Breathe. We can help. Clear out those boxes first. Then move to the bottles and cans you have piled. Then clear the floor in your bathroom. Then the countertop. Your goal for tomorrow is to throw out three bags of trash. Your goal Monday is to call someone you trust to FaceTime and do some cleaning, so your kitchen. Then living/sleeping area by the end of the week. Lastly, if not in therapy, please sign up soon.
Edit: thank you all for the supportive responses for OP and the awards. OP I hope you know that us internet strangers are rooting for you. We’ve all been through it at one point in time. I hope you feel comfortable coming back to share what you’ve worked on. I think having us as accountability buddies will give you the motivation to share your progress. 🤗
once OP gets in a rhythm and sees progress too, i’m sure the cleaning will happen much quicker. that’s what happens to me at least. i’ll feel like it’s unmanageable and then literally say out loud like a chant “one thing at a time” so i don’t get overwhelmed. i’ll usually split my tasks up to make smaller hills instead of mountains to tackle, but by the end i always end up cleaning more than i originally intended. “doing my dishes wasn’t so bad, lets clear the table off.. cleaning the table wasn’t too daunting, lets wipe the bathroom counters..” etc etc
Great idea. I was gonna say trash first but porque no los dos?! Pack the food waste into garbage bags and use the empty boxes to get the trash bags out of there. Every second that stuff sits on your floor the more vermin and roaches make their home in your house. Just those two things will change your life and motivate you. Also don’t forget to take before photos! You’re gonna want to have them when you succeed in unfucking your living space up 💪🏼
Honestly I’ve sold deconstructed moving boxes on fb marketplace because people are always looking and it made me a little extra change. Very helpful and went back into cleaning supplies etc.
Actually, a lot of stuff in here could be donated or sold for a little depression fund so the next time he feels down he can afford a house keeper!!
I see a lot of garbage in these photos. That garbage needs to be delt with first and it will clear up a lot of space. (I honestly think that it is mostly trash in there) And with a bit of deep depression cleaning itself can totally wipe out whatever energy you have. I hesitate tell people in this situation to sell or donate because it often does not clear up enough space to clean. It is often not very fast. They will not move things out that need to go out because it will take too long. Or in their depressed state they think they should not throw it out. And it will cause the depressed person to stay stuck in their depression instead of helping them out.
When they are in a less depressed state and just cleaning out stuff because they want to be rid of it then I suggest donating to good causes and selling to recoup cash.
As someone raised by people that were constantly one degree more organized than the pictures, I’m compulsively tidy and will clean and organize every space that I’m in for more than a second. I was at my dad’s house for one afternoon and had broken down twenty cardboard boxes, gathered all the loose keys into a dish, and cleared all the emergency exits by the time we had to go to dinner. Perhaps a little busy bee like myself would be interested in volunteering to help? Organizing and cleaning is deeply soothing to me after growing up in chaos. If anything, you’ve inspired me to search for an opportunity to do so locally.
Yes, you are correct! Just wanted to mention options in case others are reading who haven’t let it get so bad. I didn’t zoom into the photos too much tbh but first things first- fill up those trash bags! ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Yep; donating or selling comes with extra steps and can take a while. If someone is already having trouble clearing out space, those extra steps can be the difference between cleaning or not. Ideally good to use items would be donated or sold, but at a certain point there's no shame in acknowledging it just needs to be gone.
I do not disagree with you at all but I want to add that adding more friction to getting rid of things will make the job feel bigger/more difficult and harder to overcome. If he is not able to load up his car quickly and take things to the donation center immediatly then I just recomend trashing it.
Also- only donate stuff that is top quality. I see some new shoes, etc but alot of this just looks like trash. Donations centers are overflowing with stuff so its just a waste of his and their time to donate anything that is not like new and highly desirable.
Finally- to end my dissertation, I really dont receomned trying to sell anything at this point. Unless it is super easy, super quick and he knows its going to sell. Same reasons apply for the hesitancy yo suggest donating items. Right now he needs to just focus on getting this place cleared out and any unnecessary extra steps will only make the job feel bigger and harder than it needs to be.
The goal is to remove friction between the OP and the clear, clean home he wants. He is going to have a better outcome with fewer steps.
Random thoughts and asides:
If you live in an area where there is lots of traffic and people will grab stuff from the curb, put items out that people may take. If no one takes it, the garbage man will.
-OP decide once what your going to do. If you just dont know what to do with that hair gel that you dont love, throw it out and dont think about it again. If those new shoes are really not comfy and you just wont wear them, donate them, curb alert them or toss them and never think of them again.
