A very strange thing occurred this morning… my supervisor came by and made a comment about how organized I was. When I realized she wasn’t being sarcastic, all I could think was “Good thing she doesn’t see the squalor I live in at home!” So, I can be neat and tidy when my job depends on it, but at home, where there are little consquences, I just can’t seem to get over my procrastination. Plus, throw in lack of an attention span, and the mess I have is just building and building. And the bigger the mess, the more effort it would take to clean, so I keep procrastinating.
I mean, I wake up in the morning, have to leap over a few plastic bags and empty boxes on the floor and think “Wow, I gotta clean up after work.” and I spend my morning at work thinking I’ll start with the dishes and then move on the picking up the garbage, but then come quitting time, I am reasoning with myself about being exhausted and have already convinced myself I’ll do it tomorrow. Ad naseum, until Friday when I say to myself “I’ll do it on the weekend” but then the weekend ends up being my “fun time” after a long week at work. It didn’t use to be so bad when I lived with my sister, who would nag me until I did it, but she’s married now and have her own place and her own husband to nag.
I know I am capable of at least leaving an organized mess (because let’s face it, my house is never going to be one of those places where you swipe a white glove across a shelf and it’s spotless) since I can do it at work, but at home where there is little consequence and little reward, I just delay until I have to (ie. having guests over). I know the theory, but lack the follow through.
Stop this thinking “I gotta clean up after work”. That is overwhelming and intimidating. Instead, set aside 15-20 minutes every day. Set a timer if you have to. “I will clean for 20 minutes.” And every day, clean for 20 minutes. Then STOP.
If you skip a day don’t beat yourself up over it. Just resume the next day like it’s no big deal. Never make yourself feel bad over it.
Eventually it will become a habit. I know this for a fact because over the last five or so years I have almost completely beaten the procrastination habit.
Worry about the messes that have repercussions. Clothes on the floor? Who the fuck cares. Food out? Get rid of it, mice. Dishes undone? Do just a “batch” every day - just enough to fill your dish rack. Dishes really need to be done every day.
Don’t worry about getting it all done in a week or a month. Just do pieces, and slowly it will come together, and the good feeling you get from seeing the clean areas will inspire you to do more.
You may find an organizational program to fit your life, like http://unfuckyourhabitat.tumblr.com/ or Flylady. They build up little habits over time like Anaamika suggested. I’ve had a lot of luck with UFYH. They have apps you can download if you have a smart phone, but I just use the tumblr.
Thanks for the serious answer Anaamika. Did you find that even starting the 20 minutes was hard? For your routine, do you spend the 20 minutes doing a variety of chores, or spend the whole 20 minutes on one thing? I could easily spend the whole 20 minutes on dishes alone…
The timer is a great tool. I just tell myself “I can do anything for fifteen minutes” and no matter how exhausted I am I will work until the bell rings. It really is amazing how much you can accomplish!
It’s all about tiny changes that add up to an eventual tipping point. Doing it this way is surprisingly painless. First I made a rule that I couldn’t go to bed until I put/threw away ten things.
Then I put three bins in my front room “Put away” “Give Away” and “Throw Away”. (The third being for things too big to fit in the regular garbage.)
I also made a rule that I can’t leave the house without taking a plastic grocery bag full of trash out.
Another great trick for me is to schedule a Purple Heart pick-up. That way I have to go through the drawers and closets and set aside all the outgrown or unused stuff that needs to be given away. Otherwise, I’d be wasting the time and effort of a charity! Horrors!! Now I can just bag up whatever is inthe handy-dandy “Give Away” bin, plus anything else that catches my eye. Boom! gone!
It turned out that there were three key rules to keep me in the decent zone: Put away the clothes straight from the dryer; take the trash out every day; and do one load of dishes every night.
If I follow those three it never gets overwhelming. It’ll never be mgazine-ready, but it’s manageable, clean and decent.
You’re welcome! I like to share because it may seem like an impossible task but you really can do it! I did it.
