What is your strategy for keeping your dwelling clean?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am very disorganized. I’m not a hoarder; I’m just too lazy to throw things away. Or arrange them in an orderly fashion. It’s horrible because I have to clean up for the exterminator guy’s visit on Wednesday (I don’t have bugs but apparently it’s something the landlord does on an annual basis? Why I’m just now discovering this, I don’t know. It kind of creeps me out.)

I don’t lose things because I have a mental map of where things are, and I put important things in one area away from everything else. But it is overwhelming. Not third-degree squalor, but maybe one degree. My living room’s floor is strewn in potting soil, kitty litter dust, junk mail, little bottles of paint, baby food jars and their lids, styrofoam packaging, stacks of newspapers, leaves from my ficus, and tin cans. My couches are covered in cat hair, coats, craft supplies, stacks of mail, and potting soil. How such a little room could be jammed packed with stuff, I have no idea. The sad thing is that if it weren’t for the exterminator, I’d be fine with letting it stay like this.

My mother said she wanted to come visit me this summer and I told her I would have to come down and visit her. My house is way too messy to play hostess of the mostess. Because of the lack of central air conditioning, I can only summon up the strength to clean during the wee hours of the morning. I wouldn’t have time to do all that I would have to do to meet her standards of cleanliness.

I wish I were more organized and less blasé about things like potting soil and paint being everywhere, in everything. It’s like I don’t notice how bad things are until I’m literally falling down the stairs. I do like how nice the rooms look when I do get them cleaned up, but then I go back to letting my roommate Entropy have his way.

The only solution I can think of, in addition to working harder on improving myself in this area, is keeping myself to one room and not doing anything in the other rooms that would disturb them. Kind of like cordoning them off with an imaginary velvet rope, like they’re period rooms in a museum. After work, I could just go directly to my bedroom. But then I’d have paint all in my bed like I had during the winter, when the draftiness of my living room made working in there awful. I have a queen size mattress but it’s almost like I have a twin because the other half is dominated by bottles of paint, blocks of clay, pieces of cardboard, dirty dishes, and piles of clothes. But at least there’s no potting soil in here.

I feel lost and stupid. I need some advice to keep from being in this situation again.

2

I like to chip away at big projects. Just a few minutes here and there each day until the whole thing is done. For some projects, like cleaning an unused room, it might take a week or two, for something like a living room it’s more a way of keeping everything at status quo…but you only have until Wednesday.
I’d suggest you start by just picking up the garbage. Throw out the stryofoam, the ficus leaves, the newspapers etc…not just move them, actually get them out of the house and to the garbage. Then, get everything off the floor, get it up on tables, chairs, couches etc. My guess is that this will take less then 20 minutes, maybe 30. At this point you can vacuum up the dirt and litter.
My theory is, your place will look so much better with a clean floor and you’ll see how much nicer it looks with just an hour or so invested that you’ll want to take all the crap you piled up on the couch and get it put away…or you can do that tomorrow. But at some point before Wednesday, you’ll need to put another big dent in the project and getting all that stuff you moved off the floor put away will make the place look that much cleaner…and so on and so forth.

As for advice, well, you know what to do. There’s no magic trick. When you dump over a plant, you need to drag out the vacuum, clean it up, then put the vacuum away. When you’re done painting, you need to put everything away. When you get something from the store, take the packaging to the garbage, don’t just lob it across the room. A stitch in time and all that.

3

Hamsters ate my post…

My place looks best when we all do a bit every day, and when I don’t let a small mess go so that it looks normal and then nobody cares whether they are leaving little messes around…

You may or may not get a bunch of replies to check out Flylady. That’s where I started when I had been depressed and let things get WAY out of hand, and was overwhelmed. Basically, it is doing a little bit every day, and not allowing yourself to get sidetracked when you are in the middle of tidying so that you have 100 things half done and nothing actually done.

She has an area on there about what to do if you need to get “presentable” in a short amount of time. That might be good for your situation this week.

If you sign up, the emailed reminders can get to be too, too many, but you can turn them off…

ETA that Joey P’s strategy sounds perfect…

4

‘Emergency Response’ best describes my method.

