Goal Tracking: Declutter and Cleaning

My husband knocked over a plantand now there's soil all over the living room. On top of a sinkful of dishes he promised to help me with.

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Hi everyone, i get overwhelmed and do nothing too. I feel keeping my house clean is something I am a perpetual failure at. However I've done a lot of thinking and developing over the years.

One of my new stratagies is that there is success is in praising yourself for the little accomplishments. talk to yourself just like you were coaching a little kid. tell yourself small steps to do and lots of praise for doing those little things.

Like today I only cleaned the hamster cages and did one load of laundry. I feel like a total failure again. But instead of beating myself up I am going to give myself praise for what I did get done. I feel it helps break this guilt trip we can get ourselves in and makes it easier to start cleaning the next time.

Sometimes when we change our perspective a little bit it allows us to see things we did not before. For instance just now a I was typing the above I realized I Infact did more than i originally thought. I went grocery shopping, fixed the fridge, got school supplies, and I picked up my much needed meds too. Lol so now I feel even better about my day :-)

Anyhow keep up the fight everyone :-)

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I picked up the bedroom today. Not as thorough clean as the other rooms but its a start. Next weekend I'll work some more on it.

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Excellent. Excellent advice, tin58.

I cleaned the dining room yesterday (which is sort of like my office and personal living room in addition to being where we eat), did all the dirty dishes (before creating more), laundry...I got a lot done and will try not to feel like I should/could have done more.

Who are "Ella and Alices?"

You said you were watching Sleeping Beauty. Im a sucker for all the Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland movies.

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.

Aaahhhh. I get you now.

Jo_thorne, thank you for the reminder that things can change!!

Today it feels impossible for the house to ever be clean when we are both slobs who get annoyed with the other one for being a slob.

I feel the same way a lot of times. Wish there was some magical solution, but all I can suggest is patience and maybe try to develop a cleaning schedule that works for you.

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Ugh! Nothing new accomplished in the past two weeks. So many things I want to do and clean and donate - and I am just so damn exhausted. The best laid plans......

Well I got my dining room cleaned up - finally! I'm so pleased. It was a fire hazard of empty cardboard boxes and assorted crap. The table was completely covered in stuff. But it's all cleared out now - boxes flattened, dining table cleared of clutter and wiped clean. I even vacuumed, which I have not done in that room for several months, like maybe 8 or 9 months . It took me all afternoon, but I'm really pleased with the result.

Husband did not notice, and I felt a bit childishly snitty about my work not being acknowledged. Gee whiz, why couldn't I be happy with my work and not have to have his approval and praise. But that's another story for another thread.

We actually did eat our supper at the dining table, normally we eat on the couch in front of the TV. But it felt awkward and uncomfortable...I think I prefer eating on the couch. Eating at the table always reminds me of my ****** childhood suppers. Not the food itself, just brings up some bad family of origin memories.

I spent the better part of yesterday doing a huge clothing purge. I'd been holding on to clothes I was never going to get into again, for so long. So many different sizes of clothes and so many things I don't even like. I must of had 45 pairs of aspirational sized underwear alone.....ridiculous!

All kidding aside, it was very emotional, and I had a good cry last night. I was never one to have much emotional attachment to things. But now that I'm older and I've suffered so much loss and so much upheaval and unwanted change, well it's harder to let 'things' go. It feels like I'm getting rid of loved ones who have passed. Also, letting go of hopes and dreams I had for myself when I was younger, that I now know due to MI won't be realized. A lot of good memories with clothing, some bad memories too.

I'm okay, and it was good for me to get rid of things that really are just 'stuff' . But good for me in a way that going to the dentist is good for me. Purging clutter used to be fun and I felt energized by it. Now it just leaves me a bit sad. I'm glad that's it's done, and I feel proud of myself for finally tackling the closet clutter. But the space left behind doesn't bring me the thrill it once did, just relief, I think.

It's important to clear this crap out though. It's been so difficult to keep my apartment clean and tidy because there is just too much stuff. It gets in the way of vacuuming and when I want to put something away in its proper home, I can't, because its proper home is chocked full of junk that doesn't belong there. I find the mess and clutter very stressful and draining. So, I'm hoping as I de - clutter, everyday life at home will feel easier.

