turn out.

 

I feel kind of betrayed that this is an actual thing. I just assumed it was one of those dumb things people have to tell you because they don't know how to help. Like "just stop thinking about it!" or "try to be more cheerful!".

I read this at work earlier, and brought up "wait is this an actual thing", and my coworker looked at me like I was from some strange planet.

I get done with stuff when I'm bored with it. I write papers in one go because otherwise I will never come back to them. I'll spend an entire day reorganizing because hey, might as well.

I imagine being able to purposely remember stuff is like when you lose a word and you have to think around it until you feel the words it isn't and then you have it again.

 

Let me be captain obvious: going to a doctor and getting medicated would probably also help, if people are so sure this is adhd... (don't skip the first part tho)

 

I don´t think they give you ADHD meds without a prescription.

 

Yeah, I'm in the process of getting an assessment done, though the tests apparently run about 200 bucks from my college.

In addition, those tests are spoon-suckers. My brain curled into a ball and died about two hours through a three hour test session, and they don't give you feedback for a while, so it's been enough stress and anxiety (for someone who doesn't normally do the anxiety thing) in the past two or three weeks (I was the Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss anon/submitter whatever for seebs, if anyone was following that little saga with bated breath) that I nearly forgot about two papers, a test, and a presentation.

(Though I did clean my room and do the dishes a bunch, since I am a terrible stress cleaner).

So I'm getting my motivation back now, but I still have another round of tests, and have to figure out the money thing, and I'm perpetually worried that they'll tell me I'm fine, just lazy, try harder to be a better person...

And so getting more information is always helpful for the last part of that, anyways. The building of community, people who have kind of the same experiences, people who have tried more things...I've already found a few good study tips from talking about this.

 

My therapist actually mentioned ADHD meds to me once lol, but I think I need an actual diagnosis of ADHD to get medication??? I will add it to my list of Brain Things to get checked out by people who can do the thing (or even just mention next time I see my therapist). I nearly actually got an assessment done at a uni clinic, but they were like, "Sorry we only do ADHD tests for children," so all right I tried at least.

 

I also kind of have a weird level of vague mistrust of meds for a psych student, because a.) *whiny voice* but brain chemicals are natural and messing with them could be bad and b.) if a med makes you feel better, then it could be an issue because I have bad impulse control and a viciously addictive personality

a is kind of super bullshit, but it's something my brain likes gnawing on at night. b is a little more legitimate (but probably not by much), I think, but that would be a good question to ask in case of prescription

 

Actually a is only half bullshit. " Natural" isn´t a very good reason to not treat something that is harming you, but messing with brainchemicals does have the potential to be bad. It comes down to whether you trust the person prescribing the meds.

 

Huh. Now I am worried, because the testing I did with my psychiatrist only took about an hour, and a large portion of that hour was just talking through things. Wondering if I somehow managed to skip a step? Or maybe it's different by location.

EDIT: Probably not a thing I need to worry about, but in the playing around with my dosage I've been going through all the "maybe I'm just depressed and anxious and that doesn't relate to my having ADHD" or "this dose of adderall is giving me side effects like insomnia and anxiety maybe I don't have ADHD even though those are known side effects, it couldn't be that the dose is larger than it needs to be or that the stimulant isn't the right kind of med" stuff. Because why do a thing to make your life better without worrying over every detail all day forever?

Have some extra betrayal, I have met people for which both those pieces of advice were considered useful based on their own experiences. A reminder to be happy and not dwell on things is enough to get them out of most ruts.

 

Longer testing is only really necessary if you need specific documentation for accommodations, you want more detail about specific strengths or weaknesses, or your psych is particularly uncertain about the diagnosis. As an example about that last one: I've been chronically depressed since I was eleven or twelve, being unable to remember things or concentrate or make decisions are common symptoms of depression, and I had been too apathetic to really register that I couldn't pay attention to things until two or so years back, so in theory the depressive disorder (or even a medication I was taking for such) could have been causing my difficulties in that arena. On the other hand, my brother and my mom both have ADHD, and two first-degree relatives aren't a guarantee, but they make for a strong indicator. With that and with me being in college, we decided that getting a longer testing battery was more appropriate.

 

Gonna assume then that as I'm out of school and it was apparently really clear that they didn't feel the need to do further testing -- though I've a history with depression as well. Weird. Ah well. Should probably assume that things are okay and I'm not making some huge mistake if I don't actually have proof otherwise, given how much I worried about going in to get diagnosed in the first place.

Danke.

 

Thanks for that! I know my tester is also a grad student learning how to do these tests. And since I'm in school, generally the reason to get these tests is for specific documentation, so that makes sense.