Well, it’s been three weeks since this post. How’s it working out for me?

First, a room a week just has not been feasible. Not only with work and volunteer stuff eating my time, but not having a vehicle means I have to ask for help to transport garbage or items for donation, and I hate asking for help. But I’m chipping away and finding things working for me. Here are some areas, both from the book I mentioned and my own trial and error that help.

Kitchen

If I don’t use it, I got rid of it. This includes paring down dishes, minor appliances, and random things that are supposed to make life easier but don’t (I have legit never used a pineapple core thing, a knife works as well). There are still a few cupboards to go through but it’s a lot easier to manage.

I also got a few dollar store items for organizing–plastic bins for spices/baking supplies, towels/clothes–that I can throw things into without thinking, and some vertical organizers for pans. I am one of those people who leaves pots and baking sheets all over the place because I haaaaaate nesting things for storage. So now I don’t nest; I stow everything either vertically for easy removal/clean-up or commonly used pots are sitting by themselves in the cupboard. I am not stacking shit EVER AGAIN.

I also got rid of my dishrack. I don’t have a dishwasher so clean by hand–I got a microfiber dishmat and that keeps me cleaning dishes regularly otherwise the kitten knocks them over.

Bedroom

What really kicked me into gear with my bedroom is that my poor old dog has taken to wandering at night. She’s deaf, partially blind, and has many of the usual old lady maladies, although her bloodwork’s been great. She’s been getting herself trapped in corners and, at one point, I woke to a yelp and couldn’t fucking find her despite sleeping with both doors closed. Turns out she got herself stuck between the bookcase and laundry hamper, and some of the giant pile of laundry fell on her. It was a terrifying few sleep-deprived minutes, and I knew I had to get serious and purge more stuff.

Unfortunately, again, no laundry facilities, but I’ve made a few shifts and I’m purging as I go. If it doesn’t fit in my wardrobe or dresser, it has to go.

It also has given me space to get a new super fancy bed for Sophie.

Took her awhile to understand it’s hers but she’s settled in to sleep. Great bed, highly recommend. pic.twitter.com/9QN671qFPV

— Skyla Dawn Cameron (@skyladawn) November 6, 2017

I’m hoping it’ll help her settle at night. It’s good quality, easy to assemble, and once she got settled she passed out cold for two hours without moving.

Living Room

I haven’t actually tackled this room yet, but I looked at my space and what I needed and started making some changes. My couch was getting super uncomfortable and I rarely have guests anyway, so I bought a new-to-me loveseat and it totally changed the space. Gave me more room to use a second end table that can hold my work notepad, medications, etc, and it’s been much easier on my back. Eventually I’ll make my way south through the apartment and start tackling my bookshelves and other items, but already that’s made a big difference.

I’ve also added a small recycling bin (just a blue plastic tote from the dollar store) next to the waste basket in the living room for papers/notes and plastic bottles/cans so I don’t have to sort the garbage later. I’ve done the same thing in my room, and I would in my bathroom too if I had more floor space. SO much easier to sort when you’re tossing something rather than later.

So that’s where I am with purging thus far. I’ve had several boxes of goods donated, bags of clothes (with more to go), and a dozen bags of garbage.

The end result is space that’s much easier to keep clean, or–if I’ve had a few rough days and haven’t cleaned–is much less daunting to play catch up with.

I highly recommend the ADHD method if you have a mental illness that shares similar traits. Really, if you find yourself overwhelmed and in tears over organizing and cleaning, this is one way of doing something about it.

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!