I went to the dayworker center and brought a charming, hard working young woman of a very interesting ethnic background - east indian and French - to clean. She beat my expectations by much! Since then, I have been wiping the counters with a lavender cleaning solution at least once daily. Also, I just bought a mop with microfiber cleaning cloths (and extra cloths since I do laundry infrequently) from the Container Store, and starting tomorrow I plan to mop the floor (mind you, it is a kitchenette, so the surface area is small) every morning while listening to music. Exercise+productivity, and the reason the floor gets dirtybis my feeding my two cats wet food in the kitchen.

As I expected, cleaning the counters has been easy - when everything is clean around, a bit of spilled coffee or a few crumbs literally scream asking me to remove them. Back when I lived in a place that was overall cluttered, chaotic, and messy, more crumbs or fewer crumbs, or spills, literally made no difference.

I went to my pdoc, showed her these pictures and a picture of the little garden I now have on my balcony, and told her what I have written here. To my surprise, she was more than delighted - she said that I am intuitively doing what I need to be doing by making my environment orderly as the environment around us reflects what is going on in our brains, on the one hand, and positively impacts our brains on the other hand. She gave me an appointment in 2 months, saying that she had been seeing me monthly fearing mania or depression, but now is convinced that I can keep myself stable. Of course, I was happy to hear that.

I forgot to say that the kitchen is colorful (a green spatula, an orange ladle, etc., mostly from Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond) on purpose - bright colors cheer me up.