“Oh crap, this area is really bad, I should spend a day picking at it 5 minutes at a time while I do other things until it is back under control.”

5

monstro, I have some bad news for you:

You actually are a hoarder. Not a TERRIBLE OMG THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE hoarder, but yes, you are in the edge of that particular country. If the junk is taking over your bed you have a problem. Not, I hesitate to add, an insurmountable problem. It’s not completely out of control. You say you have cleaned up, so it’s a doable task.

And hey, I struggle with this myself. I woke last year to the fact that my front room was FULL - piles as high as my head, I could no longer get to my piano or my rocking chair or many of the things I loved. My hallways were getting narrower. I was having less and less space to live in.

Let me first recommend a book called Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. See if your library has it, so you don’t have to actually add it to your collection of stuff. It gave me a lot of insight into how my home got to be the way it is, and I’m finally making real headway on my own problem.

Your “mental map”, your “not seeing it”, and you’re “at least there’s no X” are all things I have done (though my X is different than yours). There are ways to get past this. You may never have a perfect home, but it can get better. First, however, you have to admit you do have a problem that needs some work.

Of course, there are people who’ll say “Just clean it up already!”. Or, from another thread on the topic: “Just take a garbage bag and throw 25 things away right now! Don’t think about it, just grab 25 things and toss them.” Well, you know, if I was capable of doing that my house wouldn’t look like this, ya know?

What motivates us to keep stuff we don’t need, to be disorganized, and so forth differs from one person to another. How it manifests is different, too. I’m starting to find solutions that work for me, but it certainly hasn’t happened overnight.

I guess (if you’re still reading this far) one of my concerns is that a couple of major life events could really set you back. I realize, now, that that is what tipped the balance for me. In the space of three years both my parents nearly died of pneumonia, I was seriously ill to the point of a week hospital stay, my mother-in-law had a major heart attack and other problems that led to my husband being away for six months, I lost my job, and my mom died. I lost ALL control of my house clutter, I was so busy running around taking care of other people or being ill/recovering or having some other catastrophe occur that when I finally stopped and looked around I could barely move in my own home any more.

If you can find out why you’re the housekeeper you are, then you can look for ways to improve the situation. Do you need to restrict the potting soil activities to one card table in one corner of the room? Should you first organize all the paint, would that be the best project? Would a cheap plastic bucket or tub for each project help keep you organized? Would a washable cover for your couch - where the cat hair gets on that - that you can strip and launder regularly help? When you clean, would it help to have a friend in the room to help keep you on track instead of getting distracted by projects or old memories (that’s a big one for me - the memories conjured up by objects can be overwhelming for me.) Does sending something to Goodwill or a recycling center make it easier to throw out than just tossing it in the dumpster? Stuff that’s “too good” to just throw out I either donate or I take down to an eBay store in my area where they sell it for me and hand me a check for the profit (keeping about 1/3 for themselves, but whatever - they do the work, and I have more space AND a few dollars, a win-win from my viewpoint).

If you don’t want to go into detail in public PM me. As you say, you’re far from the worst, but you have definite hoarder tendencies. You want to keep those under control so you can enjoy your living space.

6

Joey P is right. Chip away, a small section at a time, or 15 minutes at a time. If you need storage, get storage. Shelves, bins, baskets. On the hoarding shows, the organizers sort by Trash, Donate, Keep. If you have more trash than is allowed in your usual trash pickup and if you have the space, get a dumpster. Around here they’re $35 for the smallest size. You keep it for a week and then call for pickup.

A lawyer I worked for had the tidiest desk and office I’ve ever seen. Her method was to never touch anything more than twice. If she picked up a piece of paper, she dealt with it right then. It’d go in a file or in the trash or in the To Do basket. So try that – if you pick something up, deal with it, don’t just put it back down.

I helped my son clear clutter a couple years ago. We didn’t want to deal with selling things, so we’d put usable stuff on the curb. We put stuff out every day for a week and every day, everything was gone.

7

I though **Joey P **did a pretty good job, but I have a few ideas for long-term maintenance.