Congrats on getting rid of all those clothes and uncovering the tables!! I also find it hard to let go of things when the reason for getting rid of them is 'this will not happen.' Even if it is supplies for a project I am no longer interested in, it's still hard.

I visited a friend whose house is as awful as mine and found it kind of motivating, but I won't have free time to clean until the weekend, at which point all motivation will probably be gone...

Feeling really overwhelmed at the moment. I've had a sort of productive morning so far - got my quarterly taxes done, started some bread, did some dishes, hung out 70% of my winter clothes that had been mothballed... but then I went outside to pick some veggies and started to realize that I need to start processing all this food ASAP before a frost hits. I kind of wanted to do other stuff today!

Anyway, back to work...

My progress more or less ended after I posted. I made a few batches of pesto to freeze but started binge watching a tv series while I was making it and never stopped.

I gotta get it done this weekend. No excuses!

I started to disassemble a metal frame day bed we have in our living room, but I got sidelined by a bad cold. This thing needs to go, it takes up too much room in our living room, and I'll need to rearrange the living room furniture for the winter, it now blocks the baseboard heaters. The problem is the only place to stick it once disassembled is the bedroom closet, which is not a walk in, it's just a long closet. Ugh, I know the logical this is to donate this bed, but it's pretty new and we're considering moving within the next year or two. Is it worth having this thing crammed in my closet for the next two years, bunching up all my hanging clothes just to save $300. These decisions are too hard for my depressed little brain.

Best of luck, unaluna!

The kitchen is so overwhelming right now. Just got it cleaned and organized a month ago, and sense then, every weekend I have to redo my work because my husband ruins everything I do.

And I won't even go into the fact that I still can't find anything since my husband switched the office and bedroom.

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Almost done with the "personal products" part of the linen closet. If theres an apocalypse, ive got bandaids and eye patches and panty liners. Now to do the hardware / cleaning side. I also cleaned up about one third of my one (long) closet. I am feeling pretty good about this! I might actually be ready for the maintenance people when they come to switch the ac to heat this year!

That's great, unaluna! My linen closet is on my top 3 of next things to tackle list.

Today, I slept pretty late, but I still managed to get done a heap of dishes, back dated to middle of last week. Plus I purged the freezer and most of the fridge, because today is supermarket day. Mr. Biscuit got rid of the mattress from the day bed, for me - for which I was extremely grateful. Now I just need to dismantle the frame and get rid of that too. I'm hoping this week.

Annual fire inspection is this month, so I really want to have the place at the very least, presentable.

This post hit me like a ton of bricks. So much so that I couldn't reply to it until today. I was always planning to reply....but I'm choosing to do so NOW because it helps me to continue to procrastinate working on a work project that's boring me to tears.

I gained 50-60 pounds in the past 6 years. I've gone from a size 4-6 to a size 14. I went from proportionate boobs to what appears to be 2 cantaloupes inside all my shirts. I hate it. But I can't and won't get rid of my smaller clothing. I simply am not ready to concede that I won't ever be able to fit in to my beautiful smaller clothes again. I eat a marginally (at best) nutritious diet and don't have the focus nor motivation to exercise one whit....so these pounds are not going anywhere anytime soon. But, I am still holding out hope.

You cried because you purged your clothes. I cry when I open my closet and see the rows of things that I can't fit in now. If I got rid of them....I think I'd have a breakdown. Getting rid of them is too big a "signal" that I'm simply not prepared to face at this time (if that makes sense).

I've always been one to attach sentiment to inanimate things. I'm so thankful it's not to the extent that it's made me a "hoarder"...though some might say my holding on to my smaller clothes is "hoarding". This part of what you wrote struck me deeply: ...now that I'm older and I've suffered so much loss and so much upheaval and unwanted change, well it's harder to let 'things' go. It feels like I'm getting rid of loved ones who have passed. Also, letting go of hopes and dreams I had for myself when I was younger, that I now know due to MI won't be realized.

Amen, sister.

I think you were incredibly, incredibly brave.