30 Aug The Ultimate Cleaning Schedule for Depression
*disclaimer: this post may contain affiliate links and mental health triggers… and it will definitely contain curse words, hard truths, hope, inspiration, and love
IDK about you, but when I’m in the thick of depression (or TBH kinda just IRL all the time bc I guess that’s who I am as a person), the last thing I wanna do is clean, which is how my Ultimate Cleaning Schedule was born. Contrary to what your depressed brain is telling you… when you’re trying to be somewhat of a grown up and do/enjoy life, keeping a clean home space is something we need to jump on board with. say-lah-vee.
So like, I have this love-hate relationship with cleaning. It feels really nice to live in a clean home, but literally no fiber of my being actually wants to clean and I’m 10000% way too poor to hire some help. So, guess who’s gotta put their big girl pants on and clean? This girl (and you!).
Table of Contents
ToggleWhy Even Have a Cleaning Schedule?
When we’re depressed, it’s SO easy to let the little and/or important things, like cleaning, fall to the wayside. I mean, I get it. Who the fuck wants to do dumb things like wash dishes and pick up socks when it literally does not matter to you if you don’t leave your bed until the end of never? I certainly don’t.
The thing is, the status of our home environment contributes to the state of our mental health, so how we care for and maintain our homes directly impacts how we feel. And like, people who aren’t struggling with their mental health typically don’t wanna clean, so how the fuck are we supposed to do it when our brains are essentially trying to sabotage us all. the. time.?
Welp, for me… it was a cleaning schedule that changed the game and actually removed the dust that’s been collecting along the baseboards (and my life) for 4+ years. Exciting stuff, right?
And so, you might be asking yourself how exactly a lack of cleaning impacts your mental health and how exactly a cleaning schedule can help, right?
(if you weren’t before, betcha are now!)
Cleaning when you aren’t at your peak mentally is this incredibly frustrating chicken-and-egg situation. Cleaning helps your mental health, but your mental health doesn’t wanna clean. Cool. say-lah-vee.
When I learned the way my messy home environment was keeping me stuck, it made me realize that if I was ever going to pull myself out of the mental health quicksand I seem to have found myself in, I really really needed to find a way to manage and maintain the cleanliness of my home, even when I was feeling the ickiest of ickies.
How a Lack of Cleaning Impacts your Mental Health
When your home is feeling as gross as your hair after spending 6 days in a row binging New Girl in bed, it bleeds into A LOT of different aspects of your life and impacts your mental health. The clutter and mess of a sink full of dirty dishes and laundry piling up directly increases your anxiety and sense of hopelessness. It literally makes you feel like you’re drowning in your home. And like, that’s not very inspiring or safe.
And when your home is super messy, it makes it SO hard to find the things you need, like clean undies #justsaying, and live a ~somewhat~ efficient life. This leads to increased frustrations, tension, and confusion (both in your home and in your brain). Furthermore, dust covered surfaces, random big balls of your hair floating across the floor like tumble weeds in Kansas, and bed sheets that smell like an animal might have died in there 3 years ago really doesn’t motivate you to do life. Shocker.
Positive Impacts of a Clean Home Space and Using a Cleaning Schedule
You know how not cleaning brings you down? Welp, cleaning lifts you up. Who-woulda-thunk-it? Maintaining a clean space has super positive impacts on your mental health, and using a cleaning schedule is a really great way to hold yourself accountable and keep you on track.
When we have a clean space, we find a sense of control because we always usually know where our things are which is pretty neat. When we find a sense of control in our physical space, we naturally stop feeling the need to control every single aspect of our outer worlds, which (you guessed it…) leads to decreased anxiety, frustration, tension, irritability, hopelessness, and all of the other gross stuff that comes with depression and struggling with our mental health.
Maintaining a clean space naturally gives us a sense of accomplishment, both because we’ve accomplished something (no duh), but also because when we come home, we automatically feel good and proud about the hard work and persistence we’ve put towards creating a well loved space. This accomplishment and clean space increases our moods and clears space in our minds.
Additionally, having a cleaning schedule creates stability and structure that is so important in our lives, especially when working through mental health.
Tips for Building and Sticking to a Cleaning Schedule
Okay, so these next two sentences are going to be the most annoying ones of the entire post, #sorrynotsorry. There is no magic spell that is going to make building, using, and sticking to a cleaning schedule EASY, but EDUCATION and TOOLS will at least soften the blow a bit. I’ve shown up for you with the education and tools, now you need to show up for yourself with a commitment to you and your home.
If there’s one thing you do for yourself and your mental health today, download my Cleaning Schedule Template at the bottom of this post. I am going to give you my personal cleaning schedule as an example to help get you started as well as a blank template for you to work through based on what feels best for your own needs.