As an additional suggestion - in every room of the house, you need a trash can, a broom (full size or whisk) with dustpan or dustbuster type handvac. Every single room. This makes throwing garbage out as you go MUCH easier. If it’s a room with multiple projects you might want a trash can/bin at every work station. Thus, you will not have to exert any effort to throw stuff out, you don’t even have to walk across a room to do it. Yes, that might mean a lot of trash bins, but when company comes you can always hide them in a closet if you feel you must.

Well, maybe - it really does depend on how the place is. It would take more than 30 minutes to do that for my front room right now (even with a quarter of it now cleared), and you’d run out of tables, chairs, and couches. However, if you can’t get it all up off the floor, divide the room into quadrants (or smaller units), clear that space, clean up the floor, clear the next space, clean that part of the floor, and rinse and repeat. Not ideal, but it will improve the place.

Ah, but you’re talking about a person who doesn’t see the clutter and the mess most of the time… Maybe it will work, but for me, well, yes, the floor looks great now and I’ll clear off the couch tomorrow… or the next day. Because, you see, the clutter doesn’t bother me as much as it does most other people and seeing a clean floor most certainly does not inspire me to do even more cleaning. Maybe monstro is like you, maybe she’s like me. I have to use a different strategy to keep myself going on the clean up projects.

^ This. You have to start training yourself for immediate clean up. That’s why I said get the extra trash bins. Drag out the vacuum and put it away again? Not for me - every room now has a trash can, broom/handvac, roll of paper towels and a spray bottle for instant clean ups. No having to go to another room, no having to put it back in the closet. It’s there, a little “cleaning station” in each room, and since we’ve started doing that there has been a noticeable improvement (my husband is also a bit of a slob, and being disabled cleaning up is often physically more different for him than for others). That’s what works for me,** Joey P** has his system, monstro needs to find something that works for her… but if she’s more like me than Joey P some of the usual housekeeping advice may not be enough.

That was always an issue for me with craft projects. Sure, sure, when I’m done I’ll put it away. The problem is, in my own mind, I’m almost never done - I’m working along, think “oh, just a short break” then suddenly it’s a week later and the project is still all over the dining room table. That’s an issue between my ears, really. Managing my craft/art projects can be a real struggle at times.

When I perceive myself as done cleaning up is easy. It’s just that, as I said, in my own mind I’m almost never done, which means for years I almost never cleaned up.

^ This. The spouse and I sometimes manage to take packing not to the room garbage bin but directly out to the dumpster. It is, oddly, one of my proudest accomplishments, that I am finally doing this on a regular basis.

Oh, one thing about all those trash bins - you HAVE TO empty them when they’re full. Overflowing can never be allowed.

8

I don’t know that I agree with that. In fact, I think I disagree with that, based on what she’s posted so far.

Not everyone with a messy house is a hoarder. A hoarder has emotional attachments to their Stuff, and feels anxiety and stress when faced with its loss. A hoarder won’t let you touch any of their Stuff, or let anyone help them clean, because it’s not about the stress of cleaning, it’s about the stress of potentially losing their Stuff.

**monstro **sounds more like me. I’m not a hoarder, I’m lazy and unobservant. I have no emotional attachment to most of my Stuff. I’m a purger and a donator and get rid of Stuff all the time. I walked away with literally nothing from my household after the divorce except my clothes, one small set of drawers, one bookshelf, my clothes, three boxes of books and my sewing machine. The Stuff was not important, and its loss was not a stressor for me - not the actions of a hoarder. I just literally don’t notice the twist-tie from the empty bread bag on the counter (and it’s 50/50 as to whether I throw the bag in with the recyclables or drop it on the floor while I’m opening the fridge to get the mayo.)

My place is a disaster right now. I woke up with honest intentions to shake out the throw rugs, sweep, dust, clean the bathroom and do several loads of laundry before lunch. Instead I’ve been on the Dope all morning. I have no emotional attachment to my dusty shelves, I just can’t be arsed.

