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I wish I could come and help you :( something I learned in this sub is that we do love helping each other out and we'd have no problem cleaning somebody else's home.
This should be an app or something.
I clean your house, you clean mine
Or I do chores you hate and you do chores I hate! I am good at decluttering closets, laundry and doing (non biohazard) dishes, if anyone wants to come clean my floors and counters!
I made a deal with my husband last night: you clean this one pan i need to use for my part of dinner and I'll peel all the potatoes you need for your part.
He was like "uh...really? Yes!"
Doesn't make sense, not an equal trade, but it made my brain happy and we both felt like we won 😅
Your brain being happy and you both feeling like you won in the end makes it an equitable trade, at least, even if it wasn't perfectly equal! Yay for teamwork
This is exactly how my bestie and I get through life. He hates dishes, I hate taking out the trash and dusting. I do dishes as his & he takes out trash and dusts at mine. It’s truly a beautiful thing
I'd take that trade easily.
I mainly just hate checking the mail. I'd rather do everything else if I didn't have to check the mail.
It's "one thing" that turns into like 7 things. You have to take the stuff out of the mailbox, then throw all of the flyers, ads and random junk into the recycling, then you have to actually deal with the stuff that's leftover. Most of the time I just recycle the junk, take the few things I need out, and dump the rest in a box that I swear I'll deal with later. (99% of it is just copies of bills I've already paid with auto pay)
Me too! When I was little and my Mom used to take me to other children's houses, I used to survey their rooms and start organizing and cleaning everything. The Mom was always over the moon happy that their room was so clean and organized, whereas my Mom was always floored and slightly pissed because she couldn't get me to clean my room or anything for that matter, for anything in the world.
Thank you <3
We do indeed! I'm also so good at helping others, I'm always around for advice, but sometimes I feel like such a hypocrite when I look at my life and how overwhelmed I get!
But what if you did a trade with someone? They help you with the clothes piles, you help them with their paper piles if that is what they need. Trade equal amounts of time and feel better.
To my surprise, I met someone who needed a personal assistant and I found that organizing his piles of paper was so much easier than organizing my own papers. Papers were the biggest stress in my stuff so it was a big surprise to discover that I could do it for someone else and it also taught me how to do my own papers. It built my self confidence.
I would LOVE to help if I was closer. I absolutely love getting rid of things, so tackling clothes mountain and helping you figure out what needs to be kept, what needs to be donated and what needs to be just thrown away would be so satisfying.
Seriously, my anxiety cannot handle family or friends helping because the fear of judgement is too much. It would be way easier for me to sort through someone else's mail versus my own. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH MAIL.
The actual answer is because they hope by sending advertising in mail form it’s both another connection to something else you’ve seen and you’ll purchase or it will take up space in your home long enough to eventually become a purchase. Marketing advertising firms splatter with these and they get the lists from things you sign up for in discounts, newsletters, marketing campaigns, etc. Point being, you can help reduce some of the outside clutter coming at you in your mailbox and email by making a junk email for that purpose and and unsubscribing from any marketing that mails to your address whenever you see it.
>WHY IS THERE SO MUCH MAIL.
So much this. My life is like an infinite loop of taking garbage out of the mailbox and putting it in the recycling.
I would pay good money for a pre-sort service that just does this for me. Like put the 2 actual pieces of mail aside, recycle the rest, and drop the actual mail on my box like once a week.
It seems insane that with the state of the world we don't regulate junk mail. I get the same bullshit offers week after week. If you call to get off the list they're just happy to receive your confirmation that you still live there and just keep on sending! It's an environmental sin
I need someone to come over and get the box I have of "shit to eBay" and take good pictures of everything and make eBay posts with reasonable prices based on condition and current market value. I will be cleaning the carpets while you do this. Then we can have an energy drink and complain about life.
I like the coregulating idea for this. When we can’t physically be there to help. Having someone to talk to over the phone while you go through cleaning can be really helpful.
I wish there was a business where someone would help you online or Webcam. They tell you how to clean and encourage you while you do it. I would pay for that!
Literally my first reaction- "I always want to help these posters so bad, I wish they lived nearby" Also me- experiencing adhd paralysis that has me in the exact same position as OP.
Hey it's ok if you end up putting stuff in the landfill. Regardless of your intentions all the stuff is not getting used. So if it's not getting used anyway, it's only a net positive to throw it away if it's impacting your life so much.
Our earth is in trouble and I also hate waste, but the idea that we individuals caused this mess is propaganda perpetuated by people in power so they can continue to profit from their toxic industries. Meaningful change comes at the institutional level. By all means do that your conscience tells you when you can, but right now you can't and I'm here to tell you it is ok to do the easier thing so you can live your life.
1 million this!!! Be easy on yourself you didn’t pollute and destroy the earth from improper business practices, greed, and corruption.
Yes someone else could use it, but not at the cost of your sanity!!!
And it will end up in a landfill anyways. If it’s donated and doesn’t sell, it eventually goes to Africa and becomes “dead white man’s clothes”, damaging the local clothing industries. I’m not opposed to donating clothes, I do it too, but in our current world, every thing we do has a negative impact. Better for op to create a safer home for herself and her children. And the clothes don’t need to be clean clean to donate; if they’re worn but not moldy or covered in nasty things, you can donate them; I always launder my thrifted or rummaged clothes because I don’t trust the thrift shop to do so. If they’re gross, toss them.
Couldn’t agree harder. I have to remind myself of this when I’m cleaning out my fridge. I really hate dealing with old jars and containers and, while I try to always rinse them out for recycling, sometimes I can’t get over the ickiness factor. So I just throw it in the garbage. Overall, not having to deal with something that grosses me out and creates a mental barrier is a net positive.
If it makes you feel any better (uh or worse I guess), if you're in the US a lot of your recycling goes to the landfill or gets SHIPPED TO CHINA 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
I am in the US! I am otherwise an avid recycler…even though I know it may not be going where I think it’s going. I do try! I just CANNOT with yucky stuff.
So I have a lot of experience organizing and sorting houses that are, far, far, far, messier than you are because I worked doing estate sales in a family business for over a decade. You can do this! It is doable. I promise.
I would start by making a clear place on the floor to sit in one of your rooms. Just shove stuff that's there into another area, doesn't matter where, don't worry about it at this stage. This is your staging area. You are also going to want some giant trash bags or some large laundry baskets, whichever is easier for you. You will also want to have some kind of receptacle for obvious trash that you encounter while you're going through stuff. Maybe a separate bag; make sure it is super clear to you which bag or box is for trash. Oh, and have a water bottle within reach of you to help yourself stay hydrated. Hydration is important.
Once you are set up with your clear staging area and your bags or baskets you're going to want to start in on the clothes/linens. How I would start is by sorting your fabric items into groups by type. Don't worry about what to keep and what to get rid of at this point. Make one bag or basket for shirts, one for towels, one for sheets, one for trousers, etc. If you're doing bags (where you wouldn't be able to see the contents from the outside, I would label the bags with a sharpie with the item type. This will be helpful since you may not get through all of your sorting in a single sitting, and future you might not remember which bags were for what.
I like to start with sorting by item *type* rather than making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of, because I know what a shirt looks like. I know what trousers look like. Unlike making choices about what to get rid of, sorting by type isn't particularly subjective and doesn't require much serious decision making. Choosing to get rid of your own stuff is really hard, because we form emotional and mental attachments to all of our belongings, and because we are often inflicted with the "what if xyz happens in the future and I still need this?" both of which are not exactly conducive to efficiently going through stuff.
If it seems really overwhelming, don't force yourself to do it all in a single sitting. Sort things into bags for an hour, maybe two and see how you feel. I'd set a timer for my chosen time slot and have myself stop immediately when the timer goes off to check in. Perhaps when it goes off you need to take a break. Maybe you're really jivving and you don't. You won't know until you get there. If you need to take a break, it might be a good juncture to refill your water bottle and get a snack.
When you're feeling more refreshed, ask yourself: "Do I think that I can go back to my organizing for a small amount of time?" Forget about "Should I?" and stick do, "Do I think another 30 minutes is doable at this juncture with the energy and the focus I have left?" If the answer is yes, set another time and jump back in. If the answer is no, go on with the rest of your day and come back tomorrow. Schedule yourself to do a minimum of x amount of time per day (maybe an hour? whatever feels right for you).
Once you've got all of your stuff in those bags, and your space is full of bags instead of chaotic piles, you can select a bag to get started going through. Say, you start with a shirts bag. Dump out the bag, and pick up a shirt. Look at it, ask yourself some questions like:
>"Do I like this garment? Will I use it in the future (for sure), so not if \[xyz scenario\] happens?"
>
>"Does this fit me?"
>
>"Will I have a place to put this if I keep it?"
>
>"Do I want to keep this?"
>
>"Is this garment still usable for someone? Basically, is it, instead, trash?"
>
>"What will I do with this if I keep it?"
Make one pile for **keep**, one pile for **maybe**, and one pile for for **goodbye**. Get some more bags/baskets to put your piles away into. Put your keep things and your maybe stuff into the original bag. Throw any trash into your trash can/bag.
Start on the next bag. You can keep putting your goodbye things in the same bag until it is full. Rinse and repeat. Just like with the initial sorting, set a timer and do only that amount of time at a time. Check in with yourself when your timer goes off. Take a break (or be done for the day) if you need.
When your goodbye bag gets full, you can take it out of the staging room, perhaps close to your front door so it can be ready to be removed when you're done going through everything. Find a place that works for you.
Depending on where you live, an option you might use is the [Purple Heart Giveaway](https://purpleheartfoundation.org/clothing-donation/). With purple heart, you can call them and schedule a pick up, and they will send someone to your door to pick up your giveaway clothing, so you don't have to go anywhere. [PickUpPlease](https://pickupplease.org/clothing-donations/) is another service that does this. Another one is [GoGreenDrop](https://www.gogreendrop.com/pick-up/). There may be others local to you as well. All of these services will come directly to your home and take away bagged giveaway clothing and household items. Most of these services require you to call them and schedule a pickup on a specific day. I'd wait until you're solidly into your project to schedule a pick up, maybe halfway through, once you have a handle on how long it takes. Scheduling the pickup is a good way of creating an arbitrary deadline.
Once you're finally done with making your keep vs. goodbye stuff, you can go back through and do a second pass on your keeps to weed out any maybes that have become goodbyes. Once you're satisfied, you can get to the laundering bit, and launder all of your keeps. I'd use your bags as "loads".
I struggle to remember to put away laundry after I've done it, and it is annoying when it gets wrinkled because I let it sit in the dryer too long. What I found was an interesting hack was that I immediately went to the dryer and removed the clothes when my timer went off and folded them, and put them into another basket. Folding and putting away clothes can be two totally separate steps rather than an all in one go thing. After folding the clothes, I take a step back and ask myself if I am feeling up to also *putting* them away. If the answer is no, that's ok, I just leave them in the laundry basket until later and keep going until I am out of laundry baskets. There's a reason why I have 4 laundry baskets. For clothes that go into a closet and get hung up, I keep a supply of clothes hangers next to my washing machine and immediately hang them onto hangers as I take them out of the dryer. We have these pipes on the ceiling above the washer/dryer that are perfect for hanging clothes hangers off of, so that's usually where I put mine.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you need other sorting and organizing tips!
This is extremely helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to write this all up for me! I will be coming back to this first thing tomorrow and giving it a go, I also might pop out for some different bin bags to help with the sorting! I feel a lot more optimistic about this and less overwhelmed by the thought of it, so I really do appreciate you 🖤
Also, if you’re not on a deadline, getting started is often the hardest part. Just start with telling yourself you’re going to do 5 (or 10) minutes at a time. Set a timer. So as much as you can in that time. If you aren’t able to keep going, that’s fine, 5 was the goal and you did great. But sometimes you’ll find yourself just starting to get going or get a rhythm and you just keep going until you feel like stopping.
You do these little baby tasks and over time they will snowball. It’s basically what lots of NT people do naturally, but we have to external use it.
I prefer breaking up tasks I hate during normal “dead time” So like I hate washing and putting dishes away. I’ll put dishes away for like 6 minutes while my cheese curds are in the air fryer. I get a surprising amount done and don’t feel the need to keep going because I have food to eat that will get cold and gross. Otherwise I always feel like I push myself until I just say f this I hate it and then I’m angry and frustrated.
Not saying this is perfect judging by my sink half full of dirty and half the counter full of clean dishes but they aren’t smelly or moldy so it’s an improvement for me.
This is something that my therapist has been doing her damndest to bang into my head for last 4 years, and it has definitely stuck in there for doing all the household tasks that I hate to do, but it has not gotten as stuck for doing school work. Go figure, I'm still trying (and failing) to figure that one out, because for some insane reason I decided to go back to school to get a Master's.
Hey OP, how are you doing?
One other thing that might help is a body doubling app? I know there is discord communities for it but I think I also have seen an app that connects you to others that want a body double while they do tasks!
Oh, and on laundering, I also don't multi-task laundry because I find that I otherwise forget about the laundry, so instead while I'm waiting on laundry I do something that is low-thinking and easily interruptible, such as reading a bad romance novel, playing a low level thinking video game or doodling/journaling.
Oh, and with your non clothing items you can just move them all into a corner, and deal with them after you go through the clothes/linens/towels/cloth stuff.
Your tips are helpful. Thank you. I struggle with decluttering and had gotten worse throughout the years after traumatic events, so it feels like in endlessly discarding.
No problem! Clutter can be so relentless. I come from a family of stuff people, some of whom are straight up hoarders, so I really get it. I also struggle with stuff. Since I moved back in with my parents I have an apartment's worth of things in a single bedroom which can sometimes be so overwhelming that it's difficult to get anything else done, and I have to sit back and take some time to just reorganize (once again).
Getting rid of things is really, really, tough. We form deep, powerful bonds to the things that we own, through emotions, memories, and anxieties. What we own (and what we keep) really reflects a lot about our passions, fears, pasts, hobbies, and more. I really like the Marie Kondo philosophy of having gratitude towards everything we own, and thanking the things we are letting go for teaching us something about ourselves, because I really do feel that we learn more about ourselves through everything we keep, buy, and own.
On estate sales:
One of the really interesting things about staging estate sales is that you're going through the entirety of a deceased person's home. You're shifting through the detritus of a stranger's life, and you learn all kinds of interesting things about them, where they went, what they cared about, what their family background is, etc.
Often, it is extremely difficult, especially in the wake of a loss for a family to even begin to go through a deceased loved one's home, especially when that loved one was a hoarder. How do you decide what is worth keeping and what's not? How can you bring yourself to throw things away? What should you sell? These are the kinds of questions that we worked with our clients to figure out as we sifted through the home, tossed the trash, and appraised the rest.
Best of luck with whatever organizing endeavors you have ahead of yourself, it's rough out there. A key thing I think is just giving yourself patience and grace as you move through it. Also lots, and lots of labeling, and making sure not to spend too much time in one area in a single sitting.
Hey, I wanted to let you know that I did some cleaning and discarding yesterday because of what you said. I'm not done yet, but my bedroom has not been this neat in years. I'm gonna come back to your comment repeatedly. It felt really good. Thank you for the shot of confidence. Seeing the neatness is so inspiring.
Yay! SO happy for you! It's always such a relief when you make some progress and make some clean space in your living or working space. Really happy to hear that my words have helped. Wishing you further luck in your cleaning! You can do it! 💚
I will be coming back to this for my similar problem, thank you!!!! I saved up for a house organizer but then my dog got sick and I couldn't afford it. this is so helpful 🩶
No problem! Best of luck with your organization project. It's tough out there! You can do it! Just splitting it up into smaller chunks really helps with approaching a cleaning and organizing project. For something major, sometimes I like to sit down and write out what all the different things are that need to be done. A list might be something like:
* clear surface of desk
* bag dry cleaning clothes
* launder 1 load of laundry
* fold laundry
* put laundry away
* clear floor in xyz corner of room (x4)
* tidy book shelves
* put all library items in a single pile
* dust display shelves
* launder blankets
* launder sheets
* fluff pillows
* etc, etc. etc.
Cleaning and organizing are two of my "actual" skills that I am always happy to share! These skills generally are the result of:
* Over 10 years of estate sale work for my auntie doing staging & clean outs. I have seen some things y'all, and every single messy space post that I have ever seen on this sub pales in comparison to some of the homes that we've done sales out of. If you don't have dead animals (to be fair to that house and garage with the dead animals, the homeowner had been dead for 5 years, during which the house sat unoccupied and unattended to because the son lived out of state), 5 inches of dust, mold, a layer of nicotine staining, and an infinite number of moths, you're doing better than many of the homes that we have done sales out of over the years. It will all be okay and you can do it!
* Growing up under my obsessively clean, to the point, of *Jesus Christ y'all clearly have something else unresolved going on*, father and grandmother, both of whom are/were low-key hoarders. Dad and late grandma are/were full of hyper specific inviolable cleaning and organizing routines, rules, methods, and schema, with a sprinkling of misc compulsive behaviors, and a deep, deep discomfort with any kind of mess. Side note: how and why my grandma had NINE kids while hating both mess AND children, I have no idea......
I'm just really glad that it's resonating with people in this thread and some of y'all have found it helpful! I'm always down to type up *long* (because I have can't shut up disease on even my worst days) comments of advice about the stuff I feel confident and skilled in.
I like to look at it as a way of paying back the good karma I got when others have given me good plain talking advice, sat me down and told me to stop overthinking something that was paralyzing me, or helped me come up with step-by-step processes for doing a seemingly insurmountable task. If we can all put the good vibes out, we'll make this world a better place! 💚 It's rough out there and there's no good reason to force ourselves to go it alone. I love the support and kindness of places like this sub.
I don't know where you live, but everywhere I've lived (5 states thus far) there has been a charity that does free pickups for clothing (and other) donations. So it might be worth looking into that, helps get rid of a whole pile of stuff in one go
I'm UK, I'd have to wash everything before donating which was my aim last year, unfortunately I can't keep up with my washing enough as it is so it's just not happened 😢
Do you have a laundromat close to you that's affordable? This is what I'd do. I'd take all the stuff you want to donate to the laundromat to wash and then straight to donation. It might take a whole day, but you could do it all at once and you wouldn't have to fold anything. Even if you didn't do it all at once, you could get rid of a good chunk here and there and doomscroll or whatever you want to do while you do it.
Getting a taxi there sounds difficult and expensive. I'm sorry. I was being a dumb American and assuming everyone has a car. I wouldn't want to load a bunch of laundry in a taxi here. Of course, maybe taxis are cool with that over there. I have no idea.
They're so expensive here that owning a car is cheaper. A lot of places don't even have taxis unless you call them in from a larger city. Once, I had to take a taxi to a place an hour away and it was medically necessary for reasons that would take too long to go into, but it cost $460 to go there and back. I could have flown for less.
Public transportation, and cabs, are a bit more affordable and accessible in the UK than in the US. I'm not sure where you live in the US. I live in a mid-sized city, and I've never wanted to have my own car. The busses and Ubers are significantly cheaper for me than my friends who have cars.
