Zen and the art of home maintenance

Post date: 2023-03-14 05:45:29
Views: 32
I know the key to a tidy home is clearing as you go, but I find this really challenging. Instead I let things get to a critical state and then blitz the place, but this is also stressful and not-ideal. I feel like not everyone struggles with housekeeping as much as I do. How can I stop this from being such an ever-present stressor and just... like... be more tidy?!

I hire a cleaner for in-depth stuff. They come once every 2 weeks. It's really tidying that is the issue, not cleaning - my apartment is not dirty, but a complete mess.

I procrastinate on starting the clearing process until the place is an absolute state and my stress levels get higher and higher until finally I blitz the place - which is tiring and I hate every minute of it. It's the WORST.

I know 'clearing as you go' is the key to staying on top of mess, but I find clearing as you go extremely stressful for reasons I find hard to articulate. If I'm clearing as I go, I find it really hard to relax until all the clearing has been completed. Which means that, for example, I cook and eat with a sense of tension knowing that I cannot relax and enjoy any of it because the clearing awaits at the end of it all. So I end up just saying fuck it and deciding not to clear at all. And if I do that a few days in a row, I end up with a big pile of mess to attend to.

A lot of it is also plain and simple tiredness - I have a demanding job and a lot on my plate generally and cleaning is the LAST thing I feel like doing when I have a moment to spare.

Another issue is that I have a lot of stuff and a small apartment. Sure, I could (and do periodically) prune through my belongings. But the fact is that I do not have enough space for things that I need. I have thrown money at various solutions for this, but the fact remains. I do not have the space for a bigger bookcase or a bigger closet, I do not have enough space to hang my laundry out to dry so I end up hanging it over all available bits of furniture.

(I have a lot of emotions around living in an apartment which does not serve my needs in many ways, including being far too small, but my finances/other life stuff currently not allowing me to move somewhere bigger. Those emotions often get in the way of clearing and tidying too - knowing that if I had a bigger place the apartment would not look so cluttered.)

As some of you already know I have other stressful life circumstances going on at the moment, but being tidy has been hard for me since I was a kid. At the same time, being in a calm, organised, harmonious space is really beneficial for my state of mind. So this is a problem I really want to solve.

I do think I have some executive function-related difficulties around this but don't have the first idea how to start to address those.

Please share your secrets as to how you make this just a normal part of life and not some sort of spectre that hangs over you.
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