I finally tackled the hallway closet. I cleared out about 5 garbage bags worth of stuff to donate or toss.

Go finish cleaning them! My sink is finally free of pans and dishes that I’ve been soaking “to make them easier to clean”, and it only took me 10 minutes

I’ve always been disorganized, messy, and someone who struggles to stay on top of things. But I wanted to share something that has given me a different perspective.
Back in late May or June, I bought a new car. It’s a nice, midsize SUV that I absolutely love. Before that, I had a small SUV for 12 years, and honestly, I kept it dirty, cluttered, and disorganized. It was almost a reflection of how other areas of my life sometimes looked.
But something changed with this new car.
I wanted to keep it clean.

I got a membership at a local car wash, where I can wash and vacuum my car as often as I want. The membership includes vacuum stations, towels, and air guns to clean out those hard-to-reach spaces. Since then, I’ve been taking my car at least once a week, sometimes every other week.
And I’ve kept it INCREDIBLY clean.
What’s surprising is that even when I clean it weekly or every other week, there’s still a lot of dirt, crumbs, and random stuff that accumulates. It takes me about 10–20 minutes to clean the entire thing, but I do it, and my car consistently looks and smells great. It’s been about five months now, so I think this is becoming a habit rather than just the excitement of having a new car. I really enjoy having a clean car. The clutter in it is something that I need more work on but is definitely good as cleanliness drives me.
I could post pictures or a video because I’m genuinely proud of how well I’ve maintained it.

But here’s what really got me thinking.
Imagine someone getting into my car and saying, “OMG, your car is so clean! How do you keep it this way?”
I would now think, Well, it’s not effortless. I actually work at it. I spend time and money maintaining it. I make the decision to keep doing it.
And it reminded me of how I used to react when I saw people who were incredibly organized. I would wonder how they did it, and I remember sometimes feeling resentful of people who seemed to have their lives together.
I even remember telling a therapist once how much I resented organized people. He responded, somewhat impatiently, “But you know these people work at it, right? They believe they can do it, and they put in the time and effort.”

At the time, I don't think I fully understood what he meant.
Now, with this car, I think I’m beginning to understand.
Nobody necessarily has a naturally clean car just because they’re an organized person. They clean it, maintain it, and develop routines that keep it that way. They make time for things that other people might not prioritize. And they keep doing them even when it requires effort.
I’m not saying everyone starts from the same place, or that some people don’t naturally find organization easier than others. I know that habits, executive functioning, mental health, and our environments all play a role.
But for the first time, I have something that I’ve consistently maintained for five months, and it feels different. I don’t stress about someone getting into my car. I remove the stuff that accumulates throughout the week. I know that when I need to use my car, it’s going to be clean. I don’t have to wait until it becomes a disaster before doing something about it.

And the interesting thing is that I don’t necessarily have this formally written into my schedule. I’ve just made it part of my routine. It’s something I do because I’ve decided it matters to me.

Now I’m thinking about all the people who maintain organized homes, keep up with appointments, are fit, stay on top of their responsibilities, and seem to have their lives together. Maybe a lot of what I used to perceive as something they just had is actually something they continually do.

And maybe when they see someone struggling with those things, they think, “You know you have to work at it, right?”
I don’t know. I’m still trying to understand what this means for me and how I can apply it to other areas of my life. I certainly haven’t figured everything out, and my car being clean doesn't mean the rest of my life is suddenly organized.
But this experience has given me a new perspective, and I wanted to share it.

TL;DR: I’ve always struggled with being disorganized and messy, but since buying a new SUV five months ago, I’ve consistently kept it incredibly clean by taking it to the car wash weekly and spending 10–20 minutes maintaining it. It made me realize that keeping things organized isn’t necessarily effortless or something you’re born knowing how to do. It takes time, effort, and consistency. I used to resent organized people, but now I’m beginning to understand that a lot of what looks effortless from the outside is actually work that happens behind the scenes. I’m hoping to apply this realization to other areas of my life.

Continuing to get ready for Halloween, tonight I spruced up the porch. Swept down the real cob webs and their inhabitants, dusted the dust off the porch furniture and cleaned down the railing because my little insect friends love to build their homes there as well and sometimes they are venomous.