First question: No because I can do ANYTHING for 20 minutes, as TruCelt says. Am I not a successful career woman? If I am that, why can’t I pick up for 20 minutes?
Second question: Generally I did whatever was bothering me the most. Where do you spend most of your time? I spend a lot of my time in my living room, so I often start there. Or these days I do my homework in the study (I’m going back to school - take that, fucking procrastination, I have KICKED YOUR GODDAMN ASS) so I clean the study. In your case I’d start with the boxes and such you have to step over, because you will immediately see a result the next day when you no longer have to step over boxes!
This is along the same lines as what Anaamika and others said, but what I’ve found is, instead of looking at the whole mess and thinking about how much has to be done, which can make me cringe in terror, it’s easier to do something if that’s all I have to do: just do something. Just do one thing that’ll make things better than they were before you did it. Then after you finish that one thing, you can decide whether or not to go ahead and do something else.
That, or invite somebody over, so that you force yourself to clean up.
I find it easier to make a list of things that need doing. But be specific. Don’t write “clean living room” it is too big. Write clear off coffee table, organize book shelf, etc. Don’t be bothered that you didn’t do everything on the list. There is tomorrow. I get a lot of satisfaction crossing things off the list.
As far as dishes go, there’s an easy solution: have less dishes.
When my GF and I first moved in together there would be used dishes, utensils, and cups/glasses/mugs everywhere constantly until one day I collected them all, cleaned them all, then packed away all but a single set for each of us.
If you just have one set, you’ll be forced to clean it every time you eat, not to mention even if you use all of what you keep out, it only takes about 90 seconds to clean, dry, and put away a plate, bowl, cup, and utensils.
Thanks for all the replies. Talking about it and knowing other people beat the procrastination habit is very motivating.
I just downloaded something called FlyHelper, which I glean from the description is the app for the FlyLady community? I’ve looked at Unfuck your Habit before, but what I got from it was a bunch of people posting their pictures… that’s not my particular cup of tea.
I think it’s the “put away” that gets me. I mean, I actually managed my hoarding tendancies a little better this year. When I go out and something catches my eye, I actually run through my check-list of “Is the price worth it?”, “How much use am I going to get out of it?”, “Is it still going to be available to get next week if I regret not getting it?”, and “Do you have the freakin’ space for it?” and 90% of the time, the knick knack goes back on the shelf and I don’t regret not getting it. “Give away” and “throw away” isn’t a problem in theory, but I have a box of “free stuff” that’s been sitting in my hallway for a good half a year now because I intend to put it on the curb for people in the neighbourhood to pick through… but it’s been rainy…
Funny… I’ve been making preparations to go back to school too. Now, I am actually motivated to sit down and write that god damn 500 word essay I’m supposed to write for the application. It’s basically one page, and I have been procrastinating for a good three months on it now. :rolleyes: But by Sunday, it will be done!!!
It’s become a bit of a running joke in my circle of friends that they can’t come over spontaneously. That, and when I suggest that we hang out at my place, someone inevitably says “Nah, let’s just go out somewhere… wouldn’t want you to waste your time cleaning for us!” :smack: Also, if I don’t clean before I go out on a date, I know I won’t be inviting the guy over to spend the night. But no… I don’t need (and shouldn’t need!) that reasoning to keep it in my pants.
I didn’t even try to go to school until the other habits had been beaten. And I am so, so happy to see it paid off. I go home every day now and do my homework after dinner (we have dinner almost right away so as to get it out of the way). I’m doing pretty well on my classes and anything that comes across my plate I deal with it right away (school loans disbursed about a week ago and by the next day I had my first payment applied to it already, even though I don’t have to start paying it for a while).
I had a friend whose apartment had reached the pont of no return. She made a rule that before she could purchase an item she had to decide on one thing to get rid of in it’s place. So she would be in the line at the thrift store weighing the utility of the new object against whatever she thought she could give up.
It worked really well, and she ended up with house full of useful things, instead of it’s being full of just stuff that seemed like a great bargain and might be useful someday.
