Please congratulate like I am 5!

You may remember me from posts such as “10 days with a dumpster” over the summer and whatnot - in my city you can make an appointment for a bulk trash pickup of 3 specific items. This busted treadmill was at least 3x heavier than I remember but today was its day to head towards the (sun)light! Dance with me, people!

I downsized from 1700 sq ft to 1450 sq ft, and added another person + their things into the smaller place. One of our bedrooms is 15x10 and pretty much stacked and packed to the gills with moving boxes we've never opened because of space issues.

A lot of that stuff can be donated or sold, but the issue is actually unpacking and going through it. The 3 other bedrooms are much smaller and in use. The living area is already tight with furniture, so moving stuff into there would block paths. The kitchen is galley style so not room there without blocking the walkway area.

The best idea I've got is move the car out of the garage during the day to use that space, but the car has to go back inside at night so I'd have to start and finish whatever I move in there on the same day. The other issue with that, and just annoying not prohibitive, is that it's on the other side of the house so it'd be a lot of carrying things back and forth which will suck but if it's my only option then I guess I gotta do it.

Another issue is a lot of the boxes aren't sorted with any rhyme or reason. I thought about just tackling one box at a time and making sell/donate/keep piles, but since any given box can have like 5 categories of stuff in it, organizing the "keep" category as I unpack each box is gonna be tricky. If say most of it is craft items and kitchen stuff but those are the 2 areas that were compromised on the most when downsizing houses.

If I had space, I'd just unpack it all into categories and then organize items within the house, and pare down anything that doesn't fit. But since space is so limited I have to do it piecemeal.

Any advice or ideas you might have would be very helpful!

In the end stages of helping a family member unfuck their habitat!

Previously, their bedroom was home to this horrible, smell. A combination of molded food, cat waste, not showering, and unwashed clothes/bedding. All of the furniture and 2/3rds of their belongings in the bedroom were tossed and replaced. The only pre-unfuckening furniture remaining is two wooden display cabinets.

Bedroom walls and ceiling have been repainted as well. The primer used was a jaw-clenchingly expensive one specifically made to help reduce smells and stains that cling to walls.

They've done an excellent job of maintaining their bedroom in a clean and usable state for the past couple months! No food in the room to mold upon, their cat was rehomed, I wash their bedding regularly and they don't keep dirty clothes in their room (the hamper is in the hallway).

But the smell is creeping back. :(

I think it's in the floor (wood floor) or in the wood of the display cabinets. It doesn't smell like body odor, it's definitely an echo of the old stench. I have no idea what to do about it.

They 110% refuse to get rid of and replace their display cabinets, and we don't have the funds to tear out their flooring and replace it. Is there way way I can work on soaking this smell out of the wood without destroying the finish on the floor and cabinets? Is there a mysterious other option that could help that I'm just not thinking of?

I'm hoping this sub is an okay home for this question! Thank you!

20yr F
Parents house, childhood bedroom
Thrifted a lot to keep depression away, now it’s time to actually work on the hard stuff and bring my room to normal.

I have a lot of clutter. I am just lost.
I don’t know how to decorate anymore ?
Overwhelmed. Very much.
Any advice,
What to get rid of, what to keep,
How to decorate / organize

I’m very obsessed with maximizing my possibilities which ultimately paralyzes me, and I feel like if I don’t get my room right it will be a very long time until I have the energy again to change it.

I took a picture of my bathroom, and outside of my room, because I have a bunch more clutter/decor that I cleared out of my room. Now you can see everything that I have accumulated.

Help !!

No photos attached (sorry </3 I’m still too shameful at this point in the process) but it’s been a while since I posted here begging for help and advice on how to manage to dig out of my hole with severe executive dysfunction, my update is to say that I’ve made some real progress!! It took me a week or two to even pick up one thing and then I decided to start on one corner of the bedroom which has led to the entire bedroom being nearly clean, decluttered and organized and a total of 20 giant black trash bags taken out of my house. I just took the last bags out to the dumpster and my arms are shaking like I just power lifted for an hour. All this to say, truly, thank you all. While I’m still in the ocean it feels like I have a life jacket and maybe even a raft rather than just treading water. I’m excited to give myself the fresh start I deserve to be comfortable, good luck to you all and to myself I will certainly still need it!

hi all!! so there are a few factors going into this question, which i’ll provide:

- i’m currently in nj and am tired of living here. i did undergrad and my masters here, and the job market is absolute ass, so i’d like to move onto pastures new.
- that being said, i’m applying to a phd program out in the midwest, and im putting all my energy into the application so that i have any sort of chance
- my partner and i don’t live together; so i’m always between two places when it comes to spending the night/after work

so i’m on the part of the daydreaming that includes searching on zillow for apartments, setting up workflows to manage stress/timeliness, and overall hating my space. it’s become SUCH a mess, and i don’t currently have a vacuum (but i do have a cat) which makes the mess also dirty.

