When it comes to housework and any regular cleaning or routine chores, I am abysmal at the task.
My house is typically not a mess, I do a lot of tidying, but cleaning and especially deep cleaning is not anywhere near easy for me.
That being said, even the tidying and surface level cleaning can feel like an absolute chore that I don’t want to do at any given moment, and I know that the longer I put off keeping on top of any housework, the more stress I’m going to feel over it not being done, and the state of the house being in disarray.
It’s best for me, with what limited attention span I have, to do as much as I can when I feel like I’m game to do it, and then have little breaks.
That being said, I hate to-do lists. The idea of a to-do list, especially for what I call “repeatables” – or tasks that I have to do regularly – gives me hives because to do lists already give me hives thanks to my failure to keep up with them (and even remember what’s on them, if I’m honest).
Seeing a to-do list brings me an epic amount of anxiety. So I’ve worked around this in the past by making myself a Habit Tracker (which I’ll get into in another article in case this might help someone) and most recently by giving myself permission to do house chores in a novel way – with literally no limits on what I can do.
Essentially, my new technique is as follows:
I give myself a long stretch of time, let’s say 2 hours, but I don’t give myself any sort of time limit or force myself to keep going, to just do any sort of housework.
I don’t force myself to do any one thing, or even any category of thing.
I can spend the time cleaning up the garden, doing the dishes, vacuuming. The only rule is, I stop when I need a break, but won’t let myself sit for too long, just long enough to mentally be in a better space, then I keep at it, doing whatever my eye sees that my impulsivity drives me to want to do.
See my issue is not typically staying in motion. That’s fairly easy for me to do. It’s starting a task. That’s way worse for me than maintaining the momentum.
I’m guessing this is the vast majority of those with ADHD, if not all of us. I once saw someone on Reddit describe “feeling like you are driven by a motor” as – if I’m stopped, it is super hard for me to start, and if I’m on a roll, hyper-focused, it’s super hard for me to stop.
I feel like this is a flawless interpretation of that oh-so-commonly-rattled-off-description of a trait of ADHD. Practically poetry in how accurate it is, so I’m working with this concept hand in hand in my new housework technique.
When I look at a mess, the mess is yelling at me at the top of it’s lungs. I feel a compulsion to act, do something about it. And telling my brain, “No, continue that other thing you were working on,” is literal work for me. I have to tell my brain to ignore this new impulse and switch gears back to the old task.
That’s a lot of work, so during this 2-hour cleaning spree, I don’t listen to my brain. Actually, I supress it and don’t even allow it to switch on as much as possible. Instead, I let my impulses take the lead, going from one task to another, letting the environmental triggers guide my behaviour.
This allows me to feel.. free. Genuinely. I don’t have to force myself to “clean logically.” I don’t have to feel like I’m doing any sort of work, while I’m doing work. Because to me, it’s more work to force myself to stay on task than it is to actually do the things that need doing.
Okay so that’s the rule – just let your impulses guilde you, walk around your house and/or garden and basically let things trigger you into action and follow your whims. If you get interrupted by a new task, let that interruption continue, or not, does not matter – do what you feel like doing.
Wear a watch while doing this. That way you can keep track of how much time you have left before you’re done. Or don’t have a watch and let yourself keep at it aimlessly for as long as you can. If you’re feeling like you’re done, have a sit for a minute and just wait. Likely you’ll see something that will trigger you into action again, once you’ve rested up a bit.
Does this lead to a cleaner house? Yes. Not deep clean levels, but your house will likely be tidier and you will not feel like everything is in shambolic disarray.
For me, it’s worked wonders insofar as getting things done that would typically make me stress the hell out. I’ve seen areas of my garden I’ve been putting off sprucing up for months because I didn’t want to deal with the mess, because I got the impulse when I looked at the problem and went “well I could do that for a second,” and then my momentum kicked in, I followed its lead, and after taking many short breaks where I promised myself I could stop if I wanted to, I actually ended up getting everything done in one go.
Give yourself freedom. Stop restricting yourself, trying to reel yourself in. Trying to clean and tidy logically. Stop trying to follow the guides by OCPD/perfectionist people who are optimizing. Your brain is going to resist, and you breaking through that resistance is the hardest part of the productivity puzzle.
Instead, let your brain do what it does – be impuslive. Clean impuslively. Don’t get things done with a list that tries to force you to do things “logically.” Let the trigger – the actual mess that yells at you to clean it up – drive you to do “just that one thing” and don’t constrict yourself.
Will you get everything that needs to be done finished? No. But will your house be so much cleaner and tidier anyway? Yes.
It’s like when you spend your whole day productive as all hell knocking off tasks left, right, and center because you have an assignment to finish for the next day, so you’re productively procrastinating on the one thing you have to do.
Don’t force yourself to do things, just gently tell yourself to look around at the house and what needs to be done, giving yourself the freedom to do anything, and you may find yourself in the same situation as me – with a cleaner, tidier space, that’s taken less mental effort from you to keep up with, and with more accomplished than any to-do list forcing could have made you do.
Works for me! Try it.
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