A Clean & Orderly Home

I like a clean and orderly home. Clutter bothers me. Dirt makes me physically uncomfortable. And you wouldn't know it if you saw my home now. I haven't finished unpacking in the six-ish months I've been here. The worst part is that I haven't cleaned, other than putting dishes in the dishwasher (and occasionally wiping down the countertops) and freshening up the toilet and once or twice wiping out the bathroom sink. Yes, this shames me. It is a clear and unequivocal sign of how depressed and anxious I am and have been. (Anxiety paralyzes me as surely as depression does, making which is the culprit unobvious to observers.)

Of course, one person's clutter is another person's uncluttered and my mother definitely found my uncluttered to be her clutter, and vice versa. Mom had many dustables, which she kept displayed neatly. I dislike dusting, so I want it to be as easy and quick to do as possible, which is why I'm getting rid of many of my dustables and looking to store what's left in sealed glass cabinets. I seem to have an allergy to dust and dust mites, so I have to get rid of the dust if I want to keep breathing and refrain from coughing. And having tidy bookshelves and clean surfaces satisfies a personal aesthetic. It's also easier to find the book I want.

I like being able to find what I'm looking for in a short amount of time. Now, I waste time looking for things, time I could spend doing stuff I like to do. 

I used to keep my things picked up and orderly. My bedroom when I was a child and a teenager was tidy and clean and I had only two small drawers that were my "junk" drawers where things were higgledy piggledy. They were like small treasure chests; I did not want my entire life to be that kind of treasure chest, just those two drawers. 

Back in the day, I found that it was much easier to keep my space at the level of clean and tidy that I wanted if I kept it up at all times — putting stuff away, cleaning on a schedule. As my life fell apart, bit by bit over the years, so did my levels of clean, tidy, organized. 

For example, my first home had an oak floor in the living room. When I first moved in, I took off my shoes at the door and I swept up the floor at least every other day. It was a pleasure: I loved that floor and sweeping it was an exercise in mindfulness before I ever knew what that was. It gave me pleasure. But when things happened that caused me great pain and depression, doing anything, especially anything that gave me pleasure, became virtually impossible and my floor lost its clean and shiny look. And that made me even sadder.

A vision

In my mind, every item in my home is in its place, including clothing and shoes, and put away neatly, without being squished, squashed, or wrinkled to fit it in. My home is easy to dust because the flat surfaces have few things on them — no piles of papers, no stacks of books and magazines. The few dustables I own are arranged neatly and visibly (because otherwise why have them?) My home is easy to vacuum because there is no stuff cluttering the floor — no out-of-place shoes, no piles of magazines and books (see a theme here?), no basket of unfolded laundry, no purses or totes littering the floor. My bedroom is a haven of calmness and my closet is ordered such that I can easily find the clothes and shoes I want, as well as the out-of-season bedding and other stored items. My kitchen is clean and my counters are clear; I can make brownies any time I want without a major effort to make space. I can — and do — eat my meals at my dining table.

Bonus: it doesn't take me much time at all to keep my home in this state, because I put my shoes and clothing away when I remove them, I put my purse or tote in the space for them. I unpack sacks when I bring them in and put those items away immediately. And I go through all my mail when I bring it into the house, noting the date each bill is due, addressing other mail that needs addressing, and tossing the junk. Piles don't form.

Then money floats through my door and into my wallet and bank account. My emotional eating disappears and with it my excess weight. And I write my first novel. And oh yeah: depression and anxiety? GONE!

Ta da!

Now does anyone know someone who could help me achieve any of this? Anyone? Anyone?

**crickets**

Starting from Scratch

Depression devastates. It devours. It consumes your life and, if it goes on long enough or is bad enough, it can consume even your life skills.

I've been battling depression and anxiety directly for about 27 years; I've suffered from anxiety since I was a child. For a long time, I managed to hold on to the usual life skills of cleaning, cooking, staying organized, but during my worst periods have seen those skills erode. Since my mom's death, the anxiety and depression have taken me all the way down to the ground. 