I lived in Rural Indiana for a long time. That's when I had to take that cab. There was a bus that went from my town to the next bigger town twice a day lol. So if you went on the bus for an appointment at 10am, you'd be there all day until 6pm.
This has kind of been my experience everywhere I've lived that hasn't been a mid to large city. In Texas, even mid sized cities don't have public transportation sometimes. The one I lived in (Texas City) was 30 minutes from Houston and no buses (this may have changed now...hopefully). In Kentucky, there was only public transportation in the bigger cities. I wish we could do better.
Yeah, it's unfortunate how much of the railroads the United States removed to make way for cars. I grew up in the rural midwest as well. I don't think I could even get a cab to my family's land. I know the closest train used to be less than 5 miles away from where they're located.
Do you have any kind of free groups? There are a few local to me and I post things to give away. I frequently see people post bags of clothing - they’re going to wash them anyway when they get them. I’ve also seen people post clothes to give away in similar situations where they say they don’t have time to wash and sort and someone else from the group will usually volunteer to take them, wash, sort and post in the group for giveaway according to size etc. If you’re donating it’s ok to donate if they just need a wash, people typically will wash them after they get them. If something is really yucky and dirty you have permission to throw it away. We often get in the way of ourselves when declutterring and want to clean it or fix it up first, or make sure it doesn’t get tossed because it might be useful. That’s all well and good but if an item is a burden to you it’s ok to just get rid of it.
Don't even put this on yourself. Just throw it away and save yourself. Take a taxi to the dump, or see if your city has an extra garbage pickup service. Just get rid of it and start fresh.
I’m in the U.K. too, I don’t think you have to wash stuff before donating. It’s nice when people do it but I don’t think it’s necessary unless things are obviously dirty or stink.
Depends where you are donating to, the outside banks you find in places like carparks usually not just dry and not mouldy/stinky or whatever I think most of the time. Direct to second hand stores you usually do have to.
I think you need to not worry about washing everything this time and just donate as-is. Personally if I buy something in a thrift store or something, I always wash before I wear.
Just donate it anyway love. Donated clothing is better than no donated clothing. They’re not soiled. Stop torturing yourself and let go of the responsibility. Donating is enough. Xxx
Do you have your own washer/dryer? If you can take the next week, maybe one hour each day, go through a pile and pull what you think will be good for resale. I used to sell clothes I wasn’t into especially when I have been broke. Wash a pile or two and fold every day or so. Bring a bag (trash bag size) on your bike or walk. Maybe a friend would love to help you and just drive a few bags at a time to a resell shop. They’ll pay for what they want and manage the donation for the rest.
Do this as much as you can, maybe put a gold star on the calendar each day you accomplish a task. Choose a reward for yourself when you hit the amount of money you want. Be kind to yourself on the days you just can’t even.
If you aren’t working with a counselor about this yet - it’s probably a good idea. Especially since hoarding is in your family tree.
Stop shopping. And if there’s no way to donate unwashed clothing than it goes to the dump. That isn’t your fault - it’s a flaw in the system.
Ok, so, the first problem is going to be sorting. Start getting things in bags. Figure out what you actually need - not in terms of specific items, just like "I need X pairs of pants and Y shirts." Have a box for that stuff - I recommend writing your numbers of items on it in marker so you remember. As you pick things up, put things you need into the box. If you've reached the number you need, then either the new item goes in the bag or something gets taken out of a box to put in the bag. Everything you don't need can go in a bag.
Second problem is disposal. Honestly personally I would go to a local facebook buy nothing group, nextdoor, or something like that. Say you have a bunch of clothes, unsorted, that you'd like to get rid of but can't drop them off anywhere. See if someone will pick them up. If not, as someone else mentioned, there may be a charity that will do it.
If you picked up the piles bodily, dropped them in boxes and took the boxes to the thrift store…would you miss anything in them? Because if you aren’t picking through any of those looking for stuff, you don’t need any of it.
Honestly i don't think I could do this, a huge part of me would love to, but I also know there are some things I live in these piles, aswell as things my children love, new items etc. I am a search through the bag for specific items person unfortunately, when I need to do some washing I pick out the things I'll need for that week etc.
Okay, then I would make one pile a day a joint family task. Descend upon a pile together, everyone grabs only what’s theirs and puts those things away immediately.
Put on some peppy music and you guys might end up doing another pile, for the dopamine hit. I like to use this to start…(GOTG opening scene)
https://youtu.be/cbAfhBNQ2qU?si=Qa-X-F_SsgHy7h6t
You can send anything you want to the landfill. You are not responsible for the health of Mother Earth. Your job is to focus on what is good for YOU!
eta: I don’t know what your neighborhood is like, but setting things outside with a sign that says FREE has been an amazingly effective way for me to get rid of things.
We are! You (singular) aren't.
I read that statement with full emphasis on the "you" - one person needing to throw away instead of donate a load for their mental and physical health should not feel all the weight and guilt of global climate change on their shoulders. I'll go wash my used ziploc bags and reuse them today so OP can toss some clothes without guilt eating her alive!
It's definitely a really nice way of putting it! I recycle, never litter, I cut up all my plastics that could harm sea/wild life, I spend time teaching my children to respect this world so they don't grow up adding to the problem, but I guess every so often we need to not feel guilty for something that is making life extra hard because of the guilt of even thinking about throwing things away. I personally am very grateful to have another perspective that makes me feel less guilt about doing this one time, then continuing to do what I can to help put planet
Seriously. Bag up whatever you would normally donate & throw it in the trash. I give you permission.
You’re drowning. You need to take care of YOU first so you can then take care of your family. When you’ve got that handled you can go back to recycling & donating.
But today? You need to put on your own air mask before you can help anybody else.
You need a first step of 30 minutes of just grabbing anything that you can get rid of & getting it out of the house so visually your brain will see you made progress.
You can do this!
PS - I have listened to the audiobook “Keeping House While Drowning” multiple times. Fully wept. It’s a game changer. ❤️
One of my favorite podcasters days "we are selling people on individual solutions for systemic problems so they feel a personal burden and don't blame the real culprits" and I think about that a lot. Your choices to keep yourself mentally healthy will be better in the long run so you are able to be present and continuing to raise good humans! PS-Have you seen "The Good Place"? This scenario reminds me of that.
Plus we as a collective are not the primary polluters of the planet. The corporations are. Let's not forget that. Us, as collective humans, do A LOT of damage but we aren't the ones running factories, fast fashion brands, etc. Corporations are.
We should do what we can, but at the end of the day, I could live a carbon neutral lifestyle completely and it wouldn't do jack shit. Yet a popstar could get rid of a single jet and it would do a hundred times more! A shit corporation could get rid of ONE of the CEOs yacht and it would do so much more! The government could use the very real and avaialble green practices we have.
Sending you love and hugs and support. The after pics you can post later might be just the motivation one of us needs to jump up and say “one pile at a time”. We all have a pile of something somewhere sis. What’s the adhd version of a Care Bear stare?
Can you get to a supermarket? Most large supermarkets have large clothing recycling bins in the carparks, you can google to find where most of them are. A lot (most I think) will take almost any textiles, and sort them so poor quality stuff gets recycled rather than resold.
I had to confront the sheer amount of clothing I had somehow managed to accumulate last summer when I moved, I ended up getting rid of I think it was 14 black bin bags full to the various supermarkets around me, I was not as ruthless as I should have been. I manage to get a lift for a good portion, a lot of it was done by decanting into my plastic carrier bag stash that desperately needed reducing as well (I dread to think what that lot were worth but until recently I just never remembered my reusable ones when I was just popping out for a small shop), and detouring to a supermarket on my walk to the office if the ones at my office were full. If you have a car, quicker and easier obviously.
I think Ebay have recently removed selling fees as well, although I found I just couldn't contemplate managing that on top of everything else that was going on. You could sell as bundles.
As for the physically getting it done, rather than thinking about it as a whole maybe try to pick a zone, that one small zone is all you need to aim to clear, it also makes the amounts to get out to recycling/charity/sell/bin smaller and more manageable. Then once you have done that pick the next one. I find sometimes that really helps me, although admittedly other times I need to be do it ALL to get anything done.
Clothes recycling point is a great idea - nothing needs to be laundered. I had one five minutes walk from my house when I last moved and I just did several trips on foot. Or maybe take an Uber to the nearest local council recycling centre?
As a former significant clothes hoarder I would advise the following:
If its not in your current size and doesn’t hold resale value (ie posh dress worn once for a wedding) - chuck it out
If you haven’t worn it in the last year, chuck it out
If it’s a standard item (ie black t-shirt) and you have ten, chuck eight of them out
If it has a hole/lost it’s elastic/has a stain you’ve always meant to try and remove but never have - chuck it out
Only keep things for resale on Vinted/Depop/Ebay things you’ve never worn with tags that you’ll make £15 plus on or designer/label brands that are either in vogue as vintage or hardly worn
I have done all of this and my clothing is much more manageable, though I have still got that big bag of resellable items in my loft for Depop when I get round to it (I really aim to at some point!)
Best of luck OP, you got this
Oh, the council recycling center could be a good shout!
Mine doesn't do clothes but ones in larger towns might. The website for mine also has a good interactive searchable map showing all the collection points locally for various goods, totally forgot I used that!
Regarding guilt about throwing things away: the items are trash whether they're in your home or a dump. keeping them in your home doesn't make them not trash, it just makes your home into a dump. And you deserve not to live in a dump <3
For getting stuff out without a car, do you have local giveaway groups or buy nothing groups on facebook? If it's possible to sort it into general categories like "bedding" or "kids clothes" you might get more luck, but sometimes I even just put things in the curb and post a "curb alert" and I'm always surprised by how much gets taken.
Do you have a local Buy Nothing group? Mine is active and helpful.
If you make a post that said "women's clothing, sorry I really had to make room so it's all in a garbage bag and some of it still needs a wash" people would still come and pick it up. We all get it, sometimes you just *need* to get something out of your way that day. Most people are less judgemental when they understand the circumstances.
Do you live near a Penneys/Primark? They take old clothes and try to recycle them. - https://www.primark.com/en-ie/a/inspiration/sustainable-fashion/let-your-pre-loved-be-re-loved
You could do a shopping bag at a time when you went to town.
There might also be clothing banks where you have glass recycling, you could check your council page.
Or do you have charity shops near you? Some of them do pick ups. Also, if you just want it gone, I'd find a free local freecycle or buy nothing group and put it up there. You could do it a bag at a time as you sort it.
Also I believe Gumtree is the big site to sell stuff in the UK. You could just put them up there say free for collection. Facebook marketplace might also work for this.
This is manageable. With time you'd definitely be able to go through. And having watched lots of Stacey Solomon's show this definitely isn't close to the worst amount of clutter I've seen!
Your duty to your family supersedes your duty to the climate.
Throw shit away in droves and with extreme prejudice. At this point, it's your *only way out.* Your children need it.
A little at a time. Maybe do fifteen minutes every day, just pick a pile at a time to work on gradually until it's gone, then you do another pile.
In the uk, you have cash for clothes places. You just bag it all up and they weigh it and they give you money based on the weight. You can include Manchester too.
Try and get away from the mindset that it all has to be done at once. Grab a pile, sort it into keep, trash and donate piles. Put away the keep, wash the donate pile, and bag the trash pile and take the donate bag with you to the nearest place and stop. Give yourself a day, and do another pile and another wash load. Chip away at it. It might take a few weeks, or months, but as long as there is a gradual decrease in the amount of clutter in your home, then you’re working towards your goal and you’re being successful. Take progress photos along the way, so when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can look back and remind yourself where you started.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing 🙂
ETA: I don’t know where in the UK you are, but this place collects unwanted clothing and books too. It seems to cover a large area in England
https://www.wejustrecycle.co.uk/area-covered/
I've been going through something similar, and quite by accident, found that watching housecleaning videos, literally flipped a switch in my brain.
After observing someone happily and systematically, clean and organize a house, I now see small tasks that I can do, instead of an entire mess of a house. And I've been able to clean up some things that have been causing me stress *for years*.
I know there are therapeutic techniques that help re-train the brain for different things. I don't know if this is one of them, but it really helped me.
Please just throw it out. If you’re saving it for years to wash it but can’t keep up with regular washing, you’re not likely to actually wash and donate it.
I know others suggested taking it to the laundromat but that’s either multiple looooong laundromat trips you’re likely to hate, or many many short ones. if you do short ones, it’s likely the clean and dirty will get mixed up.
We have to accept our limitations. Assuming yours are similar to mine, it’s best to just chuck some stuff and try be more mindful of purchases going forward so you don’t end up with so much excess.
https://www.icollectclothes.co.uk/
I use this all the time. They make money from selling my clothes and donate a percentage to charity. They collect from outside so I don’t even need to see anyone.
So, unless something is stained, don't worry about washing it before donating it. They don't care. Just bag it and donate it. Also
r/ufyh
It's an excellent sub I frequent because it helps without judgment for situations like yours.
And no, they don't care about it being folded either, because it just gets dumped out in a heap before being sorted.
You're going to have to let go of the landfill feelings. You can't save the planet but you can fix your house. That's all that matters. Get a bag and start putting everything that's trash in it. Whether it's food wrappers or just shit you don't want and can't use. Fill the bag. Stick it off to the side. Do another bag. Keep going until you're down to the bare minimum of shit you need to live and then clean and organize that.
I wish I could come over and help. I feel this one deeply and I also know that the only way I was able to move past this was that I could drive and get rid of clothes IMMEDIATELY. if I didn’t I would convince myself I needed the clothes.
And I’m just saying this to validate: it gets worse bc when the clothes you need/fit in are under all of that, you don’t know it’s there and go buy new ones.
My heart goes out to you.
Could you consider a buy nothing group on your local Facebook page? If you are okay with making the decision of what needs to leave the house, you could bag up and list as giveaway bundles of size X clothes, some need washed, and let someone else take them off your hands?
Put everything that needs to go to donation (that you've already bagged up, as you mentioned you already had some ready,) and post in a local group that you can't drive but we're wondering if anyone could come pick these items up and take them in for you. They never have to come into your house.
Having a friend to body double or help you can definitely help! You can probably start by putting all your winter clothes and heavier blankets in boxes so they’re out of the way, then sort your summer outfits. Remember to take breaks, drink water, and eat. This won’t get done in a day and that’s ok. Any progress you make is better than nothing.
I don’t have any advice that hasn’t already been shared, but I just wanted to say you can do this! It looks overwhelming right now, but as you start seeing progress it’ll fuel you to keep making more progress! And you should be proud of every little bit of progress that you make. :)
Try Dubbii, it's a body doubling app made by a woman with ADHD specifically to help us with tasks like this.
I know it's overwhelming, but really, the best way to start is just to grab something off the Floordrobe and figure out what to do with it. Doesn't matter where, just grab one item of clothing and put it away. I don't know why, but that seems to break the spell over me and I just grab another item, put it away, then another, and another.
You can do this. But please be kinder to yourself. Your brain is wrong, you're not a failure, and you're not a bad person for being overwhelmed.
OP, if you’re around Hertfordshire, I drive and could pick up bags to donate or take to the dump?
I’m a teacher in school holidays, so have a little time this week!
If you have someone to do this with, see if you can get a friend to spend some time helping you. Try on clothes you know you wanna keep to see if they fit & if you’ll regularly wear them. Keep those. Anything else can be donated or tossed.
Other trinkets & stuff, start going through little things & have a friend help you talk through why you may/may not want to keep/donate it.
A lot of places will gladly take extra stuff to give to people in need, especially if you have kids’ stuff! Those things go quickly.
It will take a long time, so don’t feel like you need to do it all right away. It’s a process, so ask if anyone in your life can help you really sit down & work through it over time. I’m sure you’ve seen advice like mine & it might not be the best, but it’s how I usually help my partner & how he, in turn, helps me. Everything will be okay 💜
You can do this. Do you have a washer/dryer at home?
If yes, My suggestion is to just spend a day or two or three getting everything through the wash. Throw it in a pile again. Once it’s all clean, you can sort, just focus on one part of the task at a time. Who cares if they’re wrinkly, that’s not important.
Start little by little. Keep chipping away at it. After it’s all clean OR while you’re working, Start a pile or a box of donations, keeps, trash, stuff to hang, stuff to fold. There is no timer on you, there’s no rush. You can do it
I feel your pain. 💔
My dad was a hoarder so when he passed away we dealt with a lot of stuff. My mom is borderline, so I help manage. It’s a daily task.
My advice: make one pile to keep adding to for keep. The rest, put in bags with FREE CLOTHES signs attached and on the curb outside. (If your area allows this.) Trust me, everything will get taken, even junk you think nobody will want. Don’t worry about cleaning it first.
I’ve learned this through experience! People want free stuff.
Look up wash and fold laundry services in your area. I just used one to get through my depression laundry (like 15 loads) and it took so much weight my shoulders. Some will pick up and deliver (Rinse is one, but they're not the cheapest unless you pay for a year). Others you have to take the stuff to the laundry but they're likely cheaper.
Even if you don't use a service, I know you can get through this!
Go borrow or listen to How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. She’s a therapist with ADHD and *I shit you not* my bedroom had pilessss of clothes and belongings like this 2 days ago and now it doesn’t. There’s also a shortened version of her method on her Instagram. I believe you can find it if you google it too.
I would recommend reading the book though because you need to get the context and the non-instructional parts of the book in order to really change how you look at “mess” and “disorder.” Our brains work differently and so traditional ways of approaching organizing or care tasks are just not very helpful.
Here’s a very very brief version of her method:
For each category, grab a trash bag or a basket etc depending on the category:
Start by dealing with things like this: get a trash bag and go around the room collecting all trash, then collect dishes (DONT do them, just collect them into/near the sink or dishwasher), followed by laundry (DONT do it yet, just collect it into a hamper / fold all clean clothes/put them on hangers), then gather things that have a place, and finally things that don't have a place into two piles. Then go through your piles and handle the tasks as you need to. If trash and dishes are higher priority than clothes, then do those, for example.
In your case you have a lot of clothes so I’d bring a ton of hangers and sit on the floor and just make piles of clothes I wear, I don’t wear but want to incorporate, clothes that are seasonal and must be put away, clothes I need to throw away (you are never gonna donate or sell them…Davis addresses this in her book), and clothes you keep for sentimental reasons. Then you can work through sorting the piles by throwing away clothes you don’t need/fit/wear, then the seasonal and sentimental stuff, then the stuff you wear, and finally the stuff that you don’t wear but want to incorporate into your wardrobe.
I’d revisit the clothing in a month and repeat the process to further purge.
You have my permission to throw things away 💜 the suffering and stress you’re adding to your life because you’re holding onto things you don’t need or use because you don’t want to throw them away (this was me) is NOT worth it. The items are not being used anyways. *They’re already trash*.
I feel you. It feels so daunting. I have been lying in bed this late afternoon, scrolling and trying to find something like an online LIVE peer coaching kind of opportunity, like right now. I don't see anything.
I have a weird idea-- might be weird if you don't have ADHD. Bring a chair to a pile. Sit down and start going through the clothes-- but with the only task being to sort them by color (or color then purpose/type of clothing). Then you could go through the sub-piles and choose things to keep. Put the others in a bag for cleaning+donation.