And when I didn’t have someone sharing my bed, it often became another place for Stuff - again, not because there was no where else to put it or because I was emotionally attached to it, just because I was too lazy to put books back on the shelf when I was done reading them, so they piled up on my bed, along with the phone charger and the remote and Og knows what else.
That being said, monstro, what generally works best for me is setting a timer for 20 minutes and just making myself do something cleaning related until the timer goes off. (Then I check the Dope again, as a reward. :smiley: ) It really is amazing what you can get done in only 20 minutes.

Another tip is to make yourself accountable to someone else. Which I will now do. To demonstrate, and maybe even inspire, and to get my ass off the computer, I will now follow my own advice and go clean for 20 minutes. If anyone sees me post again before 11:30, smack me with a wet trout, okay? :smiley:

9

Bolding mine, and that’s what I should have made clear in my first post. At the risk of sounding like a fanatic, I am going to mention the Flylady again (but really you are all pretty much doing exactly what Flylady suggests, you just actually SEE it and DO it without prompting). The emails at the start up get you up and doing, a little bit at a time. Okay, I did not clean my sink first, and I don’t wear shoes in the house, but she makes a point of making things a habit. At the beginning you do it by the email reminders, whether you see it or not. I got off the email reminders after a couple of months because I was finding that I was doing it before the reminders came…

10

My turn again, weeeee.

You covered it at the end, but you can’t let them overflow. My garbage at work is always overflowing and because of that there’s a lot of crap, scraps of paper, crumbs etc on the floor, it’s kinda gross, but then the way the office is setup, no one EVER sees the floor by my feet. Another thing and I learned this back in college. If the garbage will be emptied less then once a week or so, there is a huge, unbreakable rule for it NO F’IN FOOD, ever. Food spoils, molds, rots and it will stink. Just keep food scraps contained to one garbage the gets emptied more often.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I want to say monstro lives in a smaller apartment. I think it was mentioned in a thread. Perhaps the thread where she found some keys or a note or something. Or maybe she posted a picture of one of her plant pots and you could see the apartment in the background…or I could just be making it up.

Another thing with ‘chipping away’ I’ve found that inevitably, there comes a point at which 5 minutes here and there just doesn’t cut it anymore. At some point you just have to dedicate an hour or two to the project to finish it up. But I usually find that it’s one of those little 5 minute projects that jump starts it. I’ll finally have everything off the floor and the next project is, say, dusting…wow, looks waaay better, let’s just do the windows right away…hay, that looks 1000% better then it did 5 minutes ago, might as well just grab the vacuum and be done with the whole project. Or I might go off on another tangent, for example, as long as I just did the windows, lets do the bathroom mirror…hey, the counter doesn’t look too bad, the rag from the mirror should clean it up and suddenly the bathroom doesn’t look half bad.

11

Thanks for all the advice. I’m actually making some progress now. The bedroom just needs to be dusted, throw rug vacuumed, and the floor mopped (linen will have to wait). The dining room has been tidied (I have to wipe down the table and vacuum), but it also meets “exterminator-guy-is-coming-over” standards.

The kitchen floor needs to be swept and mopped and I need to wipe down the counter. I have some dirty dishes and pots and pans that need to be cleaned and put away (putting away is always the hardest thing for me). I also need to clean the range. During the last big rain storm, a chuck of plaster ceiling fell onto my stove. I threw away the big chunks, but the smaller pieces and dust have been sitting there for the past few weeks (months?). So that needs to be handled (the hole in the ceiling will need to be dealt with another time).

Living room and stairs are the big challenges. I still have the spare backroom, but it’s not in TOO bad of a shape. I just need to put the big stack of newspapers somewhere. Recyclers don’t come until next week, so it will have to go to the back porch. Or maybe I’ll just throw it all away, damn the environment. Fortunately my small bathroom is the cleanest place in the joint. I just need to mop the floor and wipe down the sink.

Broomstick, I wouldn’t consider myself a hoarder because I put no sentimental value on anything. I’ve watched that show “Hoarders” and see the agony those people go through when people are throwing their stuff away. I am not empathetic at all; to me, it’s all junk (even stuff that’s not junk is junk). That’s why I think I’m just lazy. When I get home, I just want to wash the sweat off of my face, pee, spend some time on the StraightDope, and then get to doing craftwork. I don’t want to clean. I don’t want to watch the news. I don’t even want to eat.