I decorated for fall several weeks ago, so I just gave everything a bit of a fluffing to make it look like it hasn't been sitting in the 100 degree heat every day for weeks. Our curb appeal looks better already!

sometimes when i’m manic, cleaning is the best task bc it forces me to slow down my thoughts and focus on the single thing i’m holding in my hand. every object has a home!

here my best strategies for cleaning/organizing one room at a time (gather, separate, tidy, find homes, make homes) i didn’t do this for the kitchen in the first part, but did for the living room

gather in 2 baskets:
A. trash (throw away once filled)
B. loose items

separate basket B into 2 baskets:
A. loose items that belong in that room
B. loose items that don’t belong in that room
(put them to the side)

tidy
- organize what’s left

find homes
- take baskets A & B and put everything in its home

make homes
- don’t know where it can go? make a new space for it or throw it away (ex. build shelves, clear drawers to make homes)

Hiiiii again!

First of all, I wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who offered such kind words of advice on my initial post that I’d written in an absolute state of panic. Your encouragement helped so, so much.

Here’s the update in case anybody was curious. I survived (lol!). I ended up having the cleaner come 2x that week because my landlord sprung a bunch of showings on me that disrupted my plan, but she made a huge dent and got things looking good again. She also managed to find what was messing with the seal in my fridge which was allowing the fruit flies access!

There was sooooo many bags of trash between me starting to purge items and actual garbage. I took a bunch of the non gross trash to my garage (which I lost my opener to so I currently have 0 access to it) and ended up renting a truck/load van from UHaul. I hiiiighly suggest this if you’re an apartment dweller like me who doesn’t have the ability to rent a dumpster. I ended up doing 2 dump runs which got rid of 99% of the trash! This opened things up immensely and WOW I forgot how nice it was to have a clean home.

I’m officially moving this week, so I’m packing and purging as I go (and will probably do another dump run for good measure lol) and have movers coming Wednesday. I’m also desperately searching for my garage door opener and may just need to ask my landlord to borrow his until I can track it down so I can at least empty it.

But yeah — THANK YOU again! This sucked so bad but I’m happy to report I made it through 🎉

The combination of grief, ADHD, and seasonal depression from last year left our kitchen a mess. It took me about 4 hours total, but I feel great about how it looks now. My body says otherwise 😅. It's screaming at me. I need to mop still and clean the drawer faces, but progress is progress. Please no judgement. I know it was gross beforehand and the internal shame is already strong enough. My husband helped some, but he's not feeling well so I did the majority of it. My motto has become even though I wasn't the only one that made the mess, the cleaning is only getting done if I do it 🧹🧽🗑️🧻

Edit: I started with using Clorox wipes but they didn't really do much. I rinsed then used dawn power wash which worked much better.

Sorry I am late. Busy day today.

This week with Halloween coming on a Saturday, I am focusing my attention to our front porch. I want it to be warm and inviting for the kids, but also safe.

So today's task is simply to make sure your porch and steps and walkway are safe from things that might be a tripping hazard. I put pumpkins on the steps, but away from the railing so no one would trip if they needed assistance climbing the stairs. I also made sure that our outside lights were working. Even if you live in a rented place, you can make sure you have adequate lighting outside. Let maintenance know if a bulb is out. If nothing else, set a small lamp outside to make sure everyone can see after dark.

Even if you don't celebrate or don't have trick-or-treaters, you can still make sure your front porch are is safe. Our delivery people certainly appreciate not tripping over pumpkins all fall long.

Hey there. I am trapped in a clusterfkd mess, but not sure how to make it work. I have a large family, but thanks to the economy, we are all crammed into a space that's WAY too small but hey it's not a park bench okay. There's nine of us in a 3 bedroom single wide mobile home. Myself (41) and my husband (41) have the master bedroom, my twin girls (15,15) are in the front bedroom, my oldest (16) and youngest (12) sons have the middle bedroom, my best friend (50) lives in my living room, and my oldest daughter (22) and her husband (28) are staying in my dining room. We don't have many options. Me and my husband both work full time and over time. He works five days a week, I work six days a week. We literally come home to sleep and then go back to work. Everyone in the house is handicapped, disabled, or some type of health issues, causing pain, weakness and a lack of energy or inability to move around a lot. My oldest daughter is also blind. I need some ideas that won't overwhelm and won't take forever to do with limited ability and resources. I'm thinking we need to go vertical. I also have plans to get a small dresser for the foot of my bed, but much needed car parts took the money this week. I also have to figure out how to get my hands on some air tight, insect proof storage for food like rice, cereal and bread so if anyone knows a good brand that's a good price, lemme know. My ADD and executive dysfunction is literally riding the edge of crushing me just looking at everything I need to do. There's so many things and I'm just so spent that trying to figure this out on my own is stressing me out to the point it's weighing on my health. Going to the cardiologist tomorrow and have an appointment at the cancer center at the end of the week, trying to get back on top of it all. Could really use an extra brain cell or two right now if anyone has a spare....