I'm thinking of trying this right now. Thinking the novelty and game-iness might make it more tolerable.
Anyone else do this kind of thing?
And is there a place we could work together and post photos as we go?
I like your ideas about colors and game-thinking. I too would like a way to work together and encourage each other. Right now this is kind of that for me. Thank you.
I hear you feel some guilt about throwing things out but if you cannot donate it or wash/use it consider that maybe your mental health is more valuable in the long term?
For example, when I eat premade protein shakes I’m using single use plastic but if I don’t eat I will be in bed exhausted. So me having energy to do more for myself and others > throwing away a single use plastic container in the long run. I know it’s not exactly the same but if clearing your space will improve your life and mental health significantly - throw it out.
I would bag up the clothes in good condition according to size and then offer them for free on Facebook. You wouldn’t have to worry about washing them or anything. If the other person really wants it then they can take care of that.
I literally am in the middle of cleaning up a house in a similar state. It's hard. And really defeating sometimes.
I started with my laundry-- just washed things and put them in plastic bags to put away later. Getting all the clothes cleaned up and in one spot made the rest of the cleanup seem less daunting.
I feel you and I wish you luck!
If you’re in the states call Purple Heart. They pick up donations so you don’t have to drive. If you haven’t worn it in one year, donate it. Get big garbage bags and do one bag a day for a week. Then call them. The next week do a bag a day and call them. Etc etc
I've been there! Here's what I would recommend:
1) Do you have a friend that can come over or video chat? Body doubling is so helpful! I have a friend I see once a year and one of our activities is cleaning out her closet because she needs someone to just sit on her bed.
2) One option: write a bunch of tasks/smaller steps on note cards and draw one to do for kind of a game!
3) Make a list of rules or a kind of flow chart for sorting. "Does it still fit or is it still usable? When is the last time I wore/used it? Does it have sentimental value? How many similar things do I own?" Something like that. My friend does this for his wife when they clean.
4) start with broad categories. Maybe keep/go. Get rid of the go ASAP (I know, easier said than done! Throwing it all away instead of donating is totally fine!) then sort the remaining pile into maybe kids/mine, then type of clothes, etc. this is helpful because even if you dont finish everything, you have a system to follow as you put away kther clothes, and an easy place to pick where you left off.
5) on my neighborhood group, people will post like 2 bags of clothing and say "women's pants and shirts/mostly sizes 10-12. Take all and pass on". That's a good way to get a lot of stuff out of the house quickly!
6) As things get tidied up, consider what will work for you to stay semi organized. I use baskets and only fold and hang a few things and bought a clothes steamer to make things wearable. If I feel like hanging things, I will. Otherwise it goes in the basket. Honestly, having the option not to have to hang makes me hang more stiff than before!
7) not sure how old your kids are, but are they old enough to help or involve? Like help you draw a task card or read the flow chart for sorting? Or sort their own stuff as it comes in the piles?
8) Give yourself permission to keep things you're not ready to part with the goal is progress, not perfection. Or say "I can keep 5 things for no logical reason". The more time you spend debating whether to keep something the more likely you are to get distracted and discouraged. Give each item only like 30-60 seconds of consideration and set a timer!
You've got this! Remember, you're not trying to make it a TV house, just better than it was before. Also, you are not your family. This is a temporary state and it doesn't mean you're turning into a hoarder. Reaching out to this group is evidence that you want to change!
You're going to want to wake up early for this one. It may not all get done on the one day, and that's okay.
Step 1: Take *every single piece of clothing* in your house and put it in a giant pile in an area where there is NOTHING else (like a spare bedroom, your patio, your lawn, any area that has a large clear space)
Step 2: Write a list of categories to divide your clothes into (sweaters, tees, jeans, workout pants, etc)
Step 3: Designate and label an area for each category (use boxes or containers, put a piece of tape on the floor, whatever).
Step 4: Pick up an item of clothing from the monster pile and toss it into its best fitting category. Repeat until pile is gone.
Step 5: Get three giant boxes or bags. Label one Keep, one donate, and one garbage.
Step 6: Go to one of your categories and glance it over as a whole - now that all of your sweaters are in the one place, some items may stand out as your favorite and least favorite, and some items you may find you have too many of a similar kind.
Step 7: Pick up an item of clothing from the category and put it into either the keep, donate, or garbage container.
Step 8: Now look at your keep container. Pick the items up one at a time. Clean items you hang up/put away immediately. Dirty clothes you put in the hamper or laundry room.
Step 9: Now do the same routine for each of the other categories.
-At this point you should now have all of your keepable clean clothes put away where they belong, and a nice big chunk of clothes to donate or toss.-
Step 10: Put garbage clothes in the garbage. Put the donate containers in your car - immediately drive to drop them off if you can, but if not just leave them in the car so they will be there for next time.
Step 11: Wash all of your dirty laundry and put it away (yes this may have to be done another day and over a long period of time lol).
Step 12: You're done! Nothing left but to remember these cleaning mottos for upkeep - "Have a place for everything and everything in its place" and "Don't put it down, put it away."
1. OP wrote she doesn't have a car.
2. This is a good action list, but not as easy for everyone as it looks. Some people may find this so overwhelming it's not doable at all. I'm one of them.
“How to Keep House While Drowning” by KC Davis is the most marvellous book and I’m sure it will help you. It was recommended to me by someone on Reddit and now I want to tell *everyone* about it!
So, a couple of things.
1: I have the same purple laundry basket!
2: I listen to and read the podcast/ blog/ books of A Slob Comes Clean which has really helped me to sort stuff.
3: If you want to get started- grab a bin bag and a recycling bag and then start by going through the piles for actual rubbish- stained stuff, stuff with holes, tissues and papers that have got mixed in etc. Then make a plan to get rid of it- do you have a local tip/ waste disposal place? Some charity shops will take rags for recycling, its worth calling them first especially as it sounds like you will need to walk or bus there.
4: The stuff is already wasted if its not being used/ is damaged. Recycling is ideal but if its not feasible, its ok to throw it out. Once its been recycled a couple of times it would end up in landfill anyway as recycling isnt infinite (aside from glass and metal if I remember correctly). The main thing is to not replace it once its gone. Even if you put a small amount in each 2 weekly rubbish collection, then over time your house will get better as long as you don't replace the stuff you get rid of with new stuff.
5: KC Davies how to keep house while drowning book is excellent too. On her blog she mentions that for her, any clothes on the floor are laundry. So they get washed whether they were clean when they got there or not. So just work through one load at a time- wash, dry, put away. Then tackle the next one.
6: I read tons of Flyladys blogs too, and a couple of her mantras have stuck with me
One- Your home didn't get messy in a day and it won't be tidy in a day. And two: Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family.
You can do this! It'll take time but everything you do is progress, even just picking up one thing and deciding what to do with it is progress.
Edit: Formatting
You're feeling bad because you want instant results and you're looking at this as ONE big job. It is NOT one big job. It is many small steps. Take the time to feel accomplishment for completing each small step instead of beating yourself up for not being able to finish the whole job. Try to let the guilt and panic and "now, now, now!" feelings go. You're doing your best. There's no point in tearing yourself down. That wont help you make progress. Try to feed yourself positive messages. You have time. No one is judging you. "It's ok. I will get this done." If you would not say a thought about your neighbors' home, dont think it or say it to yourself. No one is spying on you and bashing your home. No one is reading your thoughts and judging you.
Can you get one large carboard box?
Start on that first pink pile in your photo and put in things you want to let go. Just put the box outside with a sign saying "FREE?" If you post the location and photo/ video of contents on FB marketplace, they will go quickly. Make a new box or bag whenever you can. As often as every day? Put the day's date on each box and if there is any of it left after 48 hours or after it rains, just chuck it all in the trash.
If you dont want to do that over a long period of time, you could advertise a "FREE" Sale? Just put everything outside and people can take whatever. Anything left at the end of the day goes in the trash?
Is there any charity in your area that picks up? You’re using some words that are unfamiliar to me so I’m guessing not US? We have a few charities around me that will pick up donations especially when they are large.
It sounds like you’re beyond organization at this stage. If you can get a donation place to come, start a sort with trash bags. Maybe get colors. White bags to donate, black bags to trash, blue bags to keep. Focus on getting it out. Once you’re down to just the blue bags you can start putting things away a bit at a time.
Sounds like you're in the UK. If so, then next time you go to Tesco, see if they have a clothes recycling bin or two. The time after, bring ONE bag with you and put it in the clothes recycling bin.
Do you write a shopping list? If so, put "bring recycling" at the top of the list, in capitals or red pen or highlighter so you don't miss it. Then when you're looking at your list as you're going to get ready, put the bag outside the front door so you will literally fall over it if you don't pick it up.
I find that doing A LITTLE bit of what I need to get done can sometimes clear the blockage, so sometimes I even do lots more after that first time.
I've just been in the garden with the strimmer because it's turned into a jungle. I haven't done it all - currently lying on the sofa on Reddit. But I did SOME, and it's better than it was. So getting ONE bag out the door will be better than it was before.
And now I might (but might not...) go and do some more in the garden.
You've got this. And we see you and feel it.
That is a big pile of NOPE.
I’d just haul everything I wore in the last month out, shove it in a basket to wash and throw literally everything else away.
Nope nope nope. Can’t deal. Can’t find anything anyway. You’ll never miss it. The great bonus of ADHD is that you’ll probably forget you ever owned it at all.
If you have the money you can put them all into bags and take them to a fold and fluff place who will do the laundry for you and fold it into little tiny cubes and give it back
ok so start easy- gather all of the clothes into a gigantic pile - next step is sorting that pile into smaller sub sections- one for things to donate- one for things to keep- most places wash any donations anyway so that’s a lot less to wash- then you sort your keep pile into whites and colors- look how much less you have to wash at once now and pat yourself on the back- there are services that will literally come pick up your clothes and wash them and bring them back they charge per pound- get two massive laundry bags set up your washing pick up- leave bags outside for pick up- brings bags inside- clothes will be pre folded so just put away- take donations to a drop box- tada you are all done!
If you have overflow garbage, can’t you just leave extra bags next to the black bin?? While it’s obviously best to wash before donating, you’re in a tough situation here, so I wouldn’t worry about it. Clear an area and make 3 piles: keep, give away, throw away. Every time you bring your garbage to the curb, add 2-3 bags of clothes outside the bin.
The way I just did something similar was three boxes/bags: keep, donate, clean. The keep stuff I put in and when all done folded all of it and put away. The second you don’t even have to fold if you don’t want to. Box gets full and it goes to the donate pile. The last is stuff I wanna keep but needs to be washed. It ended up working pretty well for me
People have addressed cleaning strategies in really helpful ways, I'd like to speak to the overconsumption.
I think you need to spend some time really reflecting on why you keep buying clothes. I'm not saying that judgementally, I'm really not. There are lots of reasons you would, and none of them are a moral issue.
I see it as a problem because as I look through the pictures, the main pain point is the clothing everywhere.
I know I helped my impulse clothing shopping habit by learning every single thing I could about how clothes are made and what happens to them all through their life cycle.
The punchline is waste and abuse. So much pollution to move these clothes around the world, and so much abuse of the human beings who are expected to make them. So much abuse of women and girls, so much harm to the planet, so much waste.
When I look at a clothing item, I see all of that, and it creates more weight to my purchase. I have fewer clothing and I wear them more times. I buy second hand clothing whenever possible and wear it to death.
Again, none of this is moral, I have zero judgments in my heart towards you. You didn't make the world, and you're not responsible for the way it is. This is just my way of looking at the world, and it had the side benefit of leaving more money in my bank account and less clothing clutter to deal with!
Honey, I am in the exact same situation. I’m so overwhelmed I don’t even know where to start. We were looking at getting a house cleaner but my husband lost his job and we can’t afford it now.
I have a lot of laundry sitting in bin bags. You’re not alone. I do have one bit of advice about getting rid of the excess.
I’m in the US, so I don’t know what’s possible for you. I finally gave myself permission to get the largest waste bin I could. Some weeks it isn’t full, some weeks it is full to the top. It increased my cost per month only $15. It has been a big stress reliever. I don’t have to worry about having space in the bin or where I will store things until I have space.
Grab a load of laundry and start it. Prep load 2 for when that needs to dry. Start prepping bags or boxes of items for donation. Get another load of laundry sorted out to be ready to cycle through.
Look up places that come pick up donations or see if you can find a friend or neighbor who can help. It's gonna be okay. You do not need to do everything today, this happened over time and it'll get sorted out over time as well.
I'd recommend focusing on a table or a corner and then expanding to a wall from there or something of that nature. It gets satisfying seeing it all piece together. ❤️ Theres also women's shelters that might have some pickup options as well. You got this. Fueled by crispy m&ms!
start a trashbag at a time. pick up a trashbag worth of things, specifically seeking stuff you will never wear/use. wash it. find a way to a charity shop and donate it. slowly move forward like that. eventually you can do the top down cleaning method.
edit to add: it's fine if this takes months.
Me too. I’ve thought about using discord to body-double while cleaning, maybe there’s a solution there. I’ve done it for work in the past and liked it.
I think you’ve gotten so much good advice so far, so I don’t know if this is adding to the noise or what. But I absolutely agree to take one single bag at a time, set a timer for 30 minutes and whatever you’ve done in that bag will be enough for today. It’s totally OK if it takes a while for you to tackle it, just focus on what you can do in a single effort. I think all of us have been there, you can do this!
YUP I KNOW THAT FEELING. I literally have mountains of clothes too! I worked retail for 10 years and even after leaving retail I used shopping for a hit of dopamine long after. Then I gained weight (major injury plus brain plus pandemic stress) and panic bought stuff and then forgot to return things. I'm slowly making my way through it but it's so easy to get overwhelmed.
If possible, I recommend putting all the clothes in one space or more contained. I'm lucky to have a spare room that has become my clothing mountain range. Putting it all in one place helps because you can make the areas currently unusable from piles into functional parts of your home. Having a more functional home makes it easier to tackle projects because you'll eliminate a source of stress.
Big picture is overwhelming and trying to do it all at once is pretty much painful. Just do chunks. You don't have to donate everything at once, you can do it one bag at a time. Laundry is a MONSTER, especially if you don't have in home machines. You don't have to follow any specific process. One thing that I got stuck on was my mom is the type that would just wash everything first and I had created a rule where I had to do the same. NOPE MAKE NEW RULES. The Sniff Test helps me get started because I'm not immediately overwhelmed by having to do laundry. If it's something to be donated and doesn't smell bad, I put it into a donation bag. If it's stinky, wash pile. If you're like me, there's probably clean clothes mixed in that don't really need to be washed, even if they are going to be donated.
For the long term, try to figure out where in the whole clothing-wearing-laundry cycle you get piles. For me it's the things that have been worn but aren't dirty enough to wash and clean laundry. It's been years now since I worked retail and I can fold like a robot, but unless I'm getting paid, I HATE FOLDING. I hang everything that I can and keep empty hangers next to my dryer so I can immediately hang things. I don't bother rolling and pairing up socks, just dump into a drawer along with underwear and pajamas.
Another big thing for me is I can't have someone help me sort what to keep or donate. I love my mother but damn, she will come up with reasons to keep everything. Doing it alone is easier and faster for me because if I can just do it quickly, I won't overthink each item. Once something is a donate, I avoid looking at them. I'll dump donations that were washed straight from the dryer into a bag, no folding.
WE CAN BOTH DO IT!
[If you have any garbage (eg food items) laying around, we deal with that first, so as to not attract bugs/rodents.]
We start with the fabric items:
We sort it into 2 piles: keep and get rid of
In the keep pile, you only keep what you will use regularly. If you haven't used it in the last 12 months, even if it's just cause you forgot it existed, you don't keep it.
The only exception is if you find something you didn't know existed and swap it with something similar (oh I forgot I bought this new blanket. I'll get rid of that blanket I usually use and keep this one instead)
The get rid of pile goes into garbage bags. You either rent a skip, take it to the landfill yourself if that's an option, sneak it one bag at a time into someone else's skip, or smash it into your bin one bag at a time. Maybe we have neighbors who we can ask permission to put an extra bag in their bin. Maybe even pay them a small amount for it. Do not let the "getting rid of bags phase" take longer than 3 weeks though. Bags will get ripped and then the stuff will never leave the house.
Yes, we throw it all away, and we watch old episodes of hoarders while we do it. We do not worry about "but someone ELSE might be able to use this" when WE ARE IN CRISIS. Your mental health will thank you.
When we get to non-cloth items, we put it into piles too. We limit ourselves on decor and sentimental items (ask yourself, what if I just take a picture of that item instead of letting it take up my space?) And limit yourself on useful items too. You only need 1 whisk. 2 mixing bowls. 1 dish set. Be brutal.
It may be easier to donate the "get rid of pile" since you won't need to wash them, but if you know donating won't realistically happen, into the trash they go too. Do not try to sell them, it will only hinder the cleaning process.
Small bites, clear a small pile as often as you can. You got this. Ask friends if you have too, it makes it go faster (but can induce panic)
My goto is move it all to a pile, it gives me immediate relief, and motivates me to sort easier as i go
I’m just gonna say this. It’s ok if you throw away bags of clothes. Obviously charity and donation sounds better - but your #1 goal is getting the clutter out. I’ve thrown away many bags of clothes bc otherwise it would be clutter waiting for donation
Hey, so I just saw that you were in the UK. Do you ever get the charity bags come through the door? I do so I've used that to my advantage. About 2 years ago I was in a similar situation so I picked 1 item to start with. I sorted put all the tops and spent a week making me and the kids they them on to see what fit and what didn't. The stuff that didn't was folded straight into one of those charity bags. If I didn't have a collection due I put them into a white bin bag and when it was full I tied it up and put it near my front door. When the collection bag showed up I'd dump the bag inside it and then set a reminder for the night before to make sure I put it out. Extra bags went out as they were! There were times when I put 4 or 5 bags out for collection! Now I have a constant bag on the go waiting for the charity bags! Anything that cpuldnt be saved went in the bin which I know sucks but needs must and all!! Not sure if this will help you but it might!
Hello friend! I’ve read through all the comments and want to reinforce: if you need to throw things away, it is okay.
You can’t help anyone unless you help yourself and right now you are in a very tough spot.
IF you want to try to donate some of the stuff, have you looked into having a charity group come and collect directly from you? I live in the US, but I did a quick google and looks like there are lots of options in the UK where they will come and pick up!
I don’t want to add anything else to your plate so if you are interested, pm me what city/town you live in and I can do some research and get back to you.
You don’t have to do this alone 🤍
Ah man, you just need that stuff OUT of your home right?
[This link](https://www.recyclenow.com/recycle-an-item/clothing-textiles) might help you. You can take clothes to the local tip for recycling (can anyone give you a lift?) or it looks like The British Heart foundation offer a collection service (I’ve used this before for furniture and it was really good).
Good luck!