i try my best to do a few minutes of cleaning every day (that sometimes turns into about an hour of cleaning when i have the energy), but i feel like sisyphus and the laundry and dishes are my boulders. i’m also trying to go through my clothes and get rid of pieces i dont want anymore, which is a massive project on its own. and it always feels like its just getting messier.

my partner is pretty insistent about keeping it so that at least the spaces we usually hang out are tidy (kitchen & living room), which he does help with sometimes. he did do a big surprise for me back in august where he and a friend tidied/cleaned up the living room and my office, which i appreciated SO much, but it’s been two months and now the mess has returned. it’s the “small tasks daily” bit that we’re trying to get better about.

sorry this is kind of rambly, part of it is also that im sorting through the files in my head (which are also currently a mess lol) to make sure relevant info is present.

so my main question is: how do i keep up motivation/energy/momentum to clean the space i’m in now while the promise of “starting over” is dangling just out of reach?

i’m only here a little more than half the time (which i am trying to change) and every time i come up the stairs i deflate because IMMEDIATELY i see mess. i want to just pack everything up, move into a new space, and intentionally put things into homes, but im still here until my lease is up next august. i need for this to get better, because its impacting pretty much every area of my life, and i feel awful that my cat lives in an unclean space (he’s my ESA).

it’s not a hoarding situation or anything, there’s just stuff on nearly every surface and it’s difficult for me to get trash/recycling out consistently (i’m on the second floor of a townhome-like apartment), but i’m pretty good at getting at least the trash out when The Smell hits.

sorry that this is long. thank u for reading all the way thru if you did. any and all advice/tips are appreciated!! i just feel stuck and don’t know what to do 🙃

Every evening when my energy crashes, standing over the litter pan with a scoop feels like the breaking point for my daily chores.

I keep looking into whether automating this actually solves burnout, or if it just moves the work around. Something simple like an open-top petpivot with basic buttons seems appealing because I want to avoid troubleshooting apps, but you still have to wipe down plastic and dump waste drawers. It feels like you only trade daily scooping for deep-cleaning plastic parts later.

For anyone managing executive dysfunction, does an automatic setup genuinely reduce chore fatigue, or does a simple manual pan stay easier to manage?

yall i have been working on this steadily for 3 weeks but finally the unties are back in and functional for laundry 😅 i need to hand shelves and touch up behind the wires as needed but so glad to have a clean painted space to work with :)))))

Since the East coast is dealing with Isaias, today our one minute task is going to get together our emergency stuff. Flashlights, batteries, water, etc. We have one drawer that is easy to get to from several pathways in our house for these things to live. This means we can easily get to them in the event of a disaster. Every region has it's natural disaster so prepare for your area.

And if you are in the path of this storm, please evacuate if you are asked to do so. If you aren't, then please stay safe!

Our plan for the day is a grocery run, making sure flashlights are good to go, and getting the house clean in case family needs to come stay with us. We are far enough north of the Gulf that we just need to worry about flooding and tornados. So we are as prepared as you can be.

I moved into my current apartment and it took me 6 months alone just to unpack and setup everything (it was so bad I watched TV on my phone for months). I went through periods where my bedroom was absolutely awful and I would just close the door whenever I had pest control or the maintenance dept come over.

I made the place slightly more manageable around June when I had a surgery. After the surgery I barely took care of my place. I talked to a therapist and that helped a little but I found a checklist app where completing tasks would help raise a tamagotchi like creature. I found myself using it daily and was able to organize better.

The first two photos were the last time my bedroom was messy. I felt really awful and realized that my cats deserved better. Today my bedroom is officially complete.

The living room I have some more tasks (sew curtains, pillowcases for throws, make cats their own blankets for the couch, etc) and the kitchen I have to resteam and put down the carpets/mats and curtains. The bathroom I have to organize the shower and lay down the bath mat, but other than that I should hopefully be done within the next week.

I know this has been asked before- but is there anything out there that's like the old app? Where you can get a random cleaning task that takes 1 or 5 or 10 mins to do? I'm open to non app things like cards or a book even! A website with a list? I just want to roll the dice and be given a short cleaning task to do.

Apologies if this is super rambly

My boyfriend made a post about me a month ago here about me. I was rightfully torn to shreds in the comments. Post here. I so desperately want to change for them but I feel so consumed. I have always had problems with keeping my space clean and have never figured out a solution. I have ADHD, depression, and probably other factors playing into it. I think my biggest struggle has been being able to break the tasks into their components and so it feels like this huge insurmountable problem that I can never solve by myself. anytime i have worked recently it has triggered a breakdown because my brain floods itself with thoughts about how I'm a failure. I have an ED being exacerbated by how unclean it is, I just can't seem to get myself out of the executive dysfunction/avoidance hellhole. There is a possibility I have hoarding tendencies, I don't know.

i do have a whole mental health team, my therapist and I have been working on coming up with solutions recently and I always come up with grand plans for how to fix myself but when i need to actually implement it it just completely falls apart.

