On Unfucking and OCD.
So, my OCD is rather mild, but it does effect my life quite a bit. Especially when it couples with anxiety. My OCD isn't like what you see on TV. There's no obsessive hand washing or everything having to be in the exact right place.
I do like to keep things clean, but theres a catch. Everything has to be clean so I can keep it clean. If it gets too messy, I get overwhelmed and can't do anything. (Now anxiety kicks in and I can't stand having a messy house, but lack the drive to do anything.) As you can imagine, this leads to a rather messy house sometimes.
I want to clean during these times, but there's too much to do, so my brain just shorts out. Then I sit around all day feeling guilty I didn't clean. Or sometimes I will try to but I start in the kitchen and can't finish the whole house in a day and have a panic attack and then go back to doing nothing and feeling guilty.
The house has been on the messier side for most of the winter.
Also it doesn't help that Jerome is lazy about this stuff too. It's really hard for me to accept that I can't force him to do his part and I'll have to wait for him to do some things on his own and do some things myself. But this is not about him. This is about me and MY want for a clean house...and for the house to stay that way.
Then, a week or so ago the awesome Brittany, posted about Unfucking her habitat with a link to Unfuck Your Habitat, the best motivation to fix my mess since ever. UFYH encourages shorter work times with breaks and to only do as much as you can at once...just keep what you've already done clean while you clean the rest of the house! Somehow, knowing other people are as messy as we are and fixing it helps, though it's still quite hard for me to not be all magically done in a day.
UFYH likes before and after pictures...which I can't bring myself to do because I am embarrassed. (Even though I'm at about the same level as most Unfuckers.)
I also try to think of some of the cleaning as exercise, which helps as well.
Since then I have completely cleaned my kitchen and kept it clean. I wash dishes every morning and make sure all the counters are wiped down and nice. I also clean the ceramic stovetop every day. After weekends are hardest. Jerome will make things and leave stuff to get stuck to the counters. I just try to think of it as an arm workout now instead of holding a grudge.
I have also completely cleaned the back yard and kept it clean. It only takes a few minutes to pick up after the dogs if you do it every day. (I had stopped because it was raining/snowing every day.) I do this wether it's raining or not. I try to do squats while doing this. Is not exactly right, but it still works a lot of those muscles.)
The bedroom is a slow work in progress. The whole bed is clean. I even made it this morning! Most of the bedroom is laundry stuff, so I'm chugging through that. Slowly but surely.
(I know, I know, 1 1/2 rooms and the yard isn't big progress for 1 1/2 weeks, but when you take weekends [that get less work done 'cause Jerome is around] going out some days with friends, and needing to stop sometimes for mental health, it's not so bad.)
I want to start on our bathroom, but I am having another anxiety mental weirdness day. I am still trying to go, though. At least doing laundry. Cleaned the kitchen and yard already. This is more than would have happened a few months ago.
Trying not to pile on too many new things at once. I don't want to overload. This is why I'm trying to wait to start exercising again.
There are other sides to my mental issues, but this is the one I'm working on currently.
Thanks for reading my looong post. I hope it helps someone else out there with similar problems. It helps me just to write about it.