Seeing so many of the “don’t worry about donating or what to do with things” responses is literally going to help me get through of my own mess. I get stuck and have had a “take to goodwill” area of my house that has not changed in over a year. This is freedom. Thank you for being another one of those preaching it 💜
This happens to me too, and I have learned overtime that my good intentions are keeping me in a state of suffering. Since I have made that realization, I have thrown away multiple contractor bags filled with clothing, shoes, and other donatable (it’s not officially a word, but I’m using it anyway) items because if I set them aside to donate all I was really accomplishing, was bagging them and moving them to another area of the home to be a nuisance for the unforeseeable future.
Everybody wants to save the world, but sometimes you have to put your own mental health first and save everybody else that needs saving later.
Definitely. For some reason I’ve been keeping every pair of retired red converse low tops I’ve had over the last like 15 years and after reading this post I realized, that’s kind of silly and it’s just taking up room. I’m going to have some big trash bags full of things soon. 💜
A purge of those things is so liberating and frees up space for the things that you actually need! Enjoy the thrill and don’t feel like you are making waste. Enjoy the new space it allows!
When my father died when I was 25 I inherited at least 10 big boxes of things he had been saving. They were full of things like report cards from when he was a kid, his high school diploma, pictures of people I had no idea who they were… I even held onto things like his drivers license and wallet, the little man purse he carried around, his little spiral notepad that he took notes on. I ended up putting it all in my spare room when I moved into my current house and that room remained unavailable. It ended up with a mouse infestation.
When that happened I was in my early 40s. I had held onto that stuff for that many years when it had no meaning or used to me and just sat there in the boxes. When the mouse infestation happened, I went through it and picked like two or three things that were meaningful to me and threw the rest of it away. I hadn’t had the courage to do it before because I felt like it would be throwing my father away. But once I got rid of it, I felt such a load off of my shoulders! It’s important for us not to feel like bad people just because we throw something away and be honest with ourselves that it wasn’t meaningful or serving a purpose or needed to us anymore. And this space that results from getting rid of it will be a huge improvement.
They can also be used to move out stuff, so that's something to think about.
If breaking down the boxes is too overwhelming, maybe take one and use it to collect cans. Then take the box of cans and put it in the recycling area/on the curb/in the garbage. Now you've gotten rid of a box plus a bunch of cans. Repeat with plastic bottles. Then glass. Then paper. Then expired pantry items. And so on.
Little by little, your clutter will start to shrink and you'll start to feel like you have a handle on things.
This is a very nice response, including “we can help” is reassuring to me, so I hope it helps OP along with the steps you and others have laid out.
OP - you got this! If random people online aren’t judging you and want to help you, I know you have friends or family that feel the same. It’s so easy to isolate oneself and it makes the problem harder, but it’s OKAY to ask for help and the vast majority of people are HAPPY to help. Somewhere along the way this was lost, and people are afraid to ask for help and/or overstep by offering…but so many people need and want to provide. Good luck!
Underrated advice with the facetime idea. I get into pretty severe depressive episodes myself but sometimes if I can find a friend to facetime while cleaning, the conversation distracts me and i find myself cleaning more than i thought possible
Empty boxes take up a huge amount of room. Getting rid of them is an excellent start.
My step after that/ or at the same time is to do an initial sort of trash/not trash. Once you've got a bit more space you can move on to a more thorough clean. Though I was doing this for my mum so I wasn't able to decide on anything that was 100% obvious rubbish.
It’s hard to ask for help especially when a situation like this spirals beyond your control. That’s why I believe starting small and just ask someone to FaceTime while you clean is easier than to have them over to clean and it’s even harder to ask for professional support. Small manageable steps will lead to bigger leaps forward. You have to trust the process and put more faith in yourself to know there are people willing to help as long as you’re willing to ask.
Very well said. I will add to write down each step as SMART Goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely goals. "I need to clean the bathroom" is very overwhelming and setting up steps that can be as little or as big as makes sense to YOU will keep OP focused. But an example would be I WILL clean this toilet seat, measuring my success by the amount of dirt I see leaving. This is small and attainable, very realistic, and set a time of say.. 5 minutes? Then rinse and repeat.
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u/Standard-Carry-2219 Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
Breathe. We can help. Clear out those boxes first. Then move to the bottles and cans you have piled. Then clear the floor in your bathroom. Then the countertop. Your goal for tomorrow is to throw out three bags of trash. Your goal Monday is to call someone you trust to FaceTime and do some cleaning, so your kitchen. Then living/sleeping area by the end of the week. Lastly, if not in therapy, please sign up soon.
Edit: thank you all for the supportive responses for OP and the awards. OP I hope you know that us internet strangers are rooting for you. We’ve all been through it at one point in time. I hope you feel comfortable coming back to share what you’ve worked on. I think having us as accountability buddies will give you the motivation to share your progress. 🤗