To address his comment about me breaking down when it gets brought up again, I have been constantly beating myself up mentally for so over this and I think that it being brought up through breakdowns just reminds me how much I feel like im fucking their life up and how much better they'd be if we never moved in together/weren't together at all.

Im not trying to make excuses for myself, just provide context. I so so desperately want to change for him and get better but I need so much help in doing it. I don't want to lose them, he feels like the best thing in my life right now. I will take any advice to help manage this.

With Isaias coming into the Gulf, it's going to get cooler on the East Coast. Fall is here. So today's task it to get out the coats, the hats, the gloves and take stock. Where I live we don't really need a coat, but we have one just in case. But I don't need 5! Where you live, you may need 5!

Since the stores have coats and hats out, now is a good time to maybe buy a newer one if your old one has seen better days. And now is a great time to thrift the ones we aren't using that are in good shape, for those parents trying to find a coat or hat for their little one before it gets too cold.

Now I went through mine. One coat, a hat (which I probably won't ever wear, but just in case), a set of gloves, and two scarves, because I hate hats!

Took me about a minute to make sure they were in good shape and hang them together in the closet for when the snow starts flying. Or ice if you live in the South.

For various reasons, my bed is currently unmakeable, and getting less so has to be a lower priority than the rest of the house. I get that part of the bed making habit is the habit part, establishing a daily routine of picking up after myself, but making my bed just isn't possible right now. Are there any sufficient substitutes for it that I can use instead?

Is your closet like mine? Does it grow clothing you hate almost over night? Today we are going to pick out 5 things we no longer wear, and put them in the bag for the thrift store. Don't take out everything in the closet. Just reach in and pick out 5 items that you aren't wearing, and put them in a bag to go to the thrift store.

That's it for today. Have a great rest of your week.

I need help with my home

Hi there! R/cleaning tips recommended this thread for my issue. My husband and I struggled with depression for several years and I’ve been working on moving towards keeping a clean home for our daughter. We don’t want her growing up in this and want to show a clean home. I’m not good at cleaning and I work full time and my husband works 50-60 hours a week. My home has become unbearable and I don’t even know where to begin on cleaning it now. It’s not hoarder level dirty but it’s under 900 sqft with 4 people living there with lots of stuff and none of us are great at it. I’m tired of not wanting friends over because I’m afraid it’s too messy or has an animal smell (we have animals). Where do I start, what cleaning supplies do I need, what’s a good schedule for cleaning to get it up to par and then a maintenance schedule for it? Thank you in advance! I’m a little overwhelmed at the thought of it and completely embarrassed that I’m not sure where to go from here.

I've been avoiding my kitchen counter for like two months. It became this weird dumping ground for mail, random tools, half-empty coffee cups, a broken phone charger, and honestly I stopped looking at it after a while. Every time I walked past it I'd just feel this low-level dread.

Today I set a timer for 20 minutes and just went at it. Threw out so much stuff. Found a library book I thought I'd lost and had to pay for. Put things back where they actually belong. Wiped down the surface which was somehow sticky in three different places.

Now I keep walking into the kitchen just to look at it. It's so empty and clean that it almost feels like it belongs to someone else. I made dinner tonight and actually had space to chop vegetables without moving a pile of junk first. Wild.

I know it's a small thing but it's the first time in weeks I've felt like I'm not drowning in my own mess. Trying to ride this momentum and maybe deal with the bathroom sink tomorrow but we'll see. For now I'm just enjoying having one surface in my apartment that doesn't make me want to close my eyes.

Todays task is makeup brushes. When we use our makeup brushes or pads, we spread bacterial from our face to our makeup and back. For the most part this is fine, because we are used to that bacterial. But over time, it can affect our skin. So today's task is super easy. Clean those makeup brushes and pads and purge any makeup that is long past it's shelf life. Get rid of any colors you don't like. It's fine to toss it if you are just hanging onto it because it cost money. Lets free up our drawer for things we love to use and that look good on us.

Think of your makeup brushes like expensive paint brushes. Keeping them clean is not only healthier for your skin, but it also extends the life of the brush.

I'm so grateful

ever since childhood, I have shifted a lot. So the boundaries have shifted. My space was unclear. Usually my room also acted as somebody else's guest room, dumping station of other items. I was not very sure as to what is mine and what is not, and how can I keep it and how can I not? And I had to renegotiate those boundaries with an absent mother who was physically present but mentally absent, could not care.

So I have grown up unmet, left. So I do not know how to organize my things anymore. In spite of being a 35-year-old woman, I don't know how to create a sense of order around me. I don't know how much of it is skill, or how much of it is training, or how much of it is my CPTSD and fractured confidence.