Seriously, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Go to Purple Heart online, or whatever local charity does neighborhood pick-ups and supports a cause you like. Make the appointment, usually you can do it on line and then they will remind you two or three days before by e-mail.
You just put the stuff out by the curb in the morning, and come home from work to find it gone. And it’s all off to it’s second life of usefulness.
I try to do this at least quarterly, and after the next pick-up I’ll be able to park in my garage again. I’d say only 20% of my neighborhood is able to do that.
I have a handful of tricks, because I battle not only procrastination but also ADHD.
The things I’ve found work best:
visible lists posted in inescapable places. I have to go to the bathroom in the morning, so I post my List O’ Stuff on the mirror. Doing that list every morning keeps things from piling up.
If I’m watching tv, I do something during each commercial break. It gives me a short, defined time period, goes through small tasks, and gets me away from the obnoxious commercials.
Also, DCnDC is totally and completely right. Get rid of stuff. Get rid of as much stuff as you can stand.
I lived with my parents for three years, and even though neither of them were packrats, the house was packed to the gills. So, I adopted some of FLYlady’s techniques, including the Throw Away/Put Away/Give Away bags. With my mom’s permission, we ended up sending several metric buttloads to Goodwill and AmVets. I also packed up and stored all but eight sets of flatware. It meant we could finally find things in the kitchen drawers, and dish washing was no longer quite overwhelming.
I could have gone farther, but my dad has dementia and became extremely anxious any time I looked like I might touch his stuff. Or anything near his stuff. Or anything that was once near his stuff. So, there were limits.
Or **pretend **to yourself that someone is coming over. Or pretend that you’re getting paid to do this.
My question here is why can I do things for someone else, but not for myself? Friends and family will ask me to do stuff - woop - it’s done. I will offer to do this and that, but it would be incidental that I do something for myself. :smack:
I’ll have to do a little research on which charities pick up in my area. I used to piggy back on my parents’ calls to the charities, then I didn’t have to worry that I didn’t have “enough” to justify calling them out and wasting their gas. But my mother has been naggy lately about the perfectly good things I’m just “throwing away” and actually picked through my box and kept a few things. Great, from one pigsty to another. :rolleyes: So, it’s not a bad idea to just arrange it myself.
It’s the reward aspect of it. Not any material rewards like money or anything, but their appreciation is rewarding. I find that I seldom appreciate the things I do for myself because I should be doing them in the first place!
I’m not sure that I’m convinced that having a clean house is a reward in itself, because I keep rolling my eyes at all the online articles that say “You’ll feel so much better once you take a deep breath and smell the cleaniness of your own home!” But I think I’ll just have to try it and see if it is. I mean, having a clean home certainly isn’t going to be worse than living in squalor. Besides, I’m not going to be one of those people who waste people’s time by asking for advice and not following it. Dammit, if those of you who replied with advice can take the time to give them, I can take the time to just do it.
Nononono. You are not cleaning merely for the sake of having a clean house. You are cleaning so that you can grab a dish anytime to eat, so that you can get out of bed without climbing over stuff, so that you can find things when you need them. It doesn’t have to be spotless.
I’m a huge procrastinator. I also find that more often than not, the state of my life mirrors the state of my bedroom in a general way; chances are if my life is in a shambles for one reason or another, my room is a disaster, whereas when my room is neat and tidy I tend to have my shit together in most other areas of my life as well. I’m sure this is correlation rather than causation, i.e. when I’m overwhelmed with other stuff I don’t have time to keep my room clean, but when I’ve got my life in order I have extra time and energy to devote towards it.
So whenever I find myself procrastinating more than usual, I clean my room. It helps because:
A) It’s a great form of procrastination in itself, I could probably clean it for weeks if I was really trying to avoid something.
B) It’s something productive that I should do anyway.
C) It’s not that fun, so I’m motivated to finish it.
After a day of cleaning my room, I get a feeling of accomplishment that makes me want to tackle my next problem. And usually, that next problem is more fun than cleaning was, so it won’t feel like a chore so much as a reward for cleaning my room.