Why Does Cleaning Feel So Impossible?
Welcome to 2021! For those of you who are planning on tackling your homes this year, I’ve got some important mindset tips for you. Because we can clean and organize all we want, but if we don’t change our mindset, it isn’t going to stick! Let’s start things off with this very real picture of my living room from the other week. After I rolled my eyes like the 16 year old I am, I made my kid help me clean it up, but seriously— who can relate to this sight? 😅
The “I rolled my eyes and then immediately cleaned it up” thing wasn’t something I was born with either, by the way. That little habit was the product of MINDSET change. Change your mindset first, then your physical space. It’s the only way to create lasting habits.
So now that we know we’re not broken, our mindset just needs a tune up, let’s get right down to it: Cleaning tasks don’t actually take that long, so why do they feel impossible? Why are we spending our days dreading the fairly simple tasks that help us keep our homes up and running?
Even though the tasks themselves only take around an hour to complete each day, it’s so easy to let them pile up until they feel all but impossible. Then at that point it feels like it’s almost not even worth it! The time and effort we put in gets undone almost immediately whether by family members or ourselves just living and being humans. I myself often feel a sense of ugh-iness when thinking about doing my daily cleaning tasks. Lately I’ve been letting things slip through my fingers which only makes me feel even more overwhelmed and stressed. I know this from, like, years of experience, yet here I am continuing to do it anyway. Oh to be human!
I think there might be a couple reasons for this debilitating overwhelm:
Clutter blocks - if you’re anything like me, the clutter around you is paralyzing. Even though we know intellectually that once we get to it we’ll feel better, somehow we just can’t seem to make it happen. The Anxiety. Clutter takes up SO much mental space! It’s probably one of the worst things for my mental health. I often wish I wasn’t so sensitive to it, but I’m learning I need to accept the way that I am, Clutter Stress Blocks and all. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to just shrug and say, “oh well, I’m doomed.” I have to train my brain to form a new habit. If I can get everything off the floor (or at least most things) then it feels like I have regained some sanity. Next I like to focus on one small manageable area (like a. countertop or dresser) and declutter it. (Decluttering can be throwing away trash, putting things back where they belong, or literally decluttering items to toss/donate.) Either this is enough momentum to get my to keep going, or I feel at least better enough to be able to truly rest and relax in my space. Remember, it’s not about having a perfect home all of the time or even some of the time, but to create a home that you feel comfortable enough to can truly rest in.
The mess is never ending, so what’s the point?We feel like, “It’s going to be undone the second I do it, so why bother?!” Yeah. This one is a biiiig one. There have been so many freaking weeks where I’ve mopped the floor and the SAME DAY my daughter or myself spill something on it and completely undo the cleanliness of it. IT’S SO FRUSTRATING. But I have both cleaned my floor and not cleaned my floor enough to know that on the weeks when the floors are done, I just feel better. I can’t explain it. I’m also more inclined to clean an already clean(ish) floor which sounds marginally insane. Maybe I’m a neat freak in a messy person’s body. Whatever it is, it’s preventing me from Doing The Thing and keeping me stuck in this stressed out, negative mindset. That sure sounds a lot like madness to me.
We operate with an all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to cleaning. This one can also be called perfectionism. Maybe we know that even though we’re working hard to clean the bathrooms today, the kitchen is still going to be a huge nasty mess when we walk back out there no matter what. So why should we take the time and put in the effort when other things are just going to be messy anyways? The house will never be fully clean, so why even bother? This one is tough to deprogram. The all or nothing mindset is no joke! This way of thinking can be so detrimental because it tells us to let things pile up until we can ‘do it all’ because we’re desperate for perfection. I call this Procrasti-perfection. And of course, our procrasti-perfection just stresses us out even more! Sometimes I swear our brains do the worst things for us. It is unbelievably hard to accept the fact that our homes will never be “clean”. What we see in Hollywood, magazines, and social media is not an accurate depiction of what a house looks like in real life. Sure, that instagram influencer might have a super clean and organized house at that moment when the picture was taken, but there is no way it looks like that all the time or even most of the time unless they don’t actually live there. Or unless they have a full time 24/7 house cleaner who literally never.stops.cleaning. But the point of this isn’t to hate on social media peeps for posting pretty pictures— there’s nothing wrong with doing that and there’s nothing wrong with wanting a social media feed full of inspiring, aesthetic pictures. I myself enjoy posting pretty pictures and following people who do the same! The problem is our mindset. If we’re stuck in the comparison trap, instead of realizing it’s a false idol our insecurities will tell us that we are the problem- that we’re the only ones whose houses are messy (LOL NOPE). Keeping a home clean is something we ALL have to struggle with. I haven’t met a person alive who doesn’t have a hard time keeping a house clean. Even “highly clean and organized” people don’t always like to clean. Everyone’s home is messy sometimes! It’s a part of being human.
Whenever my home is truly a disaster (which believe me happens more often than I’d care to let on), it makes me feel like panicking. I just want to walk straight out the door and start over somewhere new. When I walk into a messy kitchen in the morning or feel overwhelmed because all I see when I look around my house is the mess, I know through experience that I’m about to enter a shame spiral. It’s important to STOP these negative thought patterns in their tracks before they can sink their claws in!
So… knowing this, why can’t I seem to keep my house clean when I know it’s crucial for my sanity? It’s because I’m human. Whomp whomp. I think what’s more important here than “bucking up” and forcing ourselves to turn into mega cleaning machines, is to accept that there are some things that will always be left undone. We should do our best in all things, but the meaning of this will change every single day and that’s ok. Let’s allow ourselves to be human and to be ok with it.