But I do hear what you are saying about it being a horrible thing to let get out of hand. There’s a little part of me that monitors how bad things get (it screams when the clean dishes run out or if there’s too many hair clippings on the bathroom floor). But I could see it easily shutting down, and there wouldn’t even HAVE to be a reason like illness or grief. Apathy is a constant battle for me and I’m just fortunate that I’ve never let it win over completely.

12

I disagree (and would be happy to agree to disagree) because hoarding isn’t a binary condition. It’s part of a spectrum. No one wakes up one morning and decides being a hoarder would be fun. Some people are worse than others about clutter and stuff. Some people have zero attachment to anything. Some save their kid’s fingerpaintings. Some have a house full of antiques and heirlooms. Some just have what others would regard as garbage. Some people claim to enjoy housecleaning. Some loathe it. Most just do it as a necessary chore.

There are people very attached to their stuff, their collections, whatever, who are extremely organized, need, and methodical about it, and their stuff isn’t spilling out all over or making their living space unlivable. They aren’t hoarders, yet they would experience enormous distress over the loss of that stuff, they may not anyone else touching it or cleaning it, etc. So they’d match your description of a hoarder, but they wouldn’t be seen as one.

On top of that, what you describe is the end extreme of hoarding, and most hoarders don’t get quite that bad. Most lower-level hoarders CAN allow others to help, they CAN get rid of stuff, it’s just harder for them than for others.

And despite my cluttering tendencies, my bed filling up with crap is one thing I’ve never tolerated… but that doesn’t mean I’m a spotless housekeeper.

If it’s getting to point **monstro **won’t have her own mother visit, it’s a problem whatever you want to call it.

Deal. Now I just have to find the trout, I know I left it around here somewhere…

13

Yay! Great start!

Put away the trout, it’s 11:40! :smiley:

In 23 minutes, I got the bathroom cleaned, including the bathtub(!), the throw rugs shaken out, sweeping done, lugs relaid and a load of laundry down to the laundryroom - which will now have to sit there for half an hour because someone else is using the washer, but at least it’s not sitting in my living room anymore - and got some bits and pieces of paper and stuff thrown out, to boot. The Little has been instructed to move her Stuff out of the living room and into her bedroom where it belongs so that I can tidy and dust the living room in a bit.

And even though I just wrote it – yeah, I’m still surprised how much just got done in ~20 minutes! Go me! :smiley:

14

Sometimes you just gotta damn the environment! Recycling is harder for me, because there is no pick up here, I have have to drive my recyclables to the place that does it myself. That alone would make some folks just not bother, but for me, it is sooooo much easier to recycle than to toss something usable that I can do it, and the cash I get for it is a nice reward.

But… if I have a stack of stuff I forget to include when I drive to the recyclers I have to throw it out when I trip over it once I’m back home. That’s the rule. If I don’t’ remember to recycle it, it gets tossed.

The problem with a show like Hoarders is that they show the worst of the worst. How would you view, say, something like heart disease if they only time you ever saw someone with heart disease was as a terminal case hooked up to machines in an intensive care ward? You’d miss all the people who go about their daily lives dealing with the problem but not nearly as disabled by it as that.

That’s why I recommend that book Stuff upstream. It’s by two people who have made careers helping hoarders and near-hoarders. It’s NOT just about people with overwhelming emotional attachments to stuff, though there’s certainly a strong component there for many. There are people who don’t have sentimental attachments so much as compulsions to, say, never ever waste anything that might conceivably at some point be recycled, reused, or useful. Sometimes it’s linked to OCD, sometimes not. Sometimes there is clinical depression involved, sometimes not. Sometimes deteriorating physical or mental abilities come into play.

Are you lazy… or really, really focused on the craftwork? I used to be a freelance artist, I not only did crafty stuff at home at night, I did it all day at work, too. Never got tired of it. But… I never let the dirty dishes get out of control, either, I mean, they are never left anywhere but the sink. It was always a point with me the dishes got washed, the discarded food removed from the home, and the bathroom scrubbed no mater how filled up, cluttered, dusty, and disorganized everything else was. So, you could get to the sink and stove and the refrigerator and the bathroom, but almost nowhere else in the house. I denied I had a problem for years because, you know, there was no dirty dishes or decaying food around the house, it was cluttered but clean. Not a health hazard. Well, no, but I still had a problem.

