#ufyh

[unfuckyourhabitat]

Are you existing in a depression nest right now?

Checking in on my depression nest buddies out there. If you're currently burrito-ed in bed or peeking out of the blankets like a couch goblin, keeping up with the mess is probably the last thing you want to do. However, if you can muster up a tiny bit of energy for a few minutes, taking care of your immediate environment or yourself a little really can make such a difference. Can you try one, part of one, or more than one of these?

Clear some dishes/trash from the immediate area

Take a shower and/or change your clothes

Clear some stuff off the nearest flat surface (nightstand/coffee table/etc.)

Change out your bedding

Put 5 things near you away

Eat something and have some water

If you can only do one or a small part of one, that's great! Every little bit helps you get through and makes things easier on yourself once you're coming out of it. Be kind to yourself and remember that taking care of yourself is important and worthwhile.

[to-the-fishies]

All our seating has been getting more and more ragged from our felonious felines, so I took a while this weekend to apply some patches to one of the chairs. Kudos to this tutorial, my brother's staple gun, a combination of needles (upholstery, smaller upholstery, leather, and straight-up), and the local creative resale shop for what I needed to give the chair a bit more longevity!

[labelleizzy]

Sometimes I just have to go back to old habits. Like back in the day, I was getting daily emails from the website Flylady.net.

Got my shoes on. Got my kitchen timer on. Challenged myself to see how much better I could make the kitchen look in 10 minutes.

I cleared the kitchen island. Put away all the food, got all the dirty dishes into the sink. Started a load of laundry. Made up my third cup of coffee. Washed out some recycling and got it to the bin. Oh, now I can see the acetaminophen which I need to take today.

Do I still have a big mess? Yes I do. I came home from 2-week trip, and I'm still finding stuff I need to put away and laundry I need to do.

But my ADHD ass developed the self-care habits, routines, tips and tricks, originally in the late '90s due to this nice southern lady. She used to send out daily emails encouraging us to take care of ourselves and giving us ideas on how to tackle big home care projects, self-care projects, but mostly home care.

It was a lot of email. And not being Christian, I didn't always appreciate her dropping of God references. But without her structure, without her having figured out that there was tons of us out there, struggling with our lives and managing our shit...

She helped me a lot. The chaos is mostly controlled. (She used to backronym CHAOS as "Can't Have Anybody Over Syndrome" heh)

I'm no longer ashamed of my habitat (and also, thank you, @unfuckyourhabitat for continuing the momentum of this particular way of working).

Gonna finish my coffee ☕ and then set the timer for another 10 minutes. Got a friend coming over for dinner 🍽️ and I can stand to do a bit more tidying up.

Use the tools that work for you!

[robotslenderman]

A week or two ago a post was going around tumblr about someone who spent like 3 hours breaking down a task into a list of like three dozen tiny steps and then was able to execute it in one go

RN I have to haul a heavy-ass loft bed (the type with shelves and cupboards underneath it) and I've been putting it off for months bc my brain is like "nope can't do it"

the list method works, dude. it totally works. whenever I get stuck I just add stuff to the list and then keep going and it's amazing

[otherpeoplescreativity]

Today in the penultimate Salty Pirate Adventure of the year, I went four rounds against the oven.

I think it's a tie.

UFyH style, let's do Before and After photos!

Before:

This oven is less than a year old. Its interior ought to be blue. Also, whichever among us three sometimes cooks directly on the grate, we all need to stop that.

(This is going to make my occasional Eggo Lunch more tedious. Worth it to have no more battles like today.)

I followed the directions to do a Steam Clean cycle. It loosened up some of the crud, but nowhere near enough. And I was doing myself an injury as I attempted to use a wet washcloth to wipe away the grease. No matter what I did, some grease continue to be on the wall and the cloth that I was using showed signs of needing to be cleaned.

I therefore made baking soda paste with which I coated all areas that were not heating elements. I left that to think about what it was doing for a quarter of an hour or more while I cleaned one of the oven grates.

I spent an hour and a half trying to wipe away all of the residue. Mostly the baking soda succeeded in breaking up the grease and pulling it away from the oven walls. But now I had a problem of a white film on everything it took repeated runs of completely cleaning out my washcloth and then wiping the entire up and down -- starting at the top rear.

This hurts like the dickens. I don't really bend the ways that I need to bend in order to do this job.

I now understand why it would have occurred to people long ago that an older woman living alone might decide to take a small child and put them inside of the oven. However it would have been a cold oven with cleaning supplies; and the child would have been instructed to reach all the places Auntie or Baba is too old or too disabled to properly scrub.

After:

I am not delighted.

I put in more water and ran the Steam Clean cycle an extra time. Even though I got a clean damp towel to wipe everything down as soon as the half hour cycle had finished, I still have some stains. And I still have this white film on the glass.

Unfortunately at this point I am too physically uncomfortable to try anything further.

At least it's safe to use?