I don't pick up. I don't clean. I don't fix meals ... I just buy stuff and it goes bad. I don't pay my bills on time. I don't look for work. It's not laziness. I don't do any of these things because I am overwhelmed by it. I sit on the couch and when I think about doing any of those tasks, my anxiety flares up and I'm even more stuck to the couch than before. The depression weighs me down and makes me feel vague and weak. Days pass by in a haze and I am constantly surprised by the end of the day.

I'm at ground zero and around me lay the ruins of my life. Not only do I not do basic life tasks and routines, I don't do the things I love other, such as write and go for walks.

The depression and anxiety have shown signs of clearing. I finally want to live again, which is rather new since Mom's death. But I have a lot of work to do before I am doing anything other than surviving.

I plan to continue to use this blog to talk about my therapy, but I am also going to use it as a journal of learning to live all over again. None of my therapists have offered me any way to do this; all we do is talk about ideas. Obviously that hasn't worked. I'll be making this up as I go along, cobbling together solutions and motivations and simple "how do I drag myself along" functions from other people's suggestions, from things I read, and from whatever I can dredge up a brain that's had most of its creativity smothered in muck for a very long time.

The things I intend to concentrate on first are

1. Basic routines & habits: moving the morning routine along faster and to somewhere other than the couch; putting the dishes away when they are clean; putting out the garbage in a timely manner; going to bed at a reasonable time and with a dependable routine.
2. Cleaning: first, clearing out the detritus that currently covers every surface, sorting, that overall declutter that needs to take place before I can even develop routines. I think I'll have a cleaning person come in and do a deep, thorough clean after I get all the clutter handled. Then develop habits and routines.
3. Money & paperwork: get my check register up to date; get my bills scheduled on my calendar so I can pay them on time; get that bankruptcy info; stay on top of my check register by actually entering all my debit card purchases (what a thought!). Truly concentrate on decreasing expenses. Do my 2010 taxes. Clean up existing files and start new ones, such as my 2011 tax files, now that we are halfway through the year. Develop a routine for handling paper that comes into the apartment.
4. Physical activity: daily activity such as walking or doing exercises; refraining from sitting so much.
5. Meals: fix actual meals for myself. I don't need four-course feasts and I am fine with having the same food frequently, but I do need more stability than cereal with berries for breakfast. Start small with easy stuff.
6. Stuff I love to do: make time to write and do other things I enjoy on a regular basis. Another habit/routine maneuver — makes habits of these things so I remember to do them.
7. Look for work: look into the things I need to do to find or make work; look at job boards, redo my resume and portfolio and all the rest of that; and do it all regularly.

Well. That's a lot of stuff to start with. But each of those sets is very important. Maybe I'll cut it down, start a couple of essential things every 2 - 3 weeks. Even figuring out how to start is something I need to relearn.

So check back. This could be very interesting ... or it could be unimaginably tedious. Just as long as it eventually succeeds.

Losing it

The cruelest thing about mental illness is the loss of one's true self. Trauma such as sexual abuse can have the same effect: you mask or hide your true self for survival.

At one time, long, long ago, I was a cheerful, outgoing, talkative little girl. I was bright enough that the school considered bumping me over 3rd grade. I wish they had: I had social issues even among my own grade-mates. Jumping a year wouldn't have hurt me that way at all. And I was so all-consumingly bored by everything but math — and that just stomped me into the ground.  So all that boredom squashed me a bit. Don't stand out. Eventually I took only the classes I knew I could get As in so as to please my parents.

But the effects of the abuse hit me at puberty and I became shy and awkward and tended to slouch and mumble by about the age of 10 or 11. My parents couldn't even get me to take the check up to the restaurant cashier and pay it; I wouldn't go without my brother. Thus began my social phobia and ended my fearlessness.

I wasn't supposed to use the words or the knowledge that I had from reading or my gifted class — that was showing off and unacceptable. (My parents probably didn't understand everything I said by the time I was 12.) But my brother could show off any physical prowess he had. That was okay.

I wasn't supposed to correct adults, even if the teacher was teaching something wrong or an adult went back on what they said. Squash. I lost my vocabulary. I lost a lot of my brightness; I became dull.

At least I kept my room clean and tidy. Very. I liked clean and tidy and organized, even when I became a teen. No tossing clothes around and being a general slob.

