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Skyla Dawn Cameron

My characters kill people so I don't have to.

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You are here: Home / blog / The Purge: Home Edition

October 15, 2017 By Skyla Dawn Cameron 4 Comments

The Purge: Home Edition

No, not rampant murder for a day, but my apartment (housecleaning is far more scary anyway).

I try to pay attention to synchronicity when it comes up (or else it kicks my ass later); I’ve been thinking about doing something with the sheer, overwhelming mess that is my apartment, and then someone recommended a book on Twitter yesterday, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD.

I don’t have ADHD, but bipolar disorder presents many of the same challenges–in particular, mania can mimic ADHD behaviors, and depression means basic tasks take ten times as long to do around the house (and that’s if I can get out of bed to do them). I’m hopelessly disorganized, I have to watch myself for impulse spending, and everything is perpetually messy. When I’m well, I try to set things up to be easier on me during a depressive episode in various aspects of my life with proper routine and habits, but when it’s severe, I always fall behind in cleaning. Too much stuff and too little efficiency, makes it that much more difficult. So I checked out the sample, found it helpful, and got the book.

It’s a quick read, laid out to make it easy to follow if you have a short attention span, everything practical and useful. There were quite a few things I do intuitively (remove sliding closet doors so you can see the full closet), and other things that probably should’ve occurred to me (both garbage and recycling bins in every room). And in that regard, there’s a lot that I either do or want to do, and the book provides that permission (don’t fold your laundry when it’s going in a designated drawer), saying it’s okay to give up the things you were taught as “proper” if it means maximizes the efficiency of your space and ease for you to keep it organized.

Right now, I’m starting The Purge. I’m going to aim for roughly a room a week, and I’m starting with the kitchen. Paring down to the necessities, growing okay with running out of particular groceries rather than overbuying, making it easy to put things away. One complication is that I don’t drive, so rather than just hauling a couple of boxes of things to the Sally Ann years ago, I have let it accumulate rather than beg for rides to transport stuff.

The other issue is, of course, so long in poverty. It’s a type of hoarding behavior I didn’t really notice until I saw how the other half lives–normal people upgrade and get rid of the old thing, because if the upgrade breaks, they can just get another.

That has never occurred to me–I thought it was normal to keep everything “just in case”. I still have a fifteen-year-old small LED backup monitor for my computer–it works, and what if my screen dies, and and and–   I wear clothes until there are irreparable holes in them I can’t fix, I keep backup running shoes no matter what shape they’re in. I don’t have hundreds of dollars sitting around to go out and replace something, even a necessity. I have to budget, plan, and even then, I keep backups.

Then there’s food–stocking up on something when it’s on sale in case you can’t afford it next month (or full price next week). Even knowing full well that too many years of eating ramen when it was all I could afford that I would rather starve than eat it now…I still have a supply in my pantry cupboard.

“Just in case.” It’s hard to set aside that fear of being without when it’s always a real possibility.

So there’s certainly some balancing to do for some solutions (particularly advice for the bathroom–like, it’s a small apartment, I don’t even have a counter, just a sink and pipes below) with the realities of poverty, but a lot of it is quite workable.

The goal once I’m through is to have all rooms take about three minutes to clean up. Washing dishes by hand and laundry both obviously take longer, and both are the bane of my existence right behind litter boxes. I’m strongly considering, once I’m through the purging and organizing, looking at a biweekly housekeeper to do a deep clean for a couple of hours on the months my budget permits, keeping some money tucked aside for depressive episodes. I’d rather go a little lighter on groceries or skip my wine for a few months to have that off my plate, just leaving me with regular upkeep.

I post this, then, in case you’re like me and overwhelmed, and need to minimize the amount of time you spend on household crap for whatever reason. If you have chronic depression, the less time you spend on housework and/or overwhelmed by everything you have to do, the more time you have to spend on taking care of yourself.

If you have ADHD or a mental illness that makes organization tough sometimes and have found things that work for you, leave a comment with your tips!

Filed Under: blog

Comments

  1. Anna blake says

    October 15, 2017 at 7:28 pm

    Hi Skyla! I can understand the being overwhelmed about the messiness. Getting older with back issues had made my gungho ability quite a bit less ,
    ‘ gung’ if you know what I mean! My solution was to finally take one room at a time, just like you are doing. In the spring my younger sister-in-law moved back in with us. It was until she got her housing, so, once again, I moved my office from the family room and into the living room. (last year I found a note from Judy telling me to get my act together and finish writing those three books I began during my chemo treatments in 1999′ so I did an amazing up to 300,000 words so far!) So, you can figure that I have a lot of stuff with notes here and there, ideas on the chalk board and whiteboard used for timeline plotting! Well, my older sister-in-law asked her to move into her new condo and look after it while they are out of the country. So, everything had to go back into the guest room! Long story short, took me a week to do what only took three days when she moved out a year ago. My hubby told her, once she moved from here, she can’t come back to live as it takes too much out of me. You know yourself, nobody else can set your office up for you. Please stay well, even though I only know you a little, I care that you do well. Glad to see you have coping mechanisms in place. If you need help or to talk, my landline is 705-728-9700, I do not have a cell phone. You have my e-mail, stay safe, stay funny, stay as healthy as you are able.

    Reply
    • Skyla Dawn Cameron says

      October 31, 2017 at 2:05 pm

      Thanks, Anna–when I do a big clean, I tend to go room by room, but I’m finding with purging, I’m bouncing now between two rooms, or making space in a hall closet for bedroom things as needed, etc. So far so good!

      Reply
  2. Anna blake says

    October 15, 2017 at 7:29 pm

    I actually moved my office from my GUEST room, into my living room and back. Sorry!

    Reply
  3. Anna blake says

    October 15, 2017 at 7:32 pm

    Sorry, phone number is 705-738-9700! As my sister-in-law would say, sorry for the Gangnam typing!

    Reply

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