I'll give it another go in two days.

[sunmontuewrites]

[mydeclutterjourney]

So it's only 12 days into the year

But I feel like I've achieved A Lot. I've read 2 books I've had on my shelf for years, I've washed dishes almost every day, and I've started knitting on a project I've had waiting since 2018. I've decluttered 69 items, I've also achieved 2 decluttering goals and I've started on 2 other goals. I hope I can keep this momentum up.

[little-homestead-in-the-suburbs]

Cleaning Jump Starter random chore picker wheel. Created from the UFYH Mini-Challenges, with extras added by me marked with an asterisk. Hope this helps someone!

[rogue-panda]

NaClYoHo vs. ADHD

I'm even more of a mess than my apartment, and I haven't done much about either me or the apartment in ages. But I made some cleaning progress today:

dirty dishes that were in the bedroom are soaking in hot, soapy water

dirty laundry collected and sorted into hampers and moved out of the bedroom

clean laundry put away (some stuffed into drawers, some neatly folded)

some trash and recycling taken to the kitchen bins

giant wheeled container with supplies for church into the living room so I can sort and donate the stuff inside (I'm not doing that job any more! Hooray!)

giant green+spinach salad with turkey, tomatoes, olives, mozzarella, and Italian dressing for dinner

It isn't much, and Dad expressed his regret that my motivation took a nosedive (he said he wasn't criticizing me, but his tone of voice told a different story), but the housework took me three 20-minute sessions. My room is still a mess, and I have a few things to move off my bed so I can sleep. But it was something, it didn't exhaust me, and my room looks a little less awful.

I got one of those tomato-shaped timers to use for UFYH/Pomodoro Method time management, but even 20 minutes seems to be too long. My first 20-minute session ended with me yelping in fear because I'd forgot about the damn thing. I'd got distracted so many times in the first fifteen minutes that I ended up standing in the living room, watching the pie fight in "The Great Race." (Dad was watching it.) I got back to my room just in time for the tomato timer to reach zero and clang shrilly. I'm looking into how to stay focused better while cleaning.

ADHD: 1

Me: 0

I've got into the Beatles recently, and my current favorite playlist on TIDAL is a few dozen of their happy-sounding songs. I've been sick with bronchitis for two weeks, but I am getting better. It was nice to sing (hoarsely) and dance (a very little) while I worked.

P.S. I don't drink alcohol. At all. How the hell did I end up with a bottle of wine on my bedroom floor?

[flowersnteacups]

About two weeks ago I managed to pack two big bags of stuff to donate!

About twelve days ago I managed to take care of another part of the laundry mountain - a load of sheets and towels

The day after that I vacuumed the bedroom and turned the mattress. However, after that I was in a lot of back pain for several days. Fortunately last week I had someone willing to bring the bags to the 2nd hand store.

Yesterday I managed to make jam and also handwashed a shirt to give to someone who loves 90s clothes. That was A Mistake. My back is Not Amused.

Also, headache that travels back and forth between sinuses and my eye is very exhausting. The next asshole that brings a cold to the crafting group will be bitten!

[unfuckyourhabitat]

Updated Emergency Cleaning List!

As thanks for the warm (and, at times, hilarious) welcome back, here's an updated, significantly less wordy version of my Emergency Cleaning list. The original will be a decade old in a few months, if you can believe it!

You may need to modify or adjust the steps on this list based on your own situation — it's meant as a general guideline for those who need a little help pushing past the "Where the hell am I supposed to start?" feeling. This is also not meant to be a comprehensive "How to clean your house properly and maintain it forever" guide. It's for those moments when you have to quickly half-ass it because someone is going to be in your space soon and it's a disaster. If you can close some doors and cut some steps from the list, even better. Definitely do that.

(This is one of many checklists and downloadables available on my Patreon, if you're into that sort of thing.)

[to-the-fishies]

I worked on my boyfriend's quilt (15 pieces down to 8), emptied the dishwasher, auditioned a new pattern, went to go renew my tags, gave up when the option presented to me had fees, bought the cheapest toilet paper, scheduled a hopefully fee-free appointment for tag renewal, removed trash and recycling, swept the kitchen and bathroom, scrubbed at the gunky spots on the kitchen floor, applied to a job, emptied the litterboxes, vacuumed, and put everything back. good job good job good job

[booyahpurgatory]

sysyphus got the housekeeping boulder to the top of the mountain for the first time in months and bravely refuses to think about what comes next

[robotslenderman]

Me, five seconds before I dust the top of my door: Hmm, I've lived in this room like twenty years, has anyone ever dusted the top of the door? I should probably run a damp rag over it :) Me, five seconds after I dust the top of my door: nope nope nope nope nope nope

[otherpeoplescreativity]

UFyH today, a Sunday of cold rain and shoulder pain, I decided to do a 20-10* to clean up some old dropped food particles on the carpet.

Here is a cruddy photograph of a cruddy twenty-year