Yes, that’s always the issue - you’ve got these habits and tendencies. You COULD wind up in a Hoarders situation if things went far enough, right? Doesn’t mean you will, doesn’t mean you’re likely to, but the potential is there whether it’s due to over-attachment to stuff or just hating housework and putting it off forever and ever.

You say you’re “fortunate” it’s never won over completely - that’s a problem as I see it. You shouldn’t be relying on luck to keep things from getting out of hand, you need to train yourself to keep up with things, develop good habits, and maintain self-discipline in regards to housekeeping. There’s more than one way to go about that, you have to find what works for you.

15

I was a borderline hoarder for a long time. I’m still never going to be featured in Better Homes and Gardens, but my living space is generally neat and tidied these days, discounting random children’s toys that get left in inappropriate places.

You really have two problems. One is the initial clean-up, which is going to be a big job no matter how you slice it up. The other is ongoing maintenance. Back when I was still living in squalor, I managed to get myself motivated to do a big clean-up on several occasions, but since the maintenance part wasn’t there, I just slid back into messiness and clutter again pretty quickly.

Here are my tips.

  1. Everything in your home has a place. If it doesn’t have a place, find a place for it. If you can’t find a place for it, get rid of it. When you are out shopping, do not buy something unless you already know what its place will be. This goes for big things, small things, everything. If you don’t have a place for it, it doesn’t enter your home.

  2. Develop habits. I read somewhere that it takes about six weeks of doing something on a regular basis for it to become habitual. So force yourself to do it for that long, and then hopefully habit will just take over. Wash your dishes immediately after you eat, no matter how tired you are or what other things you have to do. Imagine cockroaches coming in and swarming over the dishes, if you need motivation. Or imagine the horrible smell from a pile of unwashed dishes, and imagine how good you will feel when the area is cleaned up. Force yourself to clean big messes (i.e. spilled plant dirt) as soon as they occur. Set a time each week that you will vacuum, and do it no matter what. I like to do things on Saturday as soon as I get up, to get it out of the way so I can enjoy the rest of the weekend.

  3. You mentioned crafting. Crafting and hoarding problems are a bad combination, and I say that as someone who cross-stitches and sews, so I’m not judging you here. Crafters have a tendency to accumulate a lot of crafting materials for future projects that may or may not ever be completed. If your crafting stuff is an issue, I recommend paring it down significantly and making sure it is organized and contained to a single area of your home.

You can do this. I did this. Here’s an album I put up. The first pictures were a house we lived in back in 2002. (Please just ignore the shirtless husband shots there. :stuck_out_tongue: These are the only photos I had that really showed the mess.) The last one is our current house, and that’s the way it generally looks - maybe a little bit of toy clutter but nothing major.

16

I’ll agree to disagree, because I still think, to be a useful term for planning interventions, “hoarder” should be reserved for people who hoard d/t anxiety. There’s already a centuries old term for people like me: slut. Or slattern, if you prefer. :wink:

17

What is your strategy for keeping your dwelling clean?

Cleansing fire, once every 3 to 4 months, sadly management isn’t to happy with that method.

18

Oh, just want to illustrate some other points.

Emotional issues over “stuff” - look, half the crap in my place is craft supplies. I don’t care if other people touch it, fondle it, whatever. Hell, I give a LOT of it away - I am constantly handing beginners a skein or two of yarn and a crochet hook or pair of knitting needles to teach them how to knit or crochet. I’m not attached to it… but I can’t throw it in a dumpster, either. Yes, about 15 years ago I made the mistake of going to a going out of business sale for a yarn store, and I’ve been dealing with the inventory ever since. Again, I can’t throw it out (that’s the hoarder in me talking) but I can give it to other crafters (that’s the non-hoarder). I really have to be careful about shopping for art supplies because it is way too easy for me to buy stuff, fully intending to use it, never getting around to it, and not being able to simply throw it away.

