I try to look at things over time, too, to see if they're getting better or worse on average.

When I first joined Psych Central last winter, I remember looking at this thread and being totally intimidated. People were doing deep cleaning! They mentioned washing dishes everyday as if it were nothing. At that point, I was trying to shower regularly.

Now it's about seven months later. I shower regularly, I have bought a few new clothes so I have more than one or two items that fit. I budgeted to have a cleaner come for 4 hours in June to help to get rid of all the dust and to give the floors a better cleaning than I can manage.

I have stopped skipping breakfast and am having a smoothie or oatmeal pretty much every day.

I cooked two meals yesterday.

I still have periods where I don't do much of anything for 3-4 days, but then I start up again. Before, I didn't do much of anything for um, about 2 years.

I have even started making my bed most days. This was not a past habit of mine, but I decided to start doing it because 1) it's easy and 2) it looks nice. It's a good psychological reward for the effort involved.

Thanks to all the people who post in this thread regularly for being an inspiration.