I, 26f and my partner 26m, live with my parents. We share one bedroom and an en suite in one part of the house while my parents live in the other side. I have auadhd and find it extremely difficult to be self motivating when cleaning. I get distracted very easily and feel that I cannot clean unless I have a purpose to be doing so. My partner will take care of dishes and trash, etc. but he told me he is getting frustrated with having to clean and that he is not sure for how long he can continue to live in an untidy room. I love him so much and I am always trying my best, but I do feel like I could try a bit harder. I would be extremely grateful for any advice.

Sharing this video to the most supportive Reddit group I know of. My goal is to slowly get my first floor under control, and then move upstairs.

I am hoping sharingprogress videos with y'all will keep motivated and moving!

Wish me luck!

Shared 12:15, Monday 10/26

I took a week of “staycation” with the intention to get a lot of stuff done in the house.

Which I did, though didn’t make it all the way through my list (damn: I cannot believe it’s Sunday already!).

I offered a bunch of stuff to my Buy Nothing group, and took a carload of stuff to the Salvation Army. I’ve got another box partially full to take shortly.

I feel like I’m finally coming out of my grieving/buying/hoarding funk. I got rid of a lot of my mom’s stuff. I did it slowly and thoughtfully, and I’m sure I kept some stuff I’ll get rid of later.

I feel—better. Not great, but better.

took all day. had to decide what to keep & reorganize but its mostly done. been putting it off for months since my ex moved out

So, the last few years, my husband and I have let our house get really bad. We’re finally breaking out of it and starting to get things somewhat under control. I feel like as far as hardcore cleanup, we’ve both been chipping in, but as far as maintaining what we’ve accomplished, I’m feel like I am doing most of the work. For instance, the kitchen was SPOTLESS. I deep cleaned every nook and cranny and it was perfect. I even said, “now that it’s this clean can we please keep it this way” to which he readily agreed. However, after the first day he was already not cleaning up after himself. I left it alone because the kitchen was my domain for a while, but I clean as I go/clean up after myself. When he cooks, he doesn’t throw wrappers away, fills the sink, leaves shit everywhere and the mess is awful. And then he just leaves it there. It’s so frustrating because it was so nice for a few weeks and now it’s so bad again.

So I guess my question is this - after doing an “ufyh” clean, how do you maintain it with another person living in the home who doesn’t seem to care? I can’t carry this on my own and I’m exhausted from years of trying. He’ll have moments where he genuinely gets down and dirty with it but most of the time he just lets it go until I eventually clean it up. And that demotivates me because I worked so hard to get it under control in the first place, consistently.

Hoping this can motivate someone today. Do I have a huge to-do list of all the tasks that need to happen to “ufmh?” Yes.

But this morning I tossed in a load of laundry. While that was running, I cleaned the toilet and bathroom sink, and did a half-a** wipe down of the shower shelves. I scooped the litter box, cleaned out expired stuff in the fridge, and took the trash out. I put away the clean dishes piled on the drying rack and watered all my plants. I hit a wall, so I stopped. But this all took me less than an hour and made a HUGE difference.

Progress is progress. Just start. Do ~something~ today, even if you don’t have capacity to do everything.

Trash, laundry, dishes. Those will make a mountain of difference.

I hate wasting food but I’ve accepted that my food saving has become a problem; if we can’t see what I have, we can’t use it. Composted what I could. Bonus! I did it all while making chicken stock. Dishes are my husband’s chore 😅

As a family, we’ve kind of been through hell and back over the last like eight years. And while in the hell, things got so out of hand and only made things more depressing and now I’m just trying to reclaim my space inch by inch. This is my first success.

The rainbow cart I got for free from a teacher, and saved it because I’ll need it when I get my own classroom hopefully next school year. This was the most out of view spot I could find for it in the house.

I was thinking a tension rod and small curtain and store some other items under there. The rest I’m struggling with a vision. It feels so chaotic and stresses me out every time I get ready.

I’ve been traveling a few weekends and things have piled up a bit. I need to spend some time just putting things back where they belong, laundry, dishes… there will be no big dramatic change to any area in particular, or anything to finally check off a list. I always feel frustrated when days like this are over, like it was a waste of time. But I’m going to try and find a sense of purpose and satisfaction today in the mundane, and enjoy it. I might pretend to be a little witch with an adorable cottage that I love- I used to get lost in my imagination as a kid and I miss that for me.

