M. Suzanne Terry

When I think about my ideal lush home, I see fresh flowers on the table. Endless bookshelves. Oversized, comfy chairs with warm blankets draped over them and plenty of large throw pillows to cuddle or use as floor cushions. A place to put my feet up.

Then I look around me, and I see a side table full of tea cups that haven’t quite made it to the kitchen to be washed yet. Dishes piled up in the sink. Dust bunnies lurking in the corners. And omg, the piles and piles and PILES of paper.

I was talking to my friend Stephanie lately about the challenges we both face when it comes to maintaining a clean and tidy living space. It was a cathartic conversation, and she shared some helpful resources she’s been using lately. I’ve also been reading Susan Pinsky’s Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, and it’s been useful, too. This step-by-step approach is helping me work through my overwhelm, and I’m so grateful.

Because nowhere in my vision of a lush life is a messy apartment. I find mess distracting and frustrating, but I can’t quite seem to get a handle on it. I’ve had problems with this for as long as I can remember. Every Saturday, I would complete my assigned housekeeping task for the house (vacuuming) and then spend the rest of Saturday working on my bedroom. And it would look very much the same hours later than it did when I started. I always thought I was just lazy or too busy, but I’ve since noticed that I spend just as much time (if not more) working on my home as others. I get distracted, so there are a lot of half-done tasks strewn throughout my space. Then I get overwhelmed and suddenly every unfinished job seems to have ten times the number of steps than it did before. Then I sit down and binge-watch a familiar show until the pressure subsides, at least until I notice how much is still left to do. Then the cycle repeats.

Part of my goal this year has been to find ways to break this cycle and create a maintenance plan that works for me. I track six general cleaning categories – dishes, laundry, trash, bathroom, tidying, and miscellaneous (which includes any task, such as dusting or vacuuming, that won’t ever need to be done every day) – and I try to check off at least four a day. It doesn’t matter how much time I spend on each of them as long as I can see that none of them are being neglected for more than a day or two. It’s been working much more slowly than I would like, but it has been working, and that’s the important part.

Another resource that helps is this post that reframes cleaning as a hygge activity (there’s also a Facebook group). Lots of inspiration and motivation. My perfectionist brain tells me, “You shouldn’t have to be motivated to adult properly,” but my functional brain thinks my perfectionist brain is an unhelpful asshole and needs to shut it.

[It’s ok to tell the nagging, judgy parts of your brain to mind their business. Shame has no place in this plan.]

Trying to fix the things in my life that haven’t worked for a long time is challenging (and sometimes exhausting), but it’s all part of creating a lush life.