Well, I decided to do the whole "don't aim for perfection and keep your daily expectations low, slow and steady, blah blah etc etc" method and embarrassingly I think it's working, LMAO. I only have a few small tasks I aim to do a day instead of deciding I'm going to do 3000 things, get panicked I can't do them all, and lay in bed doing nothing instead. It feels weird because I do the things I choose to do, and I still have energy to do more but I let myself rest instead - this feels so counterproductive. However, this apparently is the key to preventing burnout. So instead of having one SUPER productive day that burns me out for a week-to-multiple weeks, I do a few things a day and don't get burnt out at all???
Idk, it feels almost too good to be true. I'm sure I'll mess up at some point, but there is visibly progress in my house now. So that's good. I'm trying to not go to bed with my apartment looking worse than it did when I previously woke up. We'll see how this goes. Fingers crossed :)
My apartment is rarely clean. It's been straight up disgusting before. Right now it's in the middle. The toilet has pink mold again. The bathroom sink is starting to get clogged again too. I cleaned up some of the trash off the floor but it's already piling up again. I've got a huge pile of dirty laundry on the bedroom floor and I've been sleeping with my basket of clean laundry in the bed next to me for days now. Couldn't tell you the last time I vacuumed. There's trash all over the living room again. I spilled Miralax on the counter last night and haven't cleaned it up just yet. It's a miracle I don't have bugs really.
I am writing this with a large amount of clean laundry on the bed next to me. I need to get more shelves to put things away in, but I'm waiting until Prime Day to order them, so for now...I sleep next to the lump of my clean duvet cover and when I wake up I momentarily think it's a human and panic. But at least it's clean!!
Hello fellow squalor friend~ :p
I also recently attracted an ant colony into my bedroom owing to some plates of discarded food I left on the floor, which I totally forgot about due to the all the other refuse piling up on top of them. I tried vacuuming them up for a while but it seemed like they just kept endlessly respawning. Clearing out all the food and crumbs and stuff in the area was pretty much the only thing that worked, I guess it just kinda... starved them out eventually?
My space is still a total mess, but not waking up to bites all over my feet is better at least.
Oh my god I hope this kind doesn't bite. So far, no issues, but I found one on my bedside table yesterday and wanted to scream :D
Took out a big bag of garbage today. Hoping it helps. They need to move back outside!!! Go home guyss
maybe the time for it has finally come
I believe in you!! I know how hard it is. The TikTok cleaning community (specifically the reeeeally messy ones) and the r/hoarding subreddit have given me some motivation and really good tips. It's just nice to find people who are in the same boat and also don't shame you for where you're at. Shame makes me wanna just keep living in squalor. Just know I am not judging you and if I knew you irl, I would be helping clean that space of yours!! But I don't know you irl, so hopefully my positive thoughts are enough to help even a little. I believe in ya and you deserve a nice, clean space to live in :) We both do. And we've both got this, even if it takes longer than it would for most people.
I think this is the post I most related while being in here. My apartment is a mess and it's been more than 2 years than I moved here... and yet there are things I didn't put in place lol I also have OCD, the "super hygiene" type, yet it doesn't apply to my apartment
OCD is so wild. The brain...who the fuck knows what is going on up there.
"I want things to be very clean!" ok mr. brain
"But I'm okay living in a dirty house." what???
"But this ONE SPECIFIC THING needs to be clean, or else I'll lose it!!" that doesn't even make sense.
"And I'm gonna spend so much time panicking about the ONE SPECIFIC THING that I won't have energy to do anything else that needs to be done :)" why are you like this
add on the suicidality and it's just a whole ~treat~ to live like this :')
i too live in abject squalor
youuuu are not alone my friend!! I took a shower and there were ants...in my shower. doing what? who knows. maybe my apartment was too dirty for them and they also wanted to feel clean. ha. ha. fml :)
at least we're in this together though <3