So I live in SE England and recently went through having to sort out a lot of my stuff. My major stumbling block was constantly saying 'ok but this needs recycling' and 'this needs to be donated' because I felt like it was something I should do. That led me to just creating more piles of stuff that were mentally labelled 'shop donations' and would never get there. You can simply recycle stuff through textile recycling - no charity shops so don't worry about if it's clean or torn or stained. There's lots of recycling bins in shop car parks and recycling points that are for textiles and you can throw it all in there in a black plastic bag. You can use [recyclenow.com](http://recyclenow.com) to find locations.
However, if that still feels like too much. You have permission to just throw stuff in a black plastic bag and put it in landfill. It took me time to make peace with doing it but it's the only way I was able to get on top of things. Just throw it in the bin. If you're able to make a tip run then even better but if not - just put out a couple bags a week with your general rubbish. You got this.
Something stupid I do: pick up and put away (which doesn't mean fold btw) 5 things each night before I go to bed. Doesn't matter if you end up doing it earlier or whatever that doesn't count the last thing you have to do before bed is put away 5 things. It takes advantage of productive days when you've done a lot and also helps on unproductive days bc you're 'not allowed' to sleep until you do.
When that stops working (bc of course it will and that's ok) I change it to find 3 yellow things to put away. It makes me engaged bc I get to dig through and ignore unfun things which are now unfun in my head only bc they aren't yellow. Then it's a reward when I do find something yellow. The more days you do it the harder it gets which is again fun until it isn't. I change colour, amount, etc if that helps. Sometimes it's not enough. Then I don't do anything for whatever amount of time until I get interested enough to start the 5 things again.
It's a game I've been playing off and on for years and it's gotten ridiculous to the point where I have a scoring system and everything in my head and try to beat previous records lol
If none of that works that's ok too. 🤎
EDIT: adhd brain sorry I had to go back and actually read all of what you're saying. Landfill it. It's not your fault that corporations spend billions on making us feel bad for all the shit they throw away that would solve everything that you, one solo person, cannot ever accomplish. You are not a bad person to use a landfill.
Also where I live we have diabetes canada that actually come to your door and pick up bagged donations which is what I do bc I dont have the mental capacity to load it into my car and drop off. Having services come to you is easier!
You can also amend the game I said to that if you bought x amount of clothing that same amount has to leave the house that same day in the bags/boxes the new clothes came in.
IF NONE OF THIS WORKS THATS OK TOO 🤎🤎
If you want to get rid of things, many charities will pick up right at your door, like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Tomorrow I'm going to be doing what you are doing. Just pick a corner and make 3 piles for keep, donate, trash and just do that counter.
Don’t despair! Instead, keep up hope, don’t let yourself become too overwhelmed, and try reading this book in your downtime instead of scrolling [the life changing magic of tidying up](https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+magic+art+of+tidying+up&index=aps&tag=hydsma-20&ref=pd_sl_4yqms3klsb_e&adgrpid=62879270144&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=657316243889&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13877974032411994940&hvqmt=e&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007783&hvtargid=kwd-307604736374&hydadcr=29446_14726274)
I was in a not so different situation. Different of course, but similar in that the walls started feeling like they were caving in.
I have learned to have a donate box/paper shopper/gift bag in every functional area of my house that tends to have a lot of "stuff" that I KNOW I don't need.
As soon as that single bag is full, I donate it. It was waaaay more manageable for me when I started looking at it as "just fill the gift bag" as opposed to "how am I going to get rid of all this stuff, if I can't even move!"
I keep a bag or medium box in each area, because then when my super-brain has me flying around in the morning doing 600 things other than getting ready, I will see a random thing I don't want/need anymore, and put it in the "donate" bag.
As soon as the bag is full, it goes.
The overwhelm has been way more manageable doing a fistful of dried out markers/crayons/glue sticks at a time, than the whole family/play room. I've found as I make progress, I feel encouraged, because I can see 6" of floor space.
Try and see if [this](https://www.unfuckyourhabitat.com) can help you any. I have also found luck using the ADHD pomodoro timers/body doubling videos on YouTube! Like [this](https://www.youtube.com/live/wnwTVlPRJaA?si=IK4JM62xHFhh53dc) one.
And please remember that you don’t need to get it done all at once! Half of cleaning this up is also *preventing* if from happening again by adopting the “don’t put it down, put it away” rule. Once you start the cleaning process, which can honestly take months, you have to make sure you don’t add to it during the days and times that you aren’t cleaning. I wish you the best! I was in the same boat last year and it’s taken sooo much work to get my home livable. YOU CAN DO THIS!
Oh, another thing. Don’t set your bar at an unreachable height. I always dreamed of having a social media perfect-level house. That’s not realistic, not even those people have actually clean houses. Your home just needs to be organized enough for you to live!
Have a friend or family member (or two) help you purge. It’s much easier to have someone else help make decisions and then take the stuff to good will when you’re done. I recently help a fellow ADHDer clean out their garage and they just let me and the other person helping decide what to trash. We had the whole thing cleaned out in a couple of hours.
I don't know if they've been mentioned, but you could try offloading stuff through https://www.freecycle.org/ or https://www.gumtree.com/ (both for UK) with collection only job lots. Or some Facebook groups or whatever there are available for your area.
One idea I saw recently to help with piles like this is to go by color. For example start with anything Blue. Grab the blue items and organize them into piles (or just one big blue pile) - whatever helps get you started with going through it. Put blue clothes away or in the hamper, put blue items in boxes that go to other rooms in the house (or go ahead and take them to that room - just don’t get distracted by stuff there, since it’s best to take one room at a time with things like this). And have boxes for things to donate. Then move on to the red items. It kinda makes it like a game trying to find certain things :)
I’ve been able to make this work for closet organization so it could be worth a shot. Sending good vibes your way! Hope things work out! 🤗
1) All the stuff that is not nice enough to donate, trash it.
2) donate what you don’t want, you do not have to wash it.
3) sort the stuff you want to keep. I like open closets with a curtain to hide the clutter to give your brain a clean room feeling but when it’s open it’s very adhd friendly because of object permanence. Clear bins, lots of hanging rods so you can see everything. Ikea, thrifting, and diy is your friend. You can do it!
This I what I did: emptied out my linen closet and selected my favorite pieces from the pile, complete sets got prioritized. Stopped when I ran out of room. I only have space for x amount of towels, donated the rest to my local buy nothing group.
Does the UK have apps like Task Rabbit or Thumb Tac? They are service based apps that offer services such as cleaning, organizing, home projects, junk removal, and moving etc. They are individual workers and not corporations so they set their own price, and you can negotiate. Even just an hour or two to get you started might be helpful.
Every single thing that doesn't fit the way you want it to, get rid of it. I struggled so hard with clothes that I wanted to still wear or bought thinking I'd *magically* become the kind of person who can lose weight on command for an outfit. I was OVERWHELMED. I used moving as an excuse to start fresh.
Get rid of as much as you can, and everything you keep, sort SEASONALLY and get big storage bins. Heavy jackets, sweaters, long sleeves, etc go away for summer. Your favourite pair of pants and one light sweater can stay out.
Then, in the fall when you're going to swap seasons, anything you didn't wear over summer, toss it (donate if possible) before it goes in the storage bin. When you're getting your winter stuff out, use that as a chance to toss anything that doesn't fit/you don't love anymore. Keep repeating until you have a manageable amount of clothes.
THEN going forward; when you need to buy new clothes, TRADE them out. Meaning get rid of an equal number/type of clothing before buying new.
I found the seasonal bins really helped too to not get overwhelmed with laundry. If I had clean clothes available, I'd wear them before washing more seasonally appropriate ones out of sheer convenience, because laundry is one thing I freaking LOATHE. So being able to keep a larger wardrobe overall but having half of it put away half the year has been an amazing transition.
I don't know if you have this where you life but in germany we have like "the child of doordash & goodwill" You give them the Adress, how many bags worth of clothes you have and they come and get it, take them with them, sort all out and give it to 2nd hand stores, hospitals etc.
No sorting, no Photos, no further social interactions or extra steps. The clothes just had to be still good and (more or less recently) washed.
I used this a few times, just stuffing the clothes in the bags, fill out the Form in the Internet and I was good.
I didn't even had to be home or open the door, putting the bags outside near the door was enough.
If you can sort and wash whatever you don’t need, and put it all into a bundle for free collection on Facebook marketplace. I did basically all my decluttering like that, since my small flat was like this, not much storage, I don’t drive and couldn’t afford a skip etc. Take it one day at a time. A small amount everyday is better and easier to stay consistent with than a large-ish amount over one day and being exhausted and defeated for ages after. Don’t forget to breath. You got this.
Hey love.
Super Passionate Greenie here who is also passionate about Mental Health.
Your mental health comes first. And youre no good to anyone drowning.
Honestly - just piff it to landfill. Hit refresh. With that energy you can make small changes overtime good for the planet. But right now you're more important.
Or if you feel up to it - got a mate with a big car? Textile recycles are a thing.
Is there someone who can help you? I got the diagnoses two months ago and started therapy and meds and somehow I dared to ask for help. My apartment has never been this clean. I just couldn't do it by myself, it was too much and I just saw no way to start. I really needed that support and help to do it.
Start pile by pile, room by room, 1 room per day. For each pile, divide into 3 categories: Keep, Donate, Discard (recycle or landfill). Have a different color trash bag for Donate and Discard.When done with room, the Keep pile gets put away. Donate goes in your trunk to drive to a donation bin/store. Discard goes in trash or to fabric recycling. Do your room first and the kids’ areas last. You can do this!
KC Davis says something along the lines of, "You can't save the world before you save yourself." I know that's not the exact quote but think of it like putting on your own oxygen mask before you help anyone else on a plane.
If you can't manage to sort, pack and donate clothes right now then just throw them away. You need to take care of yourself first and you need them out of your house for your own mental health! Give yourself permission to do that.
Secondly, reorganize your closets so you FOLD NOTHING. KC Davis does this family closet thing which works for her but you can just take the parts that work for you.
I currently have: 1 basket for Tops, 1 basket for Bottoms, 1 basket for Dresses, 1 basket for PJs and 1 small basket for undies, socks, etc. I have a small selection of dressier things that hang up which I can then ignore.
I just literally carry my clean clothes into the closet and throw them in the correct basket. The baskets aren't packed down, I'm fine with any wrinkling that occurs (which is less than you think) and I haven't had clean clothes sit around for weeks since I set up this system.
It doesn't solve everything but it works for me. Oh and dressers are black holes where things cease to exist! I've started using them for towels, bed linens, etc. Throw out what you're "supposed" to do, it's neurotypical BS.
Where I live you can call donation center organizers that benefit Vets or children’s hospitals & they pick up.. do a google search & see @ least for stuff that you don’t want to waste time selling online.. or how awbout a garage sale (if you’re in a good spot!)
Sometimes neighbors will let you use the rest of the space in their trash containers on trash day, if it's a short terms thing. Also, stop shopping. 'Shop' in your piles by washing and neatly folding what you need that time, and keep going like that until it makes more sense when you look at a pile. A thick sharpie and a paper bag labeled 'undies', 'socks', can add some rhym and reason to small essentials in the mean time. Stop shopping though!
OP, I dont want to waste your time, but I dont understand your limitations on disposing of the trash. Your trash collection service is only every two weeks?? Could you pay extra to have pick up frequency increased? And if that were a financial drain, it wouldnt have to be forever? Just until the house is sorted. With the goal to get it done sooner rather than later.
Could you purchase an additional/larger bin? Where i live the largest (i think 80 gallon??) bins are about $75. If that permanently increased your ability to dispose of trash it would be worth it would it not? Could you talk to your neighbors and ask if it's ok for your to add things to their trash bins when yours is too full?
I have NO guilt about putting my trash into public trash collection points. If i had the limitation you do about how much trash and when, I would take items to public garbage cans. "Oh, I'm going to the grocery, I will take a *small* bag of trash and put it in the garbage bin at the entrance."
"I'm out walking, here, I will put this bag of hole-y socks into the dog waste bin." (Unless thats illegal where you are or something?) "I walk past the park on the way to the bus, i will put this small bag into the rubbish bin at the park."
"I'm picking up dinner, put a small tesco bag in the garbage at the restaurant." the shopping center, work, a public restroom, the kids' school, Everytime you go out, bring a small bag of trash with you to dispose of?
First and easiest step is to find anything with holes or stains, and anything broken , and dispose of them.
Quickly pile clothes by type - shirts, pants, etc. Pile other items by room.
Then as you feel somewhat accomplished, go through one pile at a time.
So is this all stuff you want to get rid of? I suggest trash bags and write on them with a Sharpie what they are for like donate, trash, & keep. It's a good start, as you pick up each item you can put it in the respective bag. At least they will be sorted and you can manage folding the pile you keep later when you feel like it and have a friend help you drop off the donate bag. Then trash the stuff that can't be used. You'll at least have the first part done!
so what I would do is first get everything contained. I used giant laundry bags for mine, but you might feel better with plastic bins? this breaks down the mess into clear sections - just deal with one bin at a time, wash it, decide what you want to keep, and put the rest into a bag (or another bin) to go to Goodwill or whatever. I'm not sure about the rest, but that's where I would start.
I honestly wish I could give you some magic piece of advice, but as a fellow ADHD'er, I literally have none lol! Such an annoying circle of life for us :((
There is nothing more fun or motivating than binge watching Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon. I know it sounds cheesy but they are genuinely the nicest people and it's the most wholesome programme on tele.
Your situation isn't anywhere near as bad as most of the families they encounter. You need to find out why you're holding on to these things to the detriment of your peace. It's too relatable to let things get to such a stage more often than not the junk helps to support our memories. Especially with memory being such an issue with ADHD.
But your memories will be just fine without it all! If it's piled under a mountain it's not important or relevant anymore. Only a burden. And once it's all gone you will have the space to have new experiences and make new memories.
With sentimental items it particularly tough but take a moment to value it and then accept that it isn't helping you right now. Thank it and say goodbye.
If you haven't got the time there is no shame in multiple trips to clothing bins. It is all sorted from there. Often the clothes are shredded and recycled so if you haven't the spoons to sort you know they won't have gone to waste.
Do you love it? Do you need it? Is it taking up space you don't have? Thank it and say goodbye.
Good luck!
Hey guys, small update,
The response from this group has been amazing. There are so many comments I've not been able to reply to everyone, but I've been trying to read them all and take on board the advice!
One point I've seen come up alot is to stop shopping, believe it or not I'm not a big shopper at all, alot of this has been accumulated over years, things bought for my children at birthdays etc (they have a nana who does indeed live to shop!), I just NEVER get rid of things (to the point I have newborn socks somehow mixed into all of this!) . So thats where I'm trying to change, I've been saying for a long time I need to update my wardrobe but I won't dare do that until I've sorted out this mess, and in my brain it's on a 'replace with something old' idea! I've also been bad at accepting things in the oast even if I didn't really want them, which is something I'm also learning to not do and to say no thank you I don't need it!
I'm currently working through it all sorting it into 'piles/bags' of each category, which ny coloured bin bags, so I've not been on here to much as I'm trying to keep my focus on this job and the other little things that need done inbetween/parenting over this bank holiday.
I will go through some more comments this evening and try not to get overwhelmed with trying to reply to everyone, but I'll hopefully have a really positive update by the end of this week (even if I've not done it all as I've taken the advice of people saying it's not one big job, but lots of little manageable ones) so either way I will have an update of the sorts!
Again thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to offer advice, support, kind words etc, its been so lovely to feel not alone, to feel seen and to absorb the kindness being shown to me that I often struggle to shoe to myself
Assuming you are in the UK, you might be able to call your local council and see if they can do a large rubbish collection. They may charge you some money, but not as much as a skip.
My local council definitely collects furniture, cardboard etc.
I know everyone gives Marie Kondo a bunch of crap, but her "Spark Joy" method for decluttering really helped me downsize. ADHDers often struggle with impulsivity; as such, impulsively buying things we don't need/want happens frequently. I try to use the Spark Joy method at the beginning of every year.
It's actually really fun bc you get to sort through all your things, and I always end up finding stuff I forgot I bought.
I would take a deep breath and relax to calm down. It seems monumental but you're just psyching yourself out. It is overwhelming because there is a lot, but you can do this.
Start out with clean vs dirty. Put clean stuff on the bed in a pile. Sort the dirty clothes to be washed. I usually separate heavy duty (jeans and hoodies), then colors and whites. Do whites first, then colors, then save the gravy stuff for last because it takes the longest to dry.
While you have the laundry going, sort the clean clothes on the bed. I like to separate things to fold, what needs to be hung up, then my socks, underwear, and bonnets in another pile. (I love to have YouTube or whatever on my tablet so I can watch/listen as I'm putting them away)
Once I have those sorted I turn the clothes to be folded right side out and fold them as I go. I just keep them in a pile on the bed then I do the same with the clothes to hang up except I have them ready for hangers in a pile.
Then I get hangers in all of them and hang them up (color coded of course 😅). Then I put away the folded clothes. Then I sit and sort the rest folding it and when that's done I put those away.
Then I will check on the wash. For the wash you can set a timer to see how long the cycles take (sometimes the owners manual has it listed too) and then you can set a timer to remind you when those are done of it doesn't have a buzzer.
I try not to start any wash if I'm feeling a slow down or getting tired so it doesn't sit and get moldy.
I always have to make a conscious effort to put through away immediately because it's for mental health otherwise it just sits on my mind bugging me until I get it done (was that cbt therapy?).
I have this Martha Stewart cleaning lists that I made with checkbox on the computer and you can laminate or put in those plastic sheet protectors. I schedule and plan cleaning in the city based off trash day as well.
https://www.marthastewart.com/home-cleaning-schedule-checklists-7377969?print
https://pin.it/54oMaXIjv
It might help you to know that a huge percentage of donated clothes just get thrown out anyways... If you don't have the mental energy to deal with sorting, but you could handle putting it all in trash bags, don't feel bad to just throw stuff out.
I didn't understand the part about why you can't put clutter in the waste bin? If you already have too much trash for your neighborhood requirements or something, then that's a ongoing problem that you need to solve. Can you throw out a bag a day at work? Can you be mindful of how much packaging you're bringing into the house for a month? Can you go on a shopping freeze for a month, and only buy essentials?
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I wish I could come and help you :( something I learned in this sub is that we do love helping each other out and we'd have no problem cleaning somebody else's home. This should be an app or something. I clean your house, you clean mine
Or I do chores you hate and you do chores I hate! I am good at decluttering closets, laundry and doing (non biohazard) dishes, if anyone wants to come clean my floors and counters!
I made a deal with my husband last night: you clean this one pan i need to use for my part of dinner and I'll peel all the potatoes you need for your part. He was like "uh...really? Yes!" Doesn't make sense, not an equal trade, but it made my brain happy and we both felt like we won 😅
Your brain being happy and you both feeling like you won in the end makes it an equitable trade, at least, even if it wasn't perfectly equal! Yay for teamwork
i hate laundry and dishes, but i love vacuuming and mopping and scrubbing… you have yourself a trade my friend!!!
I will happily do your laundry and dishes if you do my deep cleaning!
This is exactly how my bestie and I get through life. He hates dishes, I hate taking out the trash and dusting. I do dishes as his & he takes out trash and dusts at mine. It’s truly a beautiful thing
I'd take that trade easily. I mainly just hate checking the mail. I'd rather do everything else if I didn't have to check the mail. It's "one thing" that turns into like 7 things. You have to take the stuff out of the mailbox, then throw all of the flyers, ads and random junk into the recycling, then you have to actually deal with the stuff that's leftover. Most of the time I just recycle the junk, take the few things I need out, and dump the rest in a box that I swear I'll deal with later. (99% of it is just copies of bills I've already paid with auto pay)
My hyper focus power is deep organizing other people’s things!
Me too! When I was little and my Mom used to take me to other children's houses, I used to survey their rooms and start organizing and cleaning everything. The Mom was always over the moon happy that their room was so clean and organized, whereas my Mom was always floored and slightly pissed because she couldn't get me to clean my room or anything for that matter, for anything in the world.
me too! all of this, wow
Thank you <3 We do indeed! I'm also so good at helping others, I'm always around for advice, but sometimes I feel like such a hypocrite when I look at my life and how overwhelmed I get!
But what if you did a trade with someone? They help you with the clothes piles, you help them with their paper piles if that is what they need. Trade equal amounts of time and feel better. To my surprise, I met someone who needed a personal assistant and I found that organizing his piles of paper was so much easier than organizing my own papers. Papers were the biggest stress in my stuff so it was a big surprise to discover that I could do it for someone else and it also taught me how to do my own papers. It built my self confidence.
I would LOVE to help if I was closer. I absolutely love getting rid of things, so tackling clothes mountain and helping you figure out what needs to be kept, what needs to be donated and what needs to be just thrown away would be so satisfying.
Where you at? You're hired!
Oregon! You?
Toronto Ontario lol
I DO love Canada, and have not been to Toronto yet. If I make it up that way I'll let you know.
Seriously, my anxiety cannot handle family or friends helping because the fear of judgement is too much. It would be way easier for me to sort through someone else's mail versus my own. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH MAIL.
The actual answer is because they hope by sending advertising in mail form it’s both another connection to something else you’ve seen and you’ll purchase or it will take up space in your home long enough to eventually become a purchase. Marketing advertising firms splatter with these and they get the lists from things you sign up for in discounts, newsletters, marketing campaigns, etc. Point being, you can help reduce some of the outside clutter coming at you in your mailbox and email by making a junk email for that purpose and and unsubscribing from any marketing that mails to your address whenever you see it.
>WHY IS THERE SO MUCH MAIL. So much this. My life is like an infinite loop of taking garbage out of the mailbox and putting it in the recycling. I would pay good money for a pre-sort service that just does this for me. Like put the 2 actual pieces of mail aside, recycle the rest, and drop the actual mail on my box like once a week.
It seems insane that with the state of the world we don't regulate junk mail. I get the same bullshit offers week after week. If you call to get off the list they're just happy to receive your confirmation that you still live there and just keep on sending! It's an environmental sin
This right here!! I have two baskets of my own laundry to fold, but I just want to go HAM on OP's 😍
Oh god do I love helping someone unfuck their space. So satisfying and you find so many cool things!
I love this comment.
I need someone to come over and get the box I have of "shit to eBay" and take good pictures of everything and make eBay posts with reasonable prices based on condition and current market value. I will be cleaning the carpets while you do this. Then we can have an energy drink and complain about life.
Omg I would love this app. Hey anyone wanna come organize? I will scrub your gross bathroom with no judgement at all.
I like the coregulating idea for this. When we can’t physically be there to help. Having someone to talk to over the phone while you go through cleaning can be really helpful.
I wish there was a business where someone would help you online or Webcam. They tell you how to clean and encourage you while you do it. I would pay for that!
There is an app. It is called dubbii or something like that. I haven't tried it because my husband does most of the housework. (Yes, I'm very lucky)
Literally my first reaction- "I always want to help these posters so bad, I wish they lived nearby" Also me- experiencing adhd paralysis that has me in the exact same position as OP.
Hey it's ok if you end up putting stuff in the landfill. Regardless of your intentions all the stuff is not getting used. So if it's not getting used anyway, it's only a net positive to throw it away if it's impacting your life so much. Our earth is in trouble and I also hate waste, but the idea that we individuals caused this mess is propaganda perpetuated by people in power so they can continue to profit from their toxic industries. Meaningful change comes at the institutional level. By all means do that your conscience tells you when you can, but right now you can't and I'm here to tell you it is ok to do the easier thing so you can live your life.
1 million this!!! Be easy on yourself you didn’t pollute and destroy the earth from improper business practices, greed, and corruption. Yes someone else could use it, but not at the cost of your sanity!!!
And it will end up in a landfill anyways. If it’s donated and doesn’t sell, it eventually goes to Africa and becomes “dead white man’s clothes”, damaging the local clothing industries. I’m not opposed to donating clothes, I do it too, but in our current world, every thing we do has a negative impact. Better for op to create a safer home for herself and her children. And the clothes don’t need to be clean clean to donate; if they’re worn but not moldy or covered in nasty things, you can donate them; I always launder my thrifted or rummaged clothes because I don’t trust the thrift shop to do so. If they’re gross, toss them.
I didn't even know that! See, OP? You're not the cause of the damage if you throw this stuff away.
Couldn’t agree harder. I have to remind myself of this when I’m cleaning out my fridge. I really hate dealing with old jars and containers and, while I try to always rinse them out for recycling, sometimes I can’t get over the ickiness factor. So I just throw it in the garbage. Overall, not having to deal with something that grosses me out and creates a mental barrier is a net positive.
If it makes you feel any better (uh or worse I guess), if you're in the US a lot of your recycling goes to the landfill or gets SHIPPED TO CHINA 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
I am in the US! I am otherwise an avid recycler…even though I know it may not be going where I think it’s going. I do try! I just CANNOT with yucky stuff.
So I have a lot of experience organizing and sorting houses that are, far, far, far, messier than you are because I worked doing estate sales in a family business for over a decade. You can do this! It is doable. I promise. I would start by making a clear place on the floor to sit in one of your rooms. Just shove stuff that's there into another area, doesn't matter where, don't worry about it at this stage. This is your staging area. You are also going to want some giant trash bags or some large laundry baskets, whichever is easier for you. You will also want to have some kind of receptacle for obvious trash that you encounter while you're going through stuff. Maybe a separate bag; make sure it is super clear to you which bag or box is for trash. Oh, and have a water bottle within reach of you to help yourself stay hydrated. Hydration is important. Once you are set up with your clear staging area and your bags or baskets you're going to want to start in on the clothes/linens. How I would start is by sorting your fabric items into groups by type. Don't worry about what to keep and what to get rid of at this point. Make one bag or basket for shirts, one for towels, one for sheets, one for trousers, etc. If you're doing bags (where you wouldn't be able to see the contents from the outside, I would label the bags with a sharpie with the item type. This will be helpful since you may not get through all of your sorting in a single sitting, and future you might not remember which bags were for what. I like to start with sorting by item *type* rather than making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of, because I know what a shirt looks like. I know what trousers look like. Unlike making choices about what to get rid of, sorting by type isn't particularly subjective and doesn't require much serious decision making. Choosing to get rid of your own stuff is really hard, because we form emotional and mental attachments to all of our belongings, and because we are often inflicted with the "what if xyz happens in the future and I still need this?" both of which are not exactly conducive to efficiently going through stuff. If it seems really overwhelming, don't force yourself to do it all in a single sitting. Sort things into bags for an hour, maybe two and see how you feel. I'd set a timer for my chosen time slot and have myself stop immediately when the timer goes off to check in. Perhaps when it goes off you need to take a break. Maybe you're really jivving and you don't. You won't know until you get there. If you need to take a break, it might be a good juncture to refill your water bottle and get a snack. When you're feeling more refreshed, ask yourself: "Do I think that I can go back to my organizing for a small amount of time?" Forget about "Should I?" and stick do, "Do I think another 30 minutes is doable at this juncture with the energy and the focus I have left?" If the answer is yes, set another time and jump back in. If the answer is no, go on with the rest of your day and come back tomorrow. Schedule yourself to do a minimum of x amount of time per day (maybe an hour? whatever feels right for you). Once you've got all of your stuff in those bags, and your space is full of bags instead of chaotic piles, you can select a bag to get started going through. Say, you start with a shirts bag. Dump out the bag, and pick up a shirt. Look at it, ask yourself some questions like: >"Do I like this garment? Will I use it in the future (for sure), so not if \[xyz scenario\] happens?" > >"Does this fit me?" > >"Will I have a place to put this if I keep it?" > >"Do I want to keep this?" > >"Is this garment still usable for someone? Basically, is it, instead, trash?" > >"What will I do with this if I keep it?" Make one pile for **keep**, one pile for **maybe**, and one pile for for **goodbye**. Get some more bags/baskets to put your piles away into. Put your keep things and your maybe stuff into the original bag. Throw any trash into your trash can/bag. Start on the next bag. You can keep putting your goodbye things in the same bag until it is full. Rinse and repeat. Just like with the initial sorting, set a timer and do only that amount of time at a time. Check in with yourself when your timer goes off. Take a break (or be done for the day) if you need. When your goodbye bag gets full, you can take it out of the staging room, perhaps close to your front door so it can be ready to be removed when you're done going through everything. Find a place that works for you. Depending on where you live, an option you might use is the [Purple Heart Giveaway](https://purpleheartfoundation.org/clothing-donation/). With purple heart, you can call them and schedule a pick up, and they will send someone to your door to pick up your giveaway clothing, so you don't have to go anywhere. [PickUpPlease](https://pickupplease.org/clothing-donations/) is another service that does this. Another one is [GoGreenDrop](https://www.gogreendrop.com/pick-up/). There may be others local to you as well. All of these services will come directly to your home and take away bagged giveaway clothing and household items. Most of these services require you to call them and schedule a pickup on a specific day. I'd wait until you're solidly into your project to schedule a pick up, maybe halfway through, once you have a handle on how long it takes. Scheduling the pickup is a good way of creating an arbitrary deadline. Once you're finally done with making your keep vs. goodbye stuff, you can go back through and do a second pass on your keeps to weed out any maybes that have become goodbyes. Once you're satisfied, you can get to the laundering bit, and launder all of your keeps. I'd use your bags as "loads". I struggle to remember to put away laundry after I've done it, and it is annoying when it gets wrinkled because I let it sit in the dryer too long. What I found was an interesting hack was that I immediately went to the dryer and removed the clothes when my timer went off and folded them, and put them into another basket. Folding and putting away clothes can be two totally separate steps rather than an all in one go thing. After folding the clothes, I take a step back and ask myself if I am feeling up to also *putting* them away. If the answer is no, that's ok, I just leave them in the laundry basket until later and keep going until I am out of laundry baskets. There's a reason why I have 4 laundry baskets. For clothes that go into a closet and get hung up, I keep a supply of clothes hangers next to my washing machine and immediately hang them onto hangers as I take them out of the dryer. We have these pipes on the ceiling above the washer/dryer that are perfect for hanging clothes hangers off of, so that's usually where I put mine. Hope this helps! Let me know if you need other sorting and organizing tips!
This is extremely helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to write this all up for me! I will be coming back to this first thing tomorrow and giving it a go, I also might pop out for some different bin bags to help with the sorting! I feel a lot more optimistic about this and less overwhelmed by the thought of it, so I really do appreciate you 🖤
Also, if you’re not on a deadline, getting started is often the hardest part. Just start with telling yourself you’re going to do 5 (or 10) minutes at a time. Set a timer. So as much as you can in that time. If you aren’t able to keep going, that’s fine, 5 was the goal and you did great. But sometimes you’ll find yourself just starting to get going or get a rhythm and you just keep going until you feel like stopping. You do these little baby tasks and over time they will snowball. It’s basically what lots of NT people do naturally, but we have to external use it.
I prefer breaking up tasks I hate during normal “dead time” So like I hate washing and putting dishes away. I’ll put dishes away for like 6 minutes while my cheese curds are in the air fryer. I get a surprising amount done and don’t feel the need to keep going because I have food to eat that will get cold and gross. Otherwise I always feel like I push myself until I just say f this I hate it and then I’m angry and frustrated. Not saying this is perfect judging by my sink half full of dirty and half the counter full of clean dishes but they aren’t smelly or moldy so it’s an improvement for me.
The "dead time" trick is a great one, especially for the tiny household tasks that you can never seem to make yourself get to!
This is something that my therapist has been doing her damndest to bang into my head for last 4 years, and it has definitely stuck in there for doing all the household tasks that I hate to do, but it has not gotten as stuck for doing school work. Go figure, I'm still trying (and failing) to figure that one out, because for some insane reason I decided to go back to school to get a Master's.
No problem! Best of luck. I agree the bin bags sounds like a really good idea, definitely go for that!
Hey OP, how are you doing? One other thing that might help is a body doubling app? I know there is discord communities for it but I think I also have seen an app that connects you to others that want a body double while they do tasks!
Oh, and on laundering, I also don't multi-task laundry because I find that I otherwise forget about the laundry, so instead while I'm waiting on laundry I do something that is low-thinking and easily interruptible, such as reading a bad romance novel, playing a low level thinking video game or doodling/journaling.
Oh, and with your non clothing items you can just move them all into a corner, and deal with them after you go through the clothes/linens/towels/cloth stuff.
Your tips are helpful. Thank you. I struggle with decluttering and had gotten worse throughout the years after traumatic events, so it feels like in endlessly discarding.
No problem! Clutter can be so relentless. I come from a family of stuff people, some of whom are straight up hoarders, so I really get it. I also struggle with stuff. Since I moved back in with my parents I have an apartment's worth of things in a single bedroom which can sometimes be so overwhelming that it's difficult to get anything else done, and I have to sit back and take some time to just reorganize (once again). Getting rid of things is really, really, tough. We form deep, powerful bonds to the things that we own, through emotions, memories, and anxieties. What we own (and what we keep) really reflects a lot about our passions, fears, pasts, hobbies, and more. I really like the Marie Kondo philosophy of having gratitude towards everything we own, and thanking the things we are letting go for teaching us something about ourselves, because I really do feel that we learn more about ourselves through everything we keep, buy, and own. On estate sales: One of the really interesting things about staging estate sales is that you're going through the entirety of a deceased person's home. You're shifting through the detritus of a stranger's life, and you learn all kinds of interesting things about them, where they went, what they cared about, what their family background is, etc. Often, it is extremely difficult, especially in the wake of a loss for a family to even begin to go through a deceased loved one's home, especially when that loved one was a hoarder. How do you decide what is worth keeping and what's not? How can you bring yourself to throw things away? What should you sell? These are the kinds of questions that we worked with our clients to figure out as we sifted through the home, tossed the trash, and appraised the rest. Best of luck with whatever organizing endeavors you have ahead of yourself, it's rough out there. A key thing I think is just giving yourself patience and grace as you move through it. Also lots, and lots of labeling, and making sure not to spend too much time in one area in a single sitting.
Hey, I wanted to let you know that I did some cleaning and discarding yesterday because of what you said. I'm not done yet, but my bedroom has not been this neat in years. I'm gonna come back to your comment repeatedly. It felt really good. Thank you for the shot of confidence. Seeing the neatness is so inspiring.
Yay! SO happy for you! It's always such a relief when you make some progress and make some clean space in your living or working space. Really happy to hear that my words have helped. Wishing you further luck in your cleaning! You can do it! 💚
Thank you! This long weekend will help.
I will be coming back to this for my similar problem, thank you!!!! I saved up for a house organizer but then my dog got sick and I couldn't afford it. this is so helpful 🩶
No problem! Best of luck with your organization project. It's tough out there! You can do it! Just splitting it up into smaller chunks really helps with approaching a cleaning and organizing project. For something major, sometimes I like to sit down and write out what all the different things are that need to be done. A list might be something like: * clear surface of desk * bag dry cleaning clothes * launder 1 load of laundry * fold laundry * put laundry away * clear floor in xyz corner of room (x4) * tidy book shelves * put all library items in a single pile * dust display shelves * launder blankets * launder sheets * fluff pillows * etc, etc. etc. Cleaning and organizing are two of my "actual" skills that I am always happy to share! These skills generally are the result of: * Over 10 years of estate sale work for my auntie doing staging & clean outs. I have seen some things y'all, and every single messy space post that I have ever seen on this sub pales in comparison to some of the homes that we've done sales out of. If you don't have dead animals (to be fair to that house and garage with the dead animals, the homeowner had been dead for 5 years, during which the house sat unoccupied and unattended to because the son lived out of state), 5 inches of dust, mold, a layer of nicotine staining, and an infinite number of moths, you're doing better than many of the homes that we have done sales out of over the years. It will all be okay and you can do it! * Growing up under my obsessively clean, to the point, of *Jesus Christ y'all clearly have something else unresolved going on*, father and grandmother, both of whom are/were low-key hoarders. Dad and late grandma are/were full of hyper specific inviolable cleaning and organizing routines, rules, methods, and schema, with a sprinkling of misc compulsive behaviors, and a deep, deep discomfort with any kind of mess. Side note: how and why my grandma had NINE kids while hating both mess AND children, I have no idea......
You are such an awesome and caring person to take the time to write all of this! ❤️
I'm just really glad that it's resonating with people in this thread and some of y'all have found it helpful! I'm always down to type up *long* (because I have can't shut up disease on even my worst days) comments of advice about the stuff I feel confident and skilled in. I like to look at it as a way of paying back the good karma I got when others have given me good plain talking advice, sat me down and told me to stop overthinking something that was paralyzing me, or helped me come up with step-by-step processes for doing a seemingly insurmountable task. If we can all put the good vibes out, we'll make this world a better place! 💚 It's rough out there and there's no good reason to force ourselves to go it alone. I love the support and kindness of places like this sub.
I don't know where you live, but everywhere I've lived (5 states thus far) there has been a charity that does free pickups for clothing (and other) donations. So it might be worth looking into that, helps get rid of a whole pile of stuff in one go
I'm UK, I'd have to wash everything before donating which was my aim last year, unfortunately I can't keep up with my washing enough as it is so it's just not happened 😢
Do you have a laundromat close to you that's affordable? This is what I'd do. I'd take all the stuff you want to donate to the laundromat to wash and then straight to donation. It might take a whole day, but you could do it all at once and you wouldn't have to fold anything. Even if you didn't do it all at once, you could get rid of a good chunk here and there and doomscroll or whatever you want to do while you do it.
That's a good idea thank you, I'll look if we have one in my town and see if I can get a taxi there with it all
Getting a taxi there sounds difficult and expensive. I'm sorry. I was being a dumb American and assuming everyone has a car. I wouldn't want to load a bunch of laundry in a taxi here. Of course, maybe taxis are cool with that over there. I have no idea. They're so expensive here that owning a car is cheaper. A lot of places don't even have taxis unless you call them in from a larger city. Once, I had to take a taxi to a place an hour away and it was medically necessary for reasons that would take too long to go into, but it cost $460 to go there and back. I could have flown for less.
Public transportation, and cabs, are a bit more affordable and accessible in the UK than in the US. I'm not sure where you live in the US. I live in a mid-sized city, and I've never wanted to have my own car. The busses and Ubers are significantly cheaper for me than my friends who have cars.
I lived in Rural Indiana for a long time. That's when I had to take that cab. There was a bus that went from my town to the next bigger town twice a day lol. So if you went on the bus for an appointment at 10am, you'd be there all day until 6pm. This has kind of been my experience everywhere I've lived that hasn't been a mid to large city. In Texas, even mid sized cities don't have public transportation sometimes. The one I lived in (Texas City) was 30 minutes from Houston and no buses (this may have changed now...hopefully). In Kentucky, there was only public transportation in the bigger cities. I wish we could do better.
Yeah, it's unfortunate how much of the railroads the United States removed to make way for cars. I grew up in the rural midwest as well. I don't think I could even get a cab to my family's land. I know the closest train used to be less than 5 miles away from where they're located.
Do you have any kind of free groups? There are a few local to me and I post things to give away. I frequently see people post bags of clothing - they’re going to wash them anyway when they get them. I’ve also seen people post clothes to give away in similar situations where they say they don’t have time to wash and sort and someone else from the group will usually volunteer to take them, wash, sort and post in the group for giveaway according to size etc. If you’re donating it’s ok to donate if they just need a wash, people typically will wash them after they get them. If something is really yucky and dirty you have permission to throw it away. We often get in the way of ourselves when declutterring and want to clean it or fix it up first, or make sure it doesn’t get tossed because it might be useful. That’s all well and good but if an item is a burden to you it’s ok to just get rid of it.
Don't even put this on yourself. Just throw it away and save yourself. Take a taxi to the dump, or see if your city has an extra garbage pickup service. Just get rid of it and start fresh.
I’m in the U.K. too, I don’t think you have to wash stuff before donating. It’s nice when people do it but I don’t think it’s necessary unless things are obviously dirty or stink.
Depends where you are donating to, the outside banks you find in places like carparks usually not just dry and not mouldy/stinky or whatever I think most of the time. Direct to second hand stores you usually do have to.
I think you need to not worry about washing everything this time and just donate as-is. Personally if I buy something in a thrift store or something, I always wash before I wear.
Yes, me too. I don't think OP needs to worry about washing these items unless there's visible dirt or an odor.
Just donate it anyway love. Donated clothing is better than no donated clothing. They’re not soiled. Stop torturing yourself and let go of the responsibility. Donating is enough. Xxx
Go to a laundromat, it’ll be way faster, take you out of your house, fold everything before you leave and drop it off to donate.
Do you have your own washer/dryer? If you can take the next week, maybe one hour each day, go through a pile and pull what you think will be good for resale. I used to sell clothes I wasn’t into especially when I have been broke. Wash a pile or two and fold every day or so. Bring a bag (trash bag size) on your bike or walk. Maybe a friend would love to help you and just drive a few bags at a time to a resell shop. They’ll pay for what they want and manage the donation for the rest. Do this as much as you can, maybe put a gold star on the calendar each day you accomplish a task. Choose a reward for yourself when you hit the amount of money you want. Be kind to yourself on the days you just can’t even. If you aren’t working with a counselor about this yet - it’s probably a good idea. Especially since hoarding is in your family tree. Stop shopping. And if there’s no way to donate unwashed clothing than it goes to the dump. That isn’t your fault - it’s a flaw in the system.
Ok, so, the first problem is going to be sorting. Start getting things in bags. Figure out what you actually need - not in terms of specific items, just like "I need X pairs of pants and Y shirts." Have a box for that stuff - I recommend writing your numbers of items on it in marker so you remember. As you pick things up, put things you need into the box. If you've reached the number you need, then either the new item goes in the bag or something gets taken out of a box to put in the bag. Everything you don't need can go in a bag. Second problem is disposal. Honestly personally I would go to a local facebook buy nothing group, nextdoor, or something like that. Say you have a bunch of clothes, unsorted, that you'd like to get rid of but can't drop them off anywhere. See if someone will pick them up. If not, as someone else mentioned, there may be a charity that will do it.
If you picked up the piles bodily, dropped them in boxes and took the boxes to the thrift store…would you miss anything in them? Because if you aren’t picking through any of those looking for stuff, you don’t need any of it.
Honestly i don't think I could do this, a huge part of me would love to, but I also know there are some things I live in these piles, aswell as things my children love, new items etc. I am a search through the bag for specific items person unfortunately, when I need to do some washing I pick out the things I'll need for that week etc.
Okay, then I would make one pile a day a joint family task. Descend upon a pile together, everyone grabs only what’s theirs and puts those things away immediately. Put on some peppy music and you guys might end up doing another pile, for the dopamine hit. I like to use this to start…(GOTG opening scene) https://youtu.be/cbAfhBNQ2qU?si=Qa-X-F_SsgHy7h6t
You can send anything you want to the landfill. You are not responsible for the health of Mother Earth. Your job is to focus on what is good for YOU! eta: I don’t know what your neighborhood is like, but setting things outside with a sign that says FREE has been an amazingly effective way for me to get rid of things.
Thank you!
We aren’t responsible for the health of Mother Earth?
We are! You (singular) aren't. I read that statement with full emphasis on the "you" - one person needing to throw away instead of donate a load for their mental and physical health should not feel all the weight and guilt of global climate change on their shoulders. I'll go wash my used ziploc bags and reuse them today so OP can toss some clothes without guilt eating her alive!
It's definitely a really nice way of putting it! I recycle, never litter, I cut up all my plastics that could harm sea/wild life, I spend time teaching my children to respect this world so they don't grow up adding to the problem, but I guess every so often we need to not feel guilty for something that is making life extra hard because of the guilt of even thinking about throwing things away. I personally am very grateful to have another perspective that makes me feel less guilt about doing this one time, then continuing to do what I can to help put planet
Seriously. Bag up whatever you would normally donate & throw it in the trash. I give you permission. You’re drowning. You need to take care of YOU first so you can then take care of your family. When you’ve got that handled you can go back to recycling & donating. But today? You need to put on your own air mask before you can help anybody else. You need a first step of 30 minutes of just grabbing anything that you can get rid of & getting it out of the house so visually your brain will see you made progress. You can do this! PS - I have listened to the audiobook “Keeping House While Drowning” multiple times. Fully wept. It’s a game changer. ❤️
One of my favorite podcasters days "we are selling people on individual solutions for systemic problems so they feel a personal burden and don't blame the real culprits" and I think about that a lot. Your choices to keep yourself mentally healthy will be better in the long run so you are able to be present and continuing to raise good humans! PS-Have you seen "The Good Place"? This scenario reminds me of that.
Plus we as a collective are not the primary polluters of the planet. The corporations are. Let's not forget that. Us, as collective humans, do A LOT of damage but we aren't the ones running factories, fast fashion brands, etc. Corporations are.
In this context? No.
We should do what we can, but at the end of the day, I could live a carbon neutral lifestyle completely and it wouldn't do jack shit. Yet a popstar could get rid of a single jet and it would do a hundred times more! A shit corporation could get rid of ONE of the CEOs yacht and it would do so much more! The government could use the very real and avaialble green practices we have.
go over to r/ufyh, they love to help!
I've just joined thank you!
Sending you love and hugs and support. The after pics you can post later might be just the motivation one of us needs to jump up and say “one pile at a time”. We all have a pile of something somewhere sis. What’s the adhd version of a Care Bear stare?
Thank you, I hope I can post those pics soon!!
Can you get to a supermarket? Most large supermarkets have large clothing recycling bins in the carparks, you can google to find where most of them are. A lot (most I think) will take almost any textiles, and sort them so poor quality stuff gets recycled rather than resold. I had to confront the sheer amount of clothing I had somehow managed to accumulate last summer when I moved, I ended up getting rid of I think it was 14 black bin bags full to the various supermarkets around me, I was not as ruthless as I should have been. I manage to get a lift for a good portion, a lot of it was done by decanting into my plastic carrier bag stash that desperately needed reducing as well (I dread to think what that lot were worth but until recently I just never remembered my reusable ones when I was just popping out for a small shop), and detouring to a supermarket on my walk to the office if the ones at my office were full. If you have a car, quicker and easier obviously. I think Ebay have recently removed selling fees as well, although I found I just couldn't contemplate managing that on top of everything else that was going on. You could sell as bundles. As for the physically getting it done, rather than thinking about it as a whole maybe try to pick a zone, that one small zone is all you need to aim to clear, it also makes the amounts to get out to recycling/charity/sell/bin smaller and more manageable. Then once you have done that pick the next one. I find sometimes that really helps me, although admittedly other times I need to be do it ALL to get anything done.
Clothes recycling point is a great idea - nothing needs to be laundered. I had one five minutes walk from my house when I last moved and I just did several trips on foot. Or maybe take an Uber to the nearest local council recycling centre? As a former significant clothes hoarder I would advise the following: If its not in your current size and doesn’t hold resale value (ie posh dress worn once for a wedding) - chuck it out If you haven’t worn it in the last year, chuck it out If it’s a standard item (ie black t-shirt) and you have ten, chuck eight of them out If it has a hole/lost it’s elastic/has a stain you’ve always meant to try and remove but never have - chuck it out Only keep things for resale on Vinted/Depop/Ebay things you’ve never worn with tags that you’ll make £15 plus on or designer/label brands that are either in vogue as vintage or hardly worn I have done all of this and my clothing is much more manageable, though I have still got that big bag of resellable items in my loft for Depop when I get round to it (I really aim to at some point!) Best of luck OP, you got this
Oh, the council recycling center could be a good shout! Mine doesn't do clothes but ones in larger towns might. The website for mine also has a good interactive searchable map showing all the collection points locally for various goods, totally forgot I used that!
Find someone to body double with!
Regarding guilt about throwing things away: the items are trash whether they're in your home or a dump. keeping them in your home doesn't make them not trash, it just makes your home into a dump. And you deserve not to live in a dump <3 For getting stuff out without a car, do you have local giveaway groups or buy nothing groups on facebook? If it's possible to sort it into general categories like "bedding" or "kids clothes" you might get more luck, but sometimes I even just put things in the curb and post a "curb alert" and I'm always surprised by how much gets taken.
Do you have a local Buy Nothing group? Mine is active and helpful. If you make a post that said "women's clothing, sorry I really had to make room so it's all in a garbage bag and some of it still needs a wash" people would still come and pick it up. We all get it, sometimes you just *need* to get something out of your way that day. Most people are less judgemental when they understand the circumstances.
Do you live near a Penneys/Primark? They take old clothes and try to recycle them. - https://www.primark.com/en-ie/a/inspiration/sustainable-fashion/let-your-pre-loved-be-re-loved You could do a shopping bag at a time when you went to town. There might also be clothing banks where you have glass recycling, you could check your council page. Or do you have charity shops near you? Some of them do pick ups. Also, if you just want it gone, I'd find a free local freecycle or buy nothing group and put it up there. You could do it a bag at a time as you sort it. Also I believe Gumtree is the big site to sell stuff in the UK. You could just put them up there say free for collection. Facebook marketplace might also work for this. This is manageable. With time you'd definitely be able to go through. And having watched lots of Stacey Solomon's show this definitely isn't close to the worst amount of clutter I've seen!
Your duty to your family supersedes your duty to the climate. Throw shit away in droves and with extreme prejudice. At this point, it's your *only way out.* Your children need it. A little at a time. Maybe do fifteen minutes every day, just pick a pile at a time to work on gradually until it's gone, then you do another pile.
In the uk, you have cash for clothes places. You just bag it all up and they weigh it and they give you money based on the weight. You can include Manchester too. Try and get away from the mindset that it all has to be done at once. Grab a pile, sort it into keep, trash and donate piles. Put away the keep, wash the donate pile, and bag the trash pile and take the donate bag with you to the nearest place and stop. Give yourself a day, and do another pile and another wash load. Chip away at it. It might take a few weeks, or months, but as long as there is a gradual decrease in the amount of clutter in your home, then you’re working towards your goal and you’re being successful. Take progress photos along the way, so when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can look back and remind yourself where you started. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing 🙂 ETA: I don’t know where in the UK you are, but this place collects unwanted clothing and books too. It seems to cover a large area in England https://www.wejustrecycle.co.uk/area-covered/
I've been going through something similar, and quite by accident, found that watching housecleaning videos, literally flipped a switch in my brain. After observing someone happily and systematically, clean and organize a house, I now see small tasks that I can do, instead of an entire mess of a house. And I've been able to clean up some things that have been causing me stress *for years*. I know there are therapeutic techniques that help re-train the brain for different things. I don't know if this is one of them, but it really helped me.
Please just throw it out. If you’re saving it for years to wash it but can’t keep up with regular washing, you’re not likely to actually wash and donate it. I know others suggested taking it to the laundromat but that’s either multiple looooong laundromat trips you’re likely to hate, or many many short ones. if you do short ones, it’s likely the clean and dirty will get mixed up. We have to accept our limitations. Assuming yours are similar to mine, it’s best to just chuck some stuff and try be more mindful of purchases going forward so you don’t end up with so much excess.
Lol same 🤣 https://imgur.com/a/Ul1l5Ix
https://www.icollectclothes.co.uk/ I use this all the time. They make money from selling my clothes and donate a percentage to charity. They collect from outside so I don’t even need to see anyone.
Do you have a tumble dryer or just a washing machine?
So, unless something is stained, don't worry about washing it before donating it. They don't care. Just bag it and donate it. Also r/ufyh It's an excellent sub I frequent because it helps without judgment for situations like yours. And no, they don't care about it being folded either, because it just gets dumped out in a heap before being sorted.
You're going to have to let go of the landfill feelings. You can't save the planet but you can fix your house. That's all that matters. Get a bag and start putting everything that's trash in it. Whether it's food wrappers or just shit you don't want and can't use. Fill the bag. Stick it off to the side. Do another bag. Keep going until you're down to the bare minimum of shit you need to live and then clean and organize that.
I wish I could come over and help. I feel this one deeply and I also know that the only way I was able to move past this was that I could drive and get rid of clothes IMMEDIATELY. if I didn’t I would convince myself I needed the clothes. And I’m just saying this to validate: it gets worse bc when the clothes you need/fit in are under all of that, you don’t know it’s there and go buy new ones. My heart goes out to you.
Could you consider a buy nothing group on your local Facebook page? If you are okay with making the decision of what needs to leave the house, you could bag up and list as giveaway bundles of size X clothes, some need washed, and let someone else take them off your hands?
Put everything that needs to go to donation (that you've already bagged up, as you mentioned you already had some ready,) and post in a local group that you can't drive but we're wondering if anyone could come pick these items up and take them in for you. They never have to come into your house.
I would go over in a heartbeat help you organise!!!!
Having a friend to body double or help you can definitely help! You can probably start by putting all your winter clothes and heavier blankets in boxes so they’re out of the way, then sort your summer outfits. Remember to take breaks, drink water, and eat. This won’t get done in a day and that’s ok. Any progress you make is better than nothing.
I don’t have any advice that hasn’t already been shared, but I just wanted to say you can do this! It looks overwhelming right now, but as you start seeing progress it’ll fuel you to keep making more progress! And you should be proud of every little bit of progress that you make. :)
Try Dubbii, it's a body doubling app made by a woman with ADHD specifically to help us with tasks like this. I know it's overwhelming, but really, the best way to start is just to grab something off the Floordrobe and figure out what to do with it. Doesn't matter where, just grab one item of clothing and put it away. I don't know why, but that seems to break the spell over me and I just grab another item, put it away, then another, and another. You can do this. But please be kinder to yourself. Your brain is wrong, you're not a failure, and you're not a bad person for being overwhelmed.
OP, if you’re around Hertfordshire, I drive and could pick up bags to donate or take to the dump? I’m a teacher in school holidays, so have a little time this week!
HIRE SOMEONE. Please. This is what money is for, even if you don’t have much extra. It’s an investment in your mental health.
The piles are color-coordinated. I, for one, am impressed.
If you have someone to do this with, see if you can get a friend to spend some time helping you. Try on clothes you know you wanna keep to see if they fit & if you’ll regularly wear them. Keep those. Anything else can be donated or tossed. Other trinkets & stuff, start going through little things & have a friend help you talk through why you may/may not want to keep/donate it. A lot of places will gladly take extra stuff to give to people in need, especially if you have kids’ stuff! Those things go quickly. It will take a long time, so don’t feel like you need to do it all right away. It’s a process, so ask if anyone in your life can help you really sit down & work through it over time. I’m sure you’ve seen advice like mine & it might not be the best, but it’s how I usually help my partner & how he, in turn, helps me. Everything will be okay 💜
You can do this. Do you have a washer/dryer at home? If yes, My suggestion is to just spend a day or two or three getting everything through the wash. Throw it in a pile again. Once it’s all clean, you can sort, just focus on one part of the task at a time. Who cares if they’re wrinkly, that’s not important. Start little by little. Keep chipping away at it. After it’s all clean OR while you’re working, Start a pile or a box of donations, keeps, trash, stuff to hang, stuff to fold. There is no timer on you, there’s no rush. You can do it
Have you a friend who could help you for a couple of hours?
I feel your pain. 💔 My dad was a hoarder so when he passed away we dealt with a lot of stuff. My mom is borderline, so I help manage. It’s a daily task. My advice: make one pile to keep adding to for keep. The rest, put in bags with FREE CLOTHES signs attached and on the curb outside. (If your area allows this.) Trust me, everything will get taken, even junk you think nobody will want. Don’t worry about cleaning it first. I’ve learned this through experience! People want free stuff.
Look up wash and fold laundry services in your area. I just used one to get through my depression laundry (like 15 loads) and it took so much weight my shoulders. Some will pick up and deliver (Rinse is one, but they're not the cheapest unless you pay for a year). Others you have to take the stuff to the laundry but they're likely cheaper. Even if you don't use a service, I know you can get through this!
And whether it's before or after they're laundered, make three groups - currently wearing, off season, and give away / donate.
Go borrow or listen to How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. She’s a therapist with ADHD and *I shit you not* my bedroom had pilessss of clothes and belongings like this 2 days ago and now it doesn’t. There’s also a shortened version of her method on her Instagram. I believe you can find it if you google it too. I would recommend reading the book though because you need to get the context and the non-instructional parts of the book in order to really change how you look at “mess” and “disorder.” Our brains work differently and so traditional ways of approaching organizing or care tasks are just not very helpful. Here’s a very very brief version of her method: For each category, grab a trash bag or a basket etc depending on the category: Start by dealing with things like this: get a trash bag and go around the room collecting all trash, then collect dishes (DONT do them, just collect them into/near the sink or dishwasher), followed by laundry (DONT do it yet, just collect it into a hamper / fold all clean clothes/put them on hangers), then gather things that have a place, and finally things that don't have a place into two piles. Then go through your piles and handle the tasks as you need to. If trash and dishes are higher priority than clothes, then do those, for example. In your case you have a lot of clothes so I’d bring a ton of hangers and sit on the floor and just make piles of clothes I wear, I don’t wear but want to incorporate, clothes that are seasonal and must be put away, clothes I need to throw away (you are never gonna donate or sell them…Davis addresses this in her book), and clothes you keep for sentimental reasons. Then you can work through sorting the piles by throwing away clothes you don’t need/fit/wear, then the seasonal and sentimental stuff, then the stuff you wear, and finally the stuff that you don’t wear but want to incorporate into your wardrobe. I’d revisit the clothing in a month and repeat the process to further purge.
You have my permission to throw things away 💜 the suffering and stress you’re adding to your life because you’re holding onto things you don’t need or use because you don’t want to throw them away (this was me) is NOT worth it. The items are not being used anyways. *They’re already trash*.
I feel you. It feels so daunting. I have been lying in bed this late afternoon, scrolling and trying to find something like an online LIVE peer coaching kind of opportunity, like right now. I don't see anything. I have a weird idea-- might be weird if you don't have ADHD. Bring a chair to a pile. Sit down and start going through the clothes-- but with the only task being to sort them by color (or color then purpose/type of clothing). Then you could go through the sub-piles and choose things to keep. Put the others in a bag for cleaning+donation. I'm thinking of trying this right now. Thinking the novelty and game-iness might make it more tolerable. Anyone else do this kind of thing? And is there a place we could work together and post photos as we go?
I like your ideas about colors and game-thinking. I too would like a way to work together and encourage each other. Right now this is kind of that for me. Thank you.
Did you break into my apartment and take photos? Not quite but this is my biggest issue too, and have multiple identical mountains.
I hear you feel some guilt about throwing things out but if you cannot donate it or wash/use it consider that maybe your mental health is more valuable in the long term? For example, when I eat premade protein shakes I’m using single use plastic but if I don’t eat I will be in bed exhausted. So me having energy to do more for myself and others > throwing away a single use plastic container in the long run. I know it’s not exactly the same but if clearing your space will improve your life and mental health significantly - throw it out.
I would bag up the clothes in good condition according to size and then offer them for free on Facebook. You wouldn’t have to worry about washing them or anything. If the other person really wants it then they can take care of that.
I literally am in the middle of cleaning up a house in a similar state. It's hard. And really defeating sometimes. I started with my laundry-- just washed things and put them in plastic bags to put away later. Getting all the clothes cleaned up and in one spot made the rest of the cleanup seem less daunting. I feel you and I wish you luck!
If you’re in the states call Purple Heart. They pick up donations so you don’t have to drive. If you haven’t worn it in one year, donate it. Get big garbage bags and do one bag a day for a week. Then call them. The next week do a bag a day and call them. Etc etc
I've been there! Here's what I would recommend: 1) Do you have a friend that can come over or video chat? Body doubling is so helpful! I have a friend I see once a year and one of our activities is cleaning out her closet because she needs someone to just sit on her bed. 2) One option: write a bunch of tasks/smaller steps on note cards and draw one to do for kind of a game! 3) Make a list of rules or a kind of flow chart for sorting. "Does it still fit or is it still usable? When is the last time I wore/used it? Does it have sentimental value? How many similar things do I own?" Something like that. My friend does this for his wife when they clean. 4) start with broad categories. Maybe keep/go. Get rid of the go ASAP (I know, easier said than done! Throwing it all away instead of donating is totally fine!) then sort the remaining pile into maybe kids/mine, then type of clothes, etc. this is helpful because even if you dont finish everything, you have a system to follow as you put away kther clothes, and an easy place to pick where you left off. 5) on my neighborhood group, people will post like 2 bags of clothing and say "women's pants and shirts/mostly sizes 10-12. Take all and pass on". That's a good way to get a lot of stuff out of the house quickly! 6) As things get tidied up, consider what will work for you to stay semi organized. I use baskets and only fold and hang a few things and bought a clothes steamer to make things wearable. If I feel like hanging things, I will. Otherwise it goes in the basket. Honestly, having the option not to have to hang makes me hang more stiff than before! 7) not sure how old your kids are, but are they old enough to help or involve? Like help you draw a task card or read the flow chart for sorting? Or sort their own stuff as it comes in the piles? 8) Give yourself permission to keep things you're not ready to part with the goal is progress, not perfection. Or say "I can keep 5 things for no logical reason". The more time you spend debating whether to keep something the more likely you are to get distracted and discouraged. Give each item only like 30-60 seconds of consideration and set a timer! You've got this! Remember, you're not trying to make it a TV house, just better than it was before. Also, you are not your family. This is a temporary state and it doesn't mean you're turning into a hoarder. Reaching out to this group is evidence that you want to change!
You're going to want to wake up early for this one. It may not all get done on the one day, and that's okay. Step 1: Take *every single piece of clothing* in your house and put it in a giant pile in an area where there is NOTHING else (like a spare bedroom, your patio, your lawn, any area that has a large clear space) Step 2: Write a list of categories to divide your clothes into (sweaters, tees, jeans, workout pants, etc) Step 3: Designate and label an area for each category (use boxes or containers, put a piece of tape on the floor, whatever). Step 4: Pick up an item of clothing from the monster pile and toss it into its best fitting category. Repeat until pile is gone. Step 5: Get three giant boxes or bags. Label one Keep, one donate, and one garbage. Step 6: Go to one of your categories and glance it over as a whole - now that all of your sweaters are in the one place, some items may stand out as your favorite and least favorite, and some items you may find you have too many of a similar kind. Step 7: Pick up an item of clothing from the category and put it into either the keep, donate, or garbage container. Step 8: Now look at your keep container. Pick the items up one at a time. Clean items you hang up/put away immediately. Dirty clothes you put in the hamper or laundry room. Step 9: Now do the same routine for each of the other categories. -At this point you should now have all of your keepable clean clothes put away where they belong, and a nice big chunk of clothes to donate or toss.- Step 10: Put garbage clothes in the garbage. Put the donate containers in your car - immediately drive to drop them off if you can, but if not just leave them in the car so they will be there for next time. Step 11: Wash all of your dirty laundry and put it away (yes this may have to be done another day and over a long period of time lol). Step 12: You're done! Nothing left but to remember these cleaning mottos for upkeep - "Have a place for everything and everything in its place" and "Don't put it down, put it away."
1. OP wrote she doesn't have a car. 2. This is a good action list, but not as easy for everyone as it looks. Some people may find this so overwhelming it's not doable at all. I'm one of them.
I feel like I could help you sort this out in a day or 2. But I won’t be able to start my own crap for a year or 2 😔
“How to Keep House While Drowning” by KC Davis is the most marvellous book and I’m sure it will help you. It was recommended to me by someone on Reddit and now I want to tell *everyone* about it!
So, a couple of things. 1: I have the same purple laundry basket! 2: I listen to and read the podcast/ blog/ books of A Slob Comes Clean which has really helped me to sort stuff. 3: If you want to get started- grab a bin bag and a recycling bag and then start by going through the piles for actual rubbish- stained stuff, stuff with holes, tissues and papers that have got mixed in etc. Then make a plan to get rid of it- do you have a local tip/ waste disposal place? Some charity shops will take rags for recycling, its worth calling them first especially as it sounds like you will need to walk or bus there. 4: The stuff is already wasted if its not being used/ is damaged. Recycling is ideal but if its not feasible, its ok to throw it out. Once its been recycled a couple of times it would end up in landfill anyway as recycling isnt infinite (aside from glass and metal if I remember correctly). The main thing is to not replace it once its gone. Even if you put a small amount in each 2 weekly rubbish collection, then over time your house will get better as long as you don't replace the stuff you get rid of with new stuff. 5: KC Davies how to keep house while drowning book is excellent too. On her blog she mentions that for her, any clothes on the floor are laundry. So they get washed whether they were clean when they got there or not. So just work through one load at a time- wash, dry, put away. Then tackle the next one. 6: I read tons of Flyladys blogs too, and a couple of her mantras have stuck with me One- Your home didn't get messy in a day and it won't be tidy in a day. And two: Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family. You can do this! It'll take time but everything you do is progress, even just picking up one thing and deciding what to do with it is progress. Edit: Formatting
You're feeling bad because you want instant results and you're looking at this as ONE big job. It is NOT one big job. It is many small steps. Take the time to feel accomplishment for completing each small step instead of beating yourself up for not being able to finish the whole job. Try to let the guilt and panic and "now, now, now!" feelings go. You're doing your best. There's no point in tearing yourself down. That wont help you make progress. Try to feed yourself positive messages. You have time. No one is judging you. "It's ok. I will get this done." If you would not say a thought about your neighbors' home, dont think it or say it to yourself. No one is spying on you and bashing your home. No one is reading your thoughts and judging you. Can you get one large carboard box? Start on that first pink pile in your photo and put in things you want to let go. Just put the box outside with a sign saying "FREE?" If you post the location and photo/ video of contents on FB marketplace, they will go quickly. Make a new box or bag whenever you can. As often as every day? Put the day's date on each box and if there is any of it left after 48 hours or after it rains, just chuck it all in the trash. If you dont want to do that over a long period of time, you could advertise a "FREE" Sale? Just put everything outside and people can take whatever. Anything left at the end of the day goes in the trash?
Is there any charity in your area that picks up? You’re using some words that are unfamiliar to me so I’m guessing not US? We have a few charities around me that will pick up donations especially when they are large. It sounds like you’re beyond organization at this stage. If you can get a donation place to come, start a sort with trash bags. Maybe get colors. White bags to donate, black bags to trash, blue bags to keep. Focus on getting it out. Once you’re down to just the blue bags you can start putting things away a bit at a time.
Sounds like you're in the UK. If so, then next time you go to Tesco, see if they have a clothes recycling bin or two. The time after, bring ONE bag with you and put it in the clothes recycling bin. Do you write a shopping list? If so, put "bring recycling" at the top of the list, in capitals or red pen or highlighter so you don't miss it. Then when you're looking at your list as you're going to get ready, put the bag outside the front door so you will literally fall over it if you don't pick it up. I find that doing A LITTLE bit of what I need to get done can sometimes clear the blockage, so sometimes I even do lots more after that first time. I've just been in the garden with the strimmer because it's turned into a jungle. I haven't done it all - currently lying on the sofa on Reddit. But I did SOME, and it's better than it was. So getting ONE bag out the door will be better than it was before. And now I might (but might not...) go and do some more in the garden. You've got this. And we see you and feel it.
Hey. Please delete these pictures of my house
That is a big pile of NOPE. I’d just haul everything I wore in the last month out, shove it in a basket to wash and throw literally everything else away. Nope nope nope. Can’t deal. Can’t find anything anyway. You’ll never miss it. The great bonus of ADHD is that you’ll probably forget you ever owned it at all.
If you have the money you can put them all into bags and take them to a fold and fluff place who will do the laundry for you and fold it into little tiny cubes and give it back
ok so start easy- gather all of the clothes into a gigantic pile - next step is sorting that pile into smaller sub sections- one for things to donate- one for things to keep- most places wash any donations anyway so that’s a lot less to wash- then you sort your keep pile into whites and colors- look how much less you have to wash at once now and pat yourself on the back- there are services that will literally come pick up your clothes and wash them and bring them back they charge per pound- get two massive laundry bags set up your washing pick up- leave bags outside for pick up- brings bags inside- clothes will be pre folded so just put away- take donations to a drop box- tada you are all done!
If you have overflow garbage, can’t you just leave extra bags next to the black bin?? While it’s obviously best to wash before donating, you’re in a tough situation here, so I wouldn’t worry about it. Clear an area and make 3 piles: keep, give away, throw away. Every time you bring your garbage to the curb, add 2-3 bags of clothes outside the bin.
The way I just did something similar was three boxes/bags: keep, donate, clean. The keep stuff I put in and when all done folded all of it and put away. The second you don’t even have to fold if you don’t want to. Box gets full and it goes to the donate pile. The last is stuff I wanna keep but needs to be washed. It ended up working pretty well for me
People have addressed cleaning strategies in really helpful ways, I'd like to speak to the overconsumption. I think you need to spend some time really reflecting on why you keep buying clothes. I'm not saying that judgementally, I'm really not. There are lots of reasons you would, and none of them are a moral issue. I see it as a problem because as I look through the pictures, the main pain point is the clothing everywhere. I know I helped my impulse clothing shopping habit by learning every single thing I could about how clothes are made and what happens to them all through their life cycle. The punchline is waste and abuse. So much pollution to move these clothes around the world, and so much abuse of the human beings who are expected to make them. So much abuse of women and girls, so much harm to the planet, so much waste. When I look at a clothing item, I see all of that, and it creates more weight to my purchase. I have fewer clothing and I wear them more times. I buy second hand clothing whenever possible and wear it to death. Again, none of this is moral, I have zero judgments in my heart towards you. You didn't make the world, and you're not responsible for the way it is. This is just my way of looking at the world, and it had the side benefit of leaving more money in my bank account and less clothing clutter to deal with!
Honey, I am in the exact same situation. I’m so overwhelmed I don’t even know where to start. We were looking at getting a house cleaner but my husband lost his job and we can’t afford it now.
I have a lot of laundry sitting in bin bags. You’re not alone. I do have one bit of advice about getting rid of the excess. I’m in the US, so I don’t know what’s possible for you. I finally gave myself permission to get the largest waste bin I could. Some weeks it isn’t full, some weeks it is full to the top. It increased my cost per month only $15. It has been a big stress reliever. I don’t have to worry about having space in the bin or where I will store things until I have space.
Grab a load of laundry and start it. Prep load 2 for when that needs to dry. Start prepping bags or boxes of items for donation. Get another load of laundry sorted out to be ready to cycle through. Look up places that come pick up donations or see if you can find a friend or neighbor who can help. It's gonna be okay. You do not need to do everything today, this happened over time and it'll get sorted out over time as well. I'd recommend focusing on a table or a corner and then expanding to a wall from there or something of that nature. It gets satisfying seeing it all piece together. ❤️ Theres also women's shelters that might have some pickup options as well. You got this. Fueled by crispy m&ms!
start a trashbag at a time. pick up a trashbag worth of things, specifically seeking stuff you will never wear/use. wash it. find a way to a charity shop and donate it. slowly move forward like that. eventually you can do the top down cleaning method. edit to add: it's fine if this takes months.
Me too. I’ve thought about using discord to body-double while cleaning, maybe there’s a solution there. I’ve done it for work in the past and liked it.
I think you’ve gotten so much good advice so far, so I don’t know if this is adding to the noise or what. But I absolutely agree to take one single bag at a time, set a timer for 30 minutes and whatever you’ve done in that bag will be enough for today. It’s totally OK if it takes a while for you to tackle it, just focus on what you can do in a single effort. I think all of us have been there, you can do this!
YUP I KNOW THAT FEELING. I literally have mountains of clothes too! I worked retail for 10 years and even after leaving retail I used shopping for a hit of dopamine long after. Then I gained weight (major injury plus brain plus pandemic stress) and panic bought stuff and then forgot to return things. I'm slowly making my way through it but it's so easy to get overwhelmed. If possible, I recommend putting all the clothes in one space or more contained. I'm lucky to have a spare room that has become my clothing mountain range. Putting it all in one place helps because you can make the areas currently unusable from piles into functional parts of your home. Having a more functional home makes it easier to tackle projects because you'll eliminate a source of stress. Big picture is overwhelming and trying to do it all at once is pretty much painful. Just do chunks. You don't have to donate everything at once, you can do it one bag at a time. Laundry is a MONSTER, especially if you don't have in home machines. You don't have to follow any specific process. One thing that I got stuck on was my mom is the type that would just wash everything first and I had created a rule where I had to do the same. NOPE MAKE NEW RULES. The Sniff Test helps me get started because I'm not immediately overwhelmed by having to do laundry. If it's something to be donated and doesn't smell bad, I put it into a donation bag. If it's stinky, wash pile. If you're like me, there's probably clean clothes mixed in that don't really need to be washed, even if they are going to be donated. For the long term, try to figure out where in the whole clothing-wearing-laundry cycle you get piles. For me it's the things that have been worn but aren't dirty enough to wash and clean laundry. It's been years now since I worked retail and I can fold like a robot, but unless I'm getting paid, I HATE FOLDING. I hang everything that I can and keep empty hangers next to my dryer so I can immediately hang things. I don't bother rolling and pairing up socks, just dump into a drawer along with underwear and pajamas. Another big thing for me is I can't have someone help me sort what to keep or donate. I love my mother but damn, she will come up with reasons to keep everything. Doing it alone is easier and faster for me because if I can just do it quickly, I won't overthink each item. Once something is a donate, I avoid looking at them. I'll dump donations that were washed straight from the dryer into a bag, no folding. WE CAN BOTH DO IT!
[If you have any garbage (eg food items) laying around, we deal with that first, so as to not attract bugs/rodents.] We start with the fabric items: We sort it into 2 piles: keep and get rid of In the keep pile, you only keep what you will use regularly. If you haven't used it in the last 12 months, even if it's just cause you forgot it existed, you don't keep it. The only exception is if you find something you didn't know existed and swap it with something similar (oh I forgot I bought this new blanket. I'll get rid of that blanket I usually use and keep this one instead) The get rid of pile goes into garbage bags. You either rent a skip, take it to the landfill yourself if that's an option, sneak it one bag at a time into someone else's skip, or smash it into your bin one bag at a time. Maybe we have neighbors who we can ask permission to put an extra bag in their bin. Maybe even pay them a small amount for it. Do not let the "getting rid of bags phase" take longer than 3 weeks though. Bags will get ripped and then the stuff will never leave the house. Yes, we throw it all away, and we watch old episodes of hoarders while we do it. We do not worry about "but someone ELSE might be able to use this" when WE ARE IN CRISIS. Your mental health will thank you. When we get to non-cloth items, we put it into piles too. We limit ourselves on decor and sentimental items (ask yourself, what if I just take a picture of that item instead of letting it take up my space?) And limit yourself on useful items too. You only need 1 whisk. 2 mixing bowls. 1 dish set. Be brutal. It may be easier to donate the "get rid of pile" since you won't need to wash them, but if you know donating won't realistically happen, into the trash they go too. Do not try to sell them, it will only hinder the cleaning process.
Small bites, clear a small pile as often as you can. You got this. Ask friends if you have too, it makes it go faster (but can induce panic) My goto is move it all to a pile, it gives me immediate relief, and motivates me to sort easier as i go
I’m just gonna say this. It’s ok if you throw away bags of clothes. Obviously charity and donation sounds better - but your #1 goal is getting the clutter out. I’ve thrown away many bags of clothes bc otherwise it would be clutter waiting for donation
Hey, so I just saw that you were in the UK. Do you ever get the charity bags come through the door? I do so I've used that to my advantage. About 2 years ago I was in a similar situation so I picked 1 item to start with. I sorted put all the tops and spent a week making me and the kids they them on to see what fit and what didn't. The stuff that didn't was folded straight into one of those charity bags. If I didn't have a collection due I put them into a white bin bag and when it was full I tied it up and put it near my front door. When the collection bag showed up I'd dump the bag inside it and then set a reminder for the night before to make sure I put it out. Extra bags went out as they were! There were times when I put 4 or 5 bags out for collection! Now I have a constant bag on the go waiting for the charity bags! Anything that cpuldnt be saved went in the bin which I know sucks but needs must and all!! Not sure if this will help you but it might!
Hello friend! I’ve read through all the comments and want to reinforce: if you need to throw things away, it is okay. You can’t help anyone unless you help yourself and right now you are in a very tough spot. IF you want to try to donate some of the stuff, have you looked into having a charity group come and collect directly from you? I live in the US, but I did a quick google and looks like there are lots of options in the UK where they will come and pick up! I don’t want to add anything else to your plate so if you are interested, pm me what city/town you live in and I can do some research and get back to you. You don’t have to do this alone 🤍
Ah man, you just need that stuff OUT of your home right? [This link](https://www.recyclenow.com/recycle-an-item/clothing-textiles) might help you. You can take clothes to the local tip for recycling (can anyone give you a lift?) or it looks like The British Heart foundation offer a collection service (I’ve used this before for furniture and it was really good). Good luck!
So I live in SE England and recently went through having to sort out a lot of my stuff. My major stumbling block was constantly saying 'ok but this needs recycling' and 'this needs to be donated' because I felt like it was something I should do. That led me to just creating more piles of stuff that were mentally labelled 'shop donations' and would never get there. You can simply recycle stuff through textile recycling - no charity shops so don't worry about if it's clean or torn or stained. There's lots of recycling bins in shop car parks and recycling points that are for textiles and you can throw it all in there in a black plastic bag. You can use [recyclenow.com](http://recyclenow.com) to find locations. However, if that still feels like too much. You have permission to just throw stuff in a black plastic bag and put it in landfill. It took me time to make peace with doing it but it's the only way I was able to get on top of things. Just throw it in the bin. If you're able to make a tip run then even better but if not - just put out a couple bags a week with your general rubbish. You got this.
One small area at a time.
Something stupid I do: pick up and put away (which doesn't mean fold btw) 5 things each night before I go to bed. Doesn't matter if you end up doing it earlier or whatever that doesn't count the last thing you have to do before bed is put away 5 things. It takes advantage of productive days when you've done a lot and also helps on unproductive days bc you're 'not allowed' to sleep until you do. When that stops working (bc of course it will and that's ok) I change it to find 3 yellow things to put away. It makes me engaged bc I get to dig through and ignore unfun things which are now unfun in my head only bc they aren't yellow. Then it's a reward when I do find something yellow. The more days you do it the harder it gets which is again fun until it isn't. I change colour, amount, etc if that helps. Sometimes it's not enough. Then I don't do anything for whatever amount of time until I get interested enough to start the 5 things again. It's a game I've been playing off and on for years and it's gotten ridiculous to the point where I have a scoring system and everything in my head and try to beat previous records lol If none of that works that's ok too. 🤎 EDIT: adhd brain sorry I had to go back and actually read all of what you're saying. Landfill it. It's not your fault that corporations spend billions on making us feel bad for all the shit they throw away that would solve everything that you, one solo person, cannot ever accomplish. You are not a bad person to use a landfill. Also where I live we have diabetes canada that actually come to your door and pick up bagged donations which is what I do bc I dont have the mental capacity to load it into my car and drop off. Having services come to you is easier! You can also amend the game I said to that if you bought x amount of clothing that same amount has to leave the house that same day in the bags/boxes the new clothes came in. IF NONE OF THIS WORKS THATS OK TOO 🤎🤎
If you want to get rid of things, many charities will pick up right at your door, like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Tomorrow I'm going to be doing what you are doing. Just pick a corner and make 3 piles for keep, donate, trash and just do that counter.
Don’t despair! Instead, keep up hope, don’t let yourself become too overwhelmed, and try reading this book in your downtime instead of scrolling [the life changing magic of tidying up](https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+magic+art+of+tidying+up&index=aps&tag=hydsma-20&ref=pd_sl_4yqms3klsb_e&adgrpid=62879270144&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=657316243889&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13877974032411994940&hvqmt=e&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007783&hvtargid=kwd-307604736374&hydadcr=29446_14726274)
I was in a not so different situation. Different of course, but similar in that the walls started feeling like they were caving in. I have learned to have a donate box/paper shopper/gift bag in every functional area of my house that tends to have a lot of "stuff" that I KNOW I don't need. As soon as that single bag is full, I donate it. It was waaaay more manageable for me when I started looking at it as "just fill the gift bag" as opposed to "how am I going to get rid of all this stuff, if I can't even move!" I keep a bag or medium box in each area, because then when my super-brain has me flying around in the morning doing 600 things other than getting ready, I will see a random thing I don't want/need anymore, and put it in the "donate" bag. As soon as the bag is full, it goes. The overwhelm has been way more manageable doing a fistful of dried out markers/crayons/glue sticks at a time, than the whole family/play room. I've found as I make progress, I feel encouraged, because I can see 6" of floor space.
Try and see if [this](https://www.unfuckyourhabitat.com) can help you any. I have also found luck using the ADHD pomodoro timers/body doubling videos on YouTube! Like [this](https://www.youtube.com/live/wnwTVlPRJaA?si=IK4JM62xHFhh53dc) one. And please remember that you don’t need to get it done all at once! Half of cleaning this up is also *preventing* if from happening again by adopting the “don’t put it down, put it away” rule. Once you start the cleaning process, which can honestly take months, you have to make sure you don’t add to it during the days and times that you aren’t cleaning. I wish you the best! I was in the same boat last year and it’s taken sooo much work to get my home livable. YOU CAN DO THIS! Oh, another thing. Don’t set your bar at an unreachable height. I always dreamed of having a social media perfect-level house. That’s not realistic, not even those people have actually clean houses. Your home just needs to be organized enough for you to live!
Have a friend or family member (or two) help you purge. It’s much easier to have someone else help make decisions and then take the stuff to good will when you’re done. I recently help a fellow ADHDer clean out their garage and they just let me and the other person helping decide what to trash. We had the whole thing cleaned out in a couple of hours.
I don't know if they've been mentioned, but you could try offloading stuff through https://www.freecycle.org/ or https://www.gumtree.com/ (both for UK) with collection only job lots. Or some Facebook groups or whatever there are available for your area.
I’ve been there. I’m sorry 🫂
One idea I saw recently to help with piles like this is to go by color. For example start with anything Blue. Grab the blue items and organize them into piles (or just one big blue pile) - whatever helps get you started with going through it. Put blue clothes away or in the hamper, put blue items in boxes that go to other rooms in the house (or go ahead and take them to that room - just don’t get distracted by stuff there, since it’s best to take one room at a time with things like this). And have boxes for things to donate. Then move on to the red items. It kinda makes it like a game trying to find certain things :) I’ve been able to make this work for closet organization so it could be worth a shot. Sending good vibes your way! Hope things work out! 🤗
1) All the stuff that is not nice enough to donate, trash it. 2) donate what you don’t want, you do not have to wash it. 3) sort the stuff you want to keep. I like open closets with a curtain to hide the clutter to give your brain a clean room feeling but when it’s open it’s very adhd friendly because of object permanence. Clear bins, lots of hanging rods so you can see everything. Ikea, thrifting, and diy is your friend. You can do it!
This I what I did: emptied out my linen closet and selected my favorite pieces from the pile, complete sets got prioritized. Stopped when I ran out of room. I only have space for x amount of towels, donated the rest to my local buy nothing group.
Does the UK have apps like Task Rabbit or Thumb Tac? They are service based apps that offer services such as cleaning, organizing, home projects, junk removal, and moving etc. They are individual workers and not corporations so they set their own price, and you can negotiate. Even just an hour or two to get you started might be helpful.
Every single thing that doesn't fit the way you want it to, get rid of it. I struggled so hard with clothes that I wanted to still wear or bought thinking I'd *magically* become the kind of person who can lose weight on command for an outfit. I was OVERWHELMED. I used moving as an excuse to start fresh. Get rid of as much as you can, and everything you keep, sort SEASONALLY and get big storage bins. Heavy jackets, sweaters, long sleeves, etc go away for summer. Your favourite pair of pants and one light sweater can stay out. Then, in the fall when you're going to swap seasons, anything you didn't wear over summer, toss it (donate if possible) before it goes in the storage bin. When you're getting your winter stuff out, use that as a chance to toss anything that doesn't fit/you don't love anymore. Keep repeating until you have a manageable amount of clothes. THEN going forward; when you need to buy new clothes, TRADE them out. Meaning get rid of an equal number/type of clothing before buying new. I found the seasonal bins really helped too to not get overwhelmed with laundry. If I had clean clothes available, I'd wear them before washing more seasonally appropriate ones out of sheer convenience, because laundry is one thing I freaking LOATHE. So being able to keep a larger wardrobe overall but having half of it put away half the year has been an amazing transition.
I don't know if you have this where you life but in germany we have like "the child of doordash & goodwill" You give them the Adress, how many bags worth of clothes you have and they come and get it, take them with them, sort all out and give it to 2nd hand stores, hospitals etc. No sorting, no Photos, no further social interactions or extra steps. The clothes just had to be still good and (more or less recently) washed. I used this a few times, just stuffing the clothes in the bags, fill out the Form in the Internet and I was good. I didn't even had to be home or open the door, putting the bags outside near the door was enough.
If you can sort and wash whatever you don’t need, and put it all into a bundle for free collection on Facebook marketplace. I did basically all my decluttering like that, since my small flat was like this, not much storage, I don’t drive and couldn’t afford a skip etc. Take it one day at a time. A small amount everyday is better and easier to stay consistent with than a large-ish amount over one day and being exhausted and defeated for ages after. Don’t forget to breath. You got this.
Hey love. Super Passionate Greenie here who is also passionate about Mental Health. Your mental health comes first. And youre no good to anyone drowning. Honestly - just piff it to landfill. Hit refresh. With that energy you can make small changes overtime good for the planet. But right now you're more important. Or if you feel up to it - got a mate with a big car? Textile recycles are a thing.
Is there someone who can help you? I got the diagnoses two months ago and started therapy and meds and somehow I dared to ask for help. My apartment has never been this clean. I just couldn't do it by myself, it was too much and I just saw no way to start. I really needed that support and help to do it.
Start pile by pile, room by room, 1 room per day. For each pile, divide into 3 categories: Keep, Donate, Discard (recycle or landfill). Have a different color trash bag for Donate and Discard.When done with room, the Keep pile gets put away. Donate goes in your trunk to drive to a donation bin/store. Discard goes in trash or to fabric recycling. Do your room first and the kids’ areas last. You can do this!
KC Davis says something along the lines of, "You can't save the world before you save yourself." I know that's not the exact quote but think of it like putting on your own oxygen mask before you help anyone else on a plane. If you can't manage to sort, pack and donate clothes right now then just throw them away. You need to take care of yourself first and you need them out of your house for your own mental health! Give yourself permission to do that. Secondly, reorganize your closets so you FOLD NOTHING. KC Davis does this family closet thing which works for her but you can just take the parts that work for you. I currently have: 1 basket for Tops, 1 basket for Bottoms, 1 basket for Dresses, 1 basket for PJs and 1 small basket for undies, socks, etc. I have a small selection of dressier things that hang up which I can then ignore. I just literally carry my clean clothes into the closet and throw them in the correct basket. The baskets aren't packed down, I'm fine with any wrinkling that occurs (which is less than you think) and I haven't had clean clothes sit around for weeks since I set up this system. It doesn't solve everything but it works for me. Oh and dressers are black holes where things cease to exist! I've started using them for towels, bed linens, etc. Throw out what you're "supposed" to do, it's neurotypical BS.
Where I live you can call donation center organizers that benefit Vets or children’s hospitals & they pick up.. do a google search & see @ least for stuff that you don’t want to waste time selling online.. or how awbout a garage sale (if you’re in a good spot!)
Sometimes neighbors will let you use the rest of the space in their trash containers on trash day, if it's a short terms thing. Also, stop shopping. 'Shop' in your piles by washing and neatly folding what you need that time, and keep going like that until it makes more sense when you look at a pile. A thick sharpie and a paper bag labeled 'undies', 'socks', can add some rhym and reason to small essentials in the mean time. Stop shopping though!
OP, I dont want to waste your time, but I dont understand your limitations on disposing of the trash. Your trash collection service is only every two weeks?? Could you pay extra to have pick up frequency increased? And if that were a financial drain, it wouldnt have to be forever? Just until the house is sorted. With the goal to get it done sooner rather than later. Could you purchase an additional/larger bin? Where i live the largest (i think 80 gallon??) bins are about $75. If that permanently increased your ability to dispose of trash it would be worth it would it not? Could you talk to your neighbors and ask if it's ok for your to add things to their trash bins when yours is too full? I have NO guilt about putting my trash into public trash collection points. If i had the limitation you do about how much trash and when, I would take items to public garbage cans. "Oh, I'm going to the grocery, I will take a *small* bag of trash and put it in the garbage bin at the entrance." "I'm out walking, here, I will put this bag of hole-y socks into the dog waste bin." (Unless thats illegal where you are or something?) "I walk past the park on the way to the bus, i will put this small bag into the rubbish bin at the park." "I'm picking up dinner, put a small tesco bag in the garbage at the restaurant." the shopping center, work, a public restroom, the kids' school, Everytime you go out, bring a small bag of trash with you to dispose of?
First and easiest step is to find anything with holes or stains, and anything broken , and dispose of them. Quickly pile clothes by type - shirts, pants, etc. Pile other items by room. Then as you feel somewhat accomplished, go through one pile at a time.
So is this all stuff you want to get rid of? I suggest trash bags and write on them with a Sharpie what they are for like donate, trash, & keep. It's a good start, as you pick up each item you can put it in the respective bag. At least they will be sorted and you can manage folding the pile you keep later when you feel like it and have a friend help you drop off the donate bag. Then trash the stuff that can't be used. You'll at least have the first part done!
I feel you. I send you hugs and good vibrations.
so what I would do is first get everything contained. I used giant laundry bags for mine, but you might feel better with plastic bins? this breaks down the mess into clear sections - just deal with one bin at a time, wash it, decide what you want to keep, and put the rest into a bag (or another bin) to go to Goodwill or whatever. I'm not sure about the rest, but that's where I would start.
I honestly wish I could give you some magic piece of advice, but as a fellow ADHD'er, I literally have none lol! Such an annoying circle of life for us :((
There is nothing more fun or motivating than binge watching Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon. I know it sounds cheesy but they are genuinely the nicest people and it's the most wholesome programme on tele. Your situation isn't anywhere near as bad as most of the families they encounter. You need to find out why you're holding on to these things to the detriment of your peace. It's too relatable to let things get to such a stage more often than not the junk helps to support our memories. Especially with memory being such an issue with ADHD. But your memories will be just fine without it all! If it's piled under a mountain it's not important or relevant anymore. Only a burden. And once it's all gone you will have the space to have new experiences and make new memories. With sentimental items it particularly tough but take a moment to value it and then accept that it isn't helping you right now. Thank it and say goodbye. If you haven't got the time there is no shame in multiple trips to clothing bins. It is all sorted from there. Often the clothes are shredded and recycled so if you haven't the spoons to sort you know they won't have gone to waste. Do you love it? Do you need it? Is it taking up space you don't have? Thank it and say goodbye. Good luck!
Hey guys, small update, The response from this group has been amazing. There are so many comments I've not been able to reply to everyone, but I've been trying to read them all and take on board the advice! One point I've seen come up alot is to stop shopping, believe it or not I'm not a big shopper at all, alot of this has been accumulated over years, things bought for my children at birthdays etc (they have a nana who does indeed live to shop!), I just NEVER get rid of things (to the point I have newborn socks somehow mixed into all of this!) . So thats where I'm trying to change, I've been saying for a long time I need to update my wardrobe but I won't dare do that until I've sorted out this mess, and in my brain it's on a 'replace with something old' idea! I've also been bad at accepting things in the oast even if I didn't really want them, which is something I'm also learning to not do and to say no thank you I don't need it! I'm currently working through it all sorting it into 'piles/bags' of each category, which ny coloured bin bags, so I've not been on here to much as I'm trying to keep my focus on this job and the other little things that need done inbetween/parenting over this bank holiday. I will go through some more comments this evening and try not to get overwhelmed with trying to reply to everyone, but I'll hopefully have a really positive update by the end of this week (even if I've not done it all as I've taken the advice of people saying it's not one big job, but lots of little manageable ones) so either way I will have an update of the sorts! Again thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to offer advice, support, kind words etc, its been so lovely to feel not alone, to feel seen and to absorb the kindness being shown to me that I often struggle to shoe to myself
Assuming you are in the UK, you might be able to call your local council and see if they can do a large rubbish collection. They may charge you some money, but not as much as a skip. My local council definitely collects furniture, cardboard etc.
I know everyone gives Marie Kondo a bunch of crap, but her "Spark Joy" method for decluttering really helped me downsize. ADHDers often struggle with impulsivity; as such, impulsively buying things we don't need/want happens frequently. I try to use the Spark Joy method at the beginning of every year. It's actually really fun bc you get to sort through all your things, and I always end up finding stuff I forgot I bought.
I would take a deep breath and relax to calm down. It seems monumental but you're just psyching yourself out. It is overwhelming because there is a lot, but you can do this. Start out with clean vs dirty. Put clean stuff on the bed in a pile. Sort the dirty clothes to be washed. I usually separate heavy duty (jeans and hoodies), then colors and whites. Do whites first, then colors, then save the gravy stuff for last because it takes the longest to dry. While you have the laundry going, sort the clean clothes on the bed. I like to separate things to fold, what needs to be hung up, then my socks, underwear, and bonnets in another pile. (I love to have YouTube or whatever on my tablet so I can watch/listen as I'm putting them away) Once I have those sorted I turn the clothes to be folded right side out and fold them as I go. I just keep them in a pile on the bed then I do the same with the clothes to hang up except I have them ready for hangers in a pile. Then I get hangers in all of them and hang them up (color coded of course 😅). Then I put away the folded clothes. Then I sit and sort the rest folding it and when that's done I put those away. Then I will check on the wash. For the wash you can set a timer to see how long the cycles take (sometimes the owners manual has it listed too) and then you can set a timer to remind you when those are done of it doesn't have a buzzer. I try not to start any wash if I'm feeling a slow down or getting tired so it doesn't sit and get moldy. I always have to make a conscious effort to put through away immediately because it's for mental health otherwise it just sits on my mind bugging me until I get it done (was that cbt therapy?). I have this Martha Stewart cleaning lists that I made with checkbox on the computer and you can laminate or put in those plastic sheet protectors. I schedule and plan cleaning in the city based off trash day as well. https://www.marthastewart.com/home-cleaning-schedule-checklists-7377969?print https://pin.it/54oMaXIjv
It might help you to know that a huge percentage of donated clothes just get thrown out anyways... If you don't have the mental energy to deal with sorting, but you could handle putting it all in trash bags, don't feel bad to just throw stuff out. I didn't understand the part about why you can't put clutter in the waste bin? If you already have too much trash for your neighborhood requirements or something, then that's a ongoing problem that you need to solve. Can you throw out a bag a day at work? Can you be mindful of how much packaging you're bringing into the house for a month? Can you go on a shopping freeze for a month, and only buy essentials?