I discovered that the end of year is a nice natural deadline for motivation for me.

In September I realized that my average step count for 2026 was a bit over 9 000 steps daily. That irked me, and I wondered how many steps I had to do for the rest of the year in order to reach a daily average of 10 000 steps for 2026. It was about 12 500 steps daily, that seemed doable, and I committed to it.

That works like a charm, I'm positive to reach my goal, I now often reach 13-14k steps daily.

So, I wondered if I could use this "the end of the year is near, but there is still time" feeling for something else. It's now about 70 days to new year's eve, and I decided that it is realistical that I declutter 1 000 items until the year's end. That means I have to declutter about 14-15 items per day, which seems doable.

The normal everyday trash doesn't count, of course, but if I donate/throw away something that I normally wouldn't, that counts. Also if I use up something up (like groceries or a kind of shower gel) that I bought a long time ago and haven't used to now.

I'm fascinated how good this simple decision worked for the step count, and I hope it works as well for decluttering. It's a bit like new year's good intentions, but before the new year's starting, and with a deadline.

I will update!

The kitchen is the room that disintegrates the quickest in my home. I kept getting overwhelmed by it, but then I invented a little game for myself: I do 10 of something then switch.

So, I put away or wash 10 dishes, then throw away 10 pieces of trash, then put away 10 non-dishes items, repeat the pattern.

The rules are I have to fully put away the items not just move them out of the kitchen, and I can be done anytime as long as I have finished a cycle. I like to do non-dishes last before the repeat, so I can be done any time I’ve just finished putting away 10 non-dish items. But most of the time I hit that point in the cycle and think, “Ehh, I might as well put away 10 more dishes from the dishwasher, it’s just 10,“ and am locked in for another round.

Time goes SO much faster when I’m frequently switching and counting the items in my head. And you can’t be caught in a shame spiral of how long that bagel has sat on the plate on the counter when your brain is so full of keeping track of if it’s trash piece number 7 or 8.

You could have your pattern include whatever you want, like 5 sweeps of a broom, or 3 old items out of the fridge into trash, or 7 scrubs on a sticky spill. Just don’t put too many tasks in your repeating pattern, I like 2 or 3, or it will cause what I’m trying to avoid: a freak out from thinking about EVERYTHING I have to do.

You all are the best, I hope this helps someone ufyh today!

It’s so cleannnn 🥹

To say I’m overwhelmed is an understatement. In August of this year my husband was in a catastrophic work accident and he was hospitalized 6.5 weeks. He came home a month ago.

While I’m not the best housekeeper (dust, lived in home) I do keep the kitchen clean and try to vacuum a few times a week (dogs). We have hardwood floors except for a rug in the main living area. Right now my house is one big clutter cluster f*ck and it’s driving me up the wall. I don’t do clutter well.

Our house is only 3 bedrooms, 2 baths about 1200 sq ft. While he was in the hospital, I mostly slept at my house 1-2xs a week and never there longer than 8 hrs when someone could relieve me in ICU. Admittedly I did toss stuff and neglected the house due to the stress of the situation with my husband.

I don’t even know where to start. Everytime I do start, something gets in the way, or someone calls or stops by etc. while I’m appreciate of folks checking in on us, it’s really to the point that I am getting cranky because my home is so cluttered. I can’t really afford a company to come in and clear the mess. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

original post

i'm grossed out that i let it get that bad. took me 45 minutes to get this done. procrastinated for 1+ year and it took me under an hour, figured. obviously it's not completely spotless but shit, i'm no longer embarrassed to be seen in public. took her to get an oil change right after.

if my dumb ass can get it done, so can you!!! never letting it get this bad again, god damn i can be dumb sometimes.

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to come up with a flowchart to help with my process. I’ve been decluttering slowly but surely over the past 2 months. Sometimes I encounter 2 big hurdles: 1. Fear of needing the thing / scarcity mindset, and 2. Guilt over throwing it away (for various reasons).

What doesn’t work for me is putting it to the side and saying “I’ll throw it away in 6 months if I haven’t used it”. No matter what, this absolutely isn’t the path for me. It just stays to the side forever as it’s completely out of sight out of mind. I’d like to find a way to give myself a little push so I do fully throw it out / donate instead of procrastinating the decision-making or procrastinating the action.

Since there are a lot of great resources, I was wondering if something exists to help with the decision / to help let go of items?