But the items scream chaos. My mother wanted everything very clean, but that basically cut the throat of my wants and needs and desires, because everything was thrown into an almirah or cleared from the bed. I could not create what I would call my space.

I went through a rebellion phase where I did not allow anyone to enter my room, kept books stacked on the floor, so that if it is unclean, I know now nobody has messed around with it. Basically there were servants, and there were every time new servants who had even little idea as to what I had to do or what I wanted.

So they would simply enter my room when I was in school or not there, and without my permission, went through my stuff and created what their version of clean was. These servants also fluctuated within months and years, so I had no way of communicating to them what I wanted.

Over the time, cleanliness started feeling like painful. It's like my space has been encroached upon, and I felt violated. So having chaos feels peace.

Does that make sense?

And now I have to create structure and clean environment for my daughter. So I often need other people to help me out, because I am not able to do this on my own.

I come from a toxic mixture of privileged, empowered, and yet a certain sense of helplessness that never left me all those growing years. And now it has become an essential part of me, no matter where I go, no matter how much control I have.

For the first time I actually asked for help. It felt awful and humiliating to have to ask, but my friend came over and helped me clean my apartment for 7 hours straight today. She didn’t judge me. She reassured me every time I apologized. She helped me do the little tasks I’ve been avoiding, smiling and chatting the whole time. It was a good day. I’m still struggling with my mental health, but I feel a little lighter tonight.

Next week, I start my radiation treatments, so this week is pampering items.

Today we are going to clean our brushes, combs, hair picks etc. I just clean all the loose hair out of my brushes and run a sink full of hot water. I like to use shampoo to clean my brushes. You can use anything you want. Since I am the only on that uses them, I am not concerned about disinfecting them, just getting them clean and shampoo is great for breaking down all the products we use in our hair that builds up on our styling pieces.

I usually let mine soak for several hours and then rinse and let them air dry. That way they are ready for the next day.

I usually have some bottle of shampoo that has about 1/2 inch in the bottom, so it's perfect for little jobs like this. In this economy, we aren't wasting anything, including shampoo!

Hi,
Wondering if anyone has any favorite ways of making things easier to maintain?

Since I just did a bit declutter I’m not trying to reorganize my place so things make sense and take a bit less effort especially on bad days.

Currently I’m looking into some hooks so my comfy home clothes don’t pile up on the couch, and a few open baskets / trays; that kind of thing.

Since joining this sub i became so motivated to uf my stuff! Long text incoming:

First of all I'm chronilly ill, i hoarded so much "useful one day" shit around my flat and in the last few months i had a flare up and was mentally unwell. Full drawers, piles of shame everywhere, stuff piling up on empty surfaces all the time. So many things didn't have a home or i was to weak (and sometimes to lazy) to put it away properly. Laundry piling up, dust everywhere. Seeing the mess all day with all those to dos and no idea where to start let me feel so overwhelmed. I asked my girlfriend and mom several times but the mess came back so fast everytime :(

2 weeks ago i visited my grandparents for a few days and sorted through my childhood stuff. It was so emotional, i cried because it kinda hurt to let things go. My mom, grandpa and girlfriend all cheered me up. Keeping things out of nostalgia is okay for a few things but not for everything. For example most of my childhood toys will be donated since I'm not that attached or simply I and probably most of my friends won't have kids. If they'll, it won't happen in the next few years so it can go now before the toys "die" of old age. I found toys which felt awkward (like velvet-finish that goes sticky after some time), some clothing i wore when i was small which will be gifted to some of my moms friends with small children.

My grandparents are minimalistic, very organized and they clean very regularly. When i stayed there i was more organized. I put my clothes away, put stuff back where it belongs and overall didn't made a mess. I talked about it with my mom and it was kinda eye opening since the very clean house of my grandparents and enough space for a home for all my stuff, made me feel motivated enough to keep it clean on my own.

When i came back i felt the urge to do something about my mess at home. Every day i did something small to clean up, called my mom for help and made a plan with my girlfriend where i need the most help. While i sort ort they cleaned the floors, washed laundry and threw away my trash bags. My girlfriend also made sure I'm well hydrated and nourished and demanded regular breaks.

So far I sorted out the medicine cabinet, wardrobe, my bedroom drawers, makeup vanity and even found something which was lost for over a year! I don't know how i couldn't find it in the last months since it was hidden in more or less plain sight and i swear i cleaned in this area so i should've seen it earlier. Anyway next will be my bag and pouches, since i have so many and I'm certain a few are broken or unused for several years so they can go.

My mind is so much calmer now, not seeing piles of shame everywhere. I'm so motivated to sort out more stuff, having room for all my things and having a clean home. My goal doesn't seem so far anymore