I was a bit untidy in my mid-20s, when i shared a house with two guy friends. I was so miserable, still borderline suicidal (still considered it an option if I couldn't handle things), no boyfriend so I felt ugly and unloved. I began keeping my clothing in a nest around me in my bed — a queen mattress on the floor. I liked my weird-shaped room in the attic but I froze in the winter. That might have sparked the nesting.

When my best friend Steve and I shared an apartment together, I kept my space and the house clean and tidy in partnership with Steve. He, too, has always been neat and tidy, so it was easy to be that way. And I was that way with Marlys when I roomed with her. I wasn't too untidy when I moved in with Thom, but he kept all his computer stuff in a mess, so it began.

When I moved into my own house in my early 30s, at first I was very tidy. That's what I like. I loved sweeping the old oak floors. I loved that house. But then I hit a major depression, so bad that I even took two leaves of absence from work for mental health reasons. My house became the Pit of Chaos. My Mom and her second husband came and helped me clean up once. I tried, but was only able to keep parts of my home clean. Never the kitchen. I stopped cooking much at all. This continued to the coast and was the worst ever in my little apartment at the end of my life on the coast; I never even unpacked for the year I lived there. I felt lost and hopeless and terrified, with a wide-open future in front of me. Being alone in my apartment where I live now, I achieved only moderate tidiness, but it was better than nothing. I was still over-stressed. I had lost the tidy, organized, happy me.

When I moved back to Oregon to take care of Mom, I wanted to keep the tidiness up to her standards. It was bad enough she had to deal with cancer; i wasn't going to make her uncomfortable with clutter. So I kept things up fairly well. Mom had a cleaner come every other week, which was very helpful because that was beyond me. I didn't cook much for us. But I kept the clutter to a minimum and mom was comfortable in her beloved home with the brand-new kitchen until she died.

Return to Houston: my home hasn't been this bad since those bad days in Seattle in the house I loved. There are papers, mostly mail and discarded empty envelopes, all over the floor. No single surface is clean and tidy. My clothes are piled in bins and on the white wire shelf in the closet. No, I don't have a chest of drawers, or enough shelves in the book shelf. I don't use the desk because it has the TV and more stuff on top of it.

I hate this, hate this, hate this. I want clean and tidy. I want my life to be simple and easy to maintain. The times when I've achieved that, even briefly, I have experienced peacefulness and happiness. To say that this mess is contributing to my depression and anxiety is an understatement. But I don't have the energy to pick up. I'm behind on my bills, on the estate's bills. I don't even know where they all are. I am unhappy in part because my home is a mess, and when I'm this unhappy I cannot keep it clean and organized: it's a Catch-22.

I need help. Don't seem able to provide it to myself; that's something else I've lost.

Are any of those things even findable?

I used to be so good

When I was younger, I was a morning person. I kept my living space — bedroom, dorm room, apartment, house — clean and organized. When I made a commitment, I met it.

When I started having problems with anxiety and depression, particularly in my early 30s at the Job From Hell, I started calling in sick when I didn't want to do something, mostly because of severe anxiety or depression. I began backing out more and more. It became more routine for me to break a commitment rather than to meet one. 

Over the course of a couple of decades, I became a person different from the person I knew I was. Knowing this added to my feelings of depression.

When I determined that I would change my life, I determined that I would change that aspect, too. And I did ... for awhile.

I called in sick a couple of times to a new job last summer, and I'm not sure why. Stress. But I got back to doing better. 

Then I was two weeks late for a project quote because I let my mental state command me. And today I backed out of a meeting and let someone else keep notes for me. I have yet to talk to her about it because I slept for four hours this afternoon — another way I have of avoiding what pains or stresses me.

I'm late on every one of my bills and those of the estate's. I owe money to the Steps to cover their tax burden from one of our bequests. I not only didn't get my taxes done, I didn't manage to file for an extension either.

I can barely breathe.

At this rate, it wouldn't be difficult for me to simply take to my bed for a few weeks. Except that I do need to at least pretend I'm looking for work. 

Dear god I hope the house sells soon. I don't know if a bit more financial security will make a difference in my personal integrity or not. I'm not sure what will.