Building your Cleaning Schedule
When you start building out your cleaning schedule, try to focus on keeping tasks small. The whole point of this is to keep things bite sized and manageable so they don’t spiral out of control. As you get started, try thinking about your typical week and how much time you have to tackle tasks each day. Do you get home later some days than others? Maybe schedule shorter/easier/mindless tasks for those days.
You should also have a few daily (or maybe at least every other day) non-negotiables. For example, you should not only make your bed or do the dishes on Monday’s and then not maintain either of them for the rest of the week. What little tasks add up easily in your life and in turn, snowball and create chaos and clutter? Make those your non-negotiables.
Sticking to your Cleaning Schedule
Raise your hand if you like to #treatyoself
#samegirlsame
I’ve found the best way for me to keep up with my cleaning schedule is by rewarding myself. Which is obvs super hard when you’re in the thick of being super depressed because you obvs don’t care about shit to use as a reward. So once again, you gotta be the one to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and dig deep here. How can you reward yourself when you’re too depressed to care about shit? Maybe it’s a backwards reward?
If you skip your cleaning task for the day, you don’t get TV time and have to read a book instead.
If you skip your cleaning task for the day, you have to eat your least favorite vegetable.
You’re picking up what I’m putting down, right?
Another thing you can do to help stick to your cleaning schedule is set recurring reminders on your phone. I’m not gonna lie to you, I have a cleaning reminder that goes off in the morning and in the afternoon because that’s just who I am as a person. Self-awareness is a beautiful thing. I don’t mark either of them as complete until I’ve actually gotten my tasks done, which means if I end up skipping that day, the reminder is still lingering tomorrow.
Which is also why I suggested bite sized tasks. Life is gonna get in the way and you’re not gonna be able to keep up with your schedule everyday, #justbeinghonest. If tasks are too big, you are going to become overwhelmed and feel out of control, maybe even like a failure… and if you’re anything like me, that’s obviously a great reason to sit in the dark and cry and never ever clean anything ever again for the rest of your life. So like, let’s not do that.
And last but not least…
My last little tidbit for sticking to your cleaning schedule is to find some kind of system to make sure you don’t run out of cleaning supplies. Idk if you read my 5 Ways Fear Impacts Mental Health post, but the grocery store isn’t my jam so if I run out of supplies, I might not be cleaning until next month.
I think a really important way to create and stick to new habits is to be really honest with yourself. Ask yourself what will get in your way of doing what you need to do, and come up with means of deterring those obstacles so you can stay on track and productive.
Alright, are you ready to clean up your home (and your life) using my Ultimate Cleaning Schedule?!
Not sure where to go next? Read one of these below!
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Feeling Stuck? Try These 6 Tips
29 August, 2022 Advice Depression Mental Health Motivation 13 Comments
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Veronica
Posted at 08:30h, 10 OctoberGreat ideas 💡 thank you for sharing.
saylahvee
Posted at 10:33h, 06 Novemberthanks so much for reading! 🙂
Belle
Posted at 10:09h, 10 OctoberLOVE this! Will definitely be implementing these tips
saylahvee
Posted at 10:33h, 06 Novemberthanks so much! I hope they help 🙂
Kelly
Posted at 11:03h, 10 OctoberGreat ideas!!!
saylahvee
Posted at 10:31h, 06 Novemberthank you for reading 🙂
Abby
Posted at 12:06h, 10 OctoberI love this! It’s such an important topic for anyone who battles depression but still has a home to run.
saylahvee
Posted at 10:31h, 06 Novemberthanks so much for reading 🙂
Eva Petruzziello
Posted at 12:50h, 10 OctoberI find myself cleaning a lot. I think it allows for a sense of control!
saylahvee
Posted at 10:31h, 06 NovemberI feel that about the control with cleaning. I’m actually working on a post about that this week!
Andrea
Posted at 21:15h, 11 OctoberThis is awesome. Thanks for sharing this!
saylahvee
Posted at 10:29h, 06 Novemberof course, thanks so much for reading!
Danielle
Posted at 08:29h, 12 OctoberI love your look at cleaning…it seriously matches mine!! I do enjoy a clean space but oh so hate to get it that way!!!
saylahvee
Posted at 10:29h, 06 Novemberhaha glad I’m not the only one!
Diomayra
Posted at 19:44h, 12 OctoberAmazing post!!! Enjoy reading you post as you didn’t sugar coat anything. Cleaning is not fun but we ought to do it.
saylahvee
Posted at 10:28h, 06 NovemberThanks so much for reading 🙂
Tianna
Posted at 18:34h, 15 OctoberI find a cleaning schedule is essential for me, i find designating a room to clean a day and list the things that need to be done in that room. Find it so much better then being overwhelmed at having to clean the whole house.
saylahvee
Posted at 10:26h, 06 NovemberI love the ideas of cleaning room by room! Definitely makes things feel a bit more manageable!