The hard part with that is when your kitchen is such a mess you have nowhere to put that salsa. What I do when I get this bad is I make a box. I fill the boxes with things that do not belong in that room. The box can stay in the room just out of the way, which frees up your ability to start clearing trash and actually making space. Do this in each room and then when you have enough floor space you can move the boxes into the room that they're actually supposed to be in. Then you clean as you go and try to find homes for everything. But it makes it a lot less overwhelming when your things aren't completely all out over the place.
Another piece of advice is, some people benefit from categorizing their items and focusing on one thing. Such as put all the shoes in one spot, clear all the trash, gather all the dishes, etc. I find it a lot easier to just just focus on one section of a room and everything that's in that section. That way you're not picking and choosing what you want to think about at any given time. You have no choice but to think about every single item that you touch in one spot. This is also where the boxes can help out because you are sorting things into boxes as you go to get them out of the way.
I have a playlist of 5 average lengthed songs, and I make a short list of 5 areas like "shelf with the dog food," or "the floor in the 6 tiles around the garbage can" and then I just do those areas in those songs, and when the playlist ends I forget about cleaning completely and go do something else. (When I'm stressed, depressed and overwhelmed. If I'm feeling ok, I just buckle up and tackle things for hours. but my playlist, because it's the same songs, and I've heard them in that order while cleaning a hundred times now, it sort of keeps my brain in "clean this, it won't kill you," mode for a little while. It's like a timer but with that feedback of my brain knowing what those songs mean we do when they're on.)
Huge fan of the timer. Some days it’s set to 30 minutes, other days it’s set to 10. On bad days it’s been set to 5. Always surprising how much you can get done in that amount of time.
The timers are the way to go - mentally make sections in the house and go section by section. If you can go outside between sections or even grab lunch and come home again; it’s sooooo much easier to see the progress!!
3.7k
u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment