Messy Cleaning

I don’t even know where to begin. This is what goes through my head every time I even consider doing any household cleaning. I’m all about tidying up- Marie Kondo’s got nothing on me. But when it comes to actually removing dust and dirt from the apartment, I’m at a loss. It just seems like too big a task to even comprehend. I’m extremely fortunate to have a husband who’s not intimidated by vacuum cleaners or bleach and who has taken care of just about all the cleaning for some time. I have managed to hold up my end with laundry and drying dishes and making the bed, but I rarely even cook my own dinner, never mind mow the lawn or mop the floor.

There was an era though, during my Adderall days, when I was pretty much hyperactive. And I really took the bull by the horns with the cleaning. I created charts and lists of cleaning tasks and scheduled them all every week, month, 2 months, or 6 months. I tackled everything from vacuuming lamp shades to wiping down baseboards to washing windows to dry-mopping the walls. I of course enlisted my husband to help with all of these tasks, and he was very tolerant of my pathological perfectionism. But this constant cleaning of rooms that were already quite clean was not a sustainable way of life. I tired of removing everything from the kitchen cabinets and drawers to vacuum the crumbs out and wipe the insides down. My husband tired of dusting light fixtures that weren’t really dusty and pulling out the fridge to vacuum behind it. I was beyond the point of obsessiveness; no one I know could keep that up. And so once the Adderall started to wear off, as amphetamines do, I stopped cleaning altogether.

I went into a deep depression as we tried to figure out better meds, and I had zero energy for dusting or vacuuming or cleaning the shower grout. It all just ground to a halt, and it’s stayed there for the last year and a half or so. I often fantasize about cleaning, watching “Clean With Me” YouTube videos where you watch someone clean their entire house in fast motion. They’re totally absorbing, these videos, bordering on addictive. You get all the satisfaction of cleaning without any of the actual work. I think they’re meant to be motivational but I prefer just watching and not doing anything. As I said, I love tidying, putting things away, throwing things out, donating unwanted gifts to the thrift shop immediately upon receiving them. I think I have this idea that if I tidy everything perfectly, it’ll make cleaning easier. And to some extent, it does, at least for my husband. I never seem able to cross over into actually dusting the bookshelf after organizing it.

But I’ve been studying the way my husband cleans. I refer to his style of cleaning as “messy cleaning.” He doesn’t obsess over making every little thing perfect, he just does a decent job and is done with it. He’ll even hold up the vacuum canister and say, “Look at all that dust we just cleaned up.” Talk about seeing the glass half-full. This is the exact opposite of the way I usually think about cleaning, and it’s the way I think about it that’s a big part of why I don’t do it. I look around frantically for nooks and crannies that aren’t perfectly spotless. I insist on cleaning behind every piece of furniture because the dust I can’t even see bothers me. Then I tiptoe around the place trying not to mess it up. If one of my hairs falls on the floor, I immediately pick it up and throw it in the trash. When I clean my way, it’s ridiculous and impossible to maintain. But this “messy cleaning” perspective seems to be way more realistic and far more effective.

And so yesterday something monumental happened: I helped my husband clean. To pitch in with his apartment-wide vacuuming, I was handed one of those little Swiffer dusters. It’s just a fluffy thing on a hand-held stick, but it goes pretty far with just a spritz of Pledge. So I walked around looking for things to use it on: shelves, picture frames, light fixtures. My husband demonstrated how you can use it to clean our radiators, so I did that. And then I followed him around for a while, picking up shoes or chairs in his way. And that was it. It was over in about an hour and the apartment felt fresh and clean (we saved the kitchen and bathroom for another day). In my compulsive mind, this cleaning effort was a total disaster- there were sure to be things we missed! What about wiping down the light switches? And there was a certain amount of dust kicked up in the air. It was a mess. But it worked. I actually cleaned something, and that was huge.

When you lose confidence in your ability to do things, as is bound to happen in a mental health crisis, it’s really hard to get back on track. I often screamed at myself in my head about how I’m lazy and I should just suck it up and get on top of things. But cleaning turned into a real mental block for me at a certain point, especially after my bout of obsession with it. So this “messy cleaning” idea acted as a gateway for me to at least start doing some cleaning again. I had tears rolling down my cheeks as I picked up that Swiffer, worried about how terrible a job I’d do. But my husband was patient enough to get me through it, and my helping out built a tiny bit of confidence in me. So at least it’s a start.