Oddly enough, shopping on the internet makes it easier for me NOT to buy, because I don’t have the direct visual/tactile input that makes it so desirable to acquire this stuff. I can go up, find the one or two things for a specific project, and I’m not wandering the aisle of a store filling up my cart. I understand some people have the opposite problem, the internet makes it too easy to acquire stuff.

(That’s a point raised in Stuff - it can be very important to control input as well as what’s in the house. I’ve discontinued newspaper delivery and subscription magazines for me for the same reason - once it’s inside it can become an issue for me, so I stopped bringing into the house entirely. The only exception to my magazine purging are the ones containing my published writing. THOSE I keep. I don’t know whether to be sad or pleased at how small that particular stack is…)

The other big issue I have is, yes, sentimental stuff. Mostly things I have acquired from deceased relatives and friends. ENORMOUS emotional attachment to them. Fortunately, the largest of such things is my grandmother’s china set, which I keep as my “good” set. Well, and my dad’s cherry-wood desk (Dad, I hasten to add, is still alive, he just didn’t want the desk anymore). However, it is being used as a desk. It’s not just a non-used museum piece in the corner of a room. Likewise, the inherited dishes and cookware is being used, it’s functional. The other stuff… I’m trying to get it down to a “memory box” for each individual, and really, some of them are quite small, shoebox size, but at least it’s not scattered willy-nilly.

Funny thing is, though - while my living space has usually been a mess my cars have always been really clean. I can NOT tolerate clutter in my car! Unfortunately, my spouse can - this was a rather serious point of contention for many years in our marriage. (Eventually, I agreed to ease up about his eating in the car - something I really don’t approve of - so long as he made sure to clean up any spills and use the car’s trash can for garbage instead of throwing it on the floor of the back seat. We’re both sort of equally discomforted by the compromise, which means it’s probably a reasonable one.)

19

How does one train themselves to care?

I feel like 60% of me is devoted to art, 30% to work, and 10% to other stuff (eating, laundry, taking care of my cats, cleaning). The part devoted to my art is authentic, though I don’t understand the red-hot intensity behind it (sometimes it feels like I will die if I stop). The part of me concerned about my 9-to-5 is only 50% genuine; the rest is just an act to keep me employed and sufficiently compensated so that I can do what I really care about. And the last 10% is slowly slipping away, converting over to the 60%. I feel so awful about not playing with my cats. I love them so much, but they only get my attention when I’m their captive audience–like when I’m locked in the bathroom with one of them :). Otherwise, it’s “SHOO!” Oh, how I hate myself when I think about that.

I’ve been “faking it until I make it” for so long that I guess I’m just kind of giving up. But I don’t feel depressed. I just feel like, “What’s the point? It’s just potting soil. It’s just a hole in the ceiling. It’s just a spider web in the corner. It’s just a pile of junk mail on top of a pile of Vogue magazines that I didn’t even subscribe to and will never take out of the plastic wrapping. None of it is hurting anyone. Why should I spend energy to make things look a certain way when I don’t care what they look like?”

But obviously I do care, at least a little bit, because I don’t want the exterminator to see how bad things have gotten. Because if the landlord happens to be with him, I could be evicted. Which would be bad.

I just wish the bad consequences, like going to jail or getting fired, weren’t the things always motivating me to do the right thing. I would like the right thing to come naturally…I would like to actually care about doing the right thing just for the sake of it.

Oh well, enough babbling. I’ve got housework to do.

20

While I’m cleaning the house I keep telling myself I will be better able to do my art in a clean and roomy space. I tell myself that my pets will be safer if there aren’t tottering piles of stuff all over (I have birds - injury due to falling/shifting objects isn’t unknown, though so far I’ve been able to prevent it in mine). I tell myself that by getting rid of that pile of magazines I’ll never read I’ll have more stuff for the things I want to keep, more room to do the things I want to do.

Maybe framing it as how cleaning up will help you with your real interests might help? It helps me.

Either that, or if having someone in the place motivates you, make a point of regular company so you’ll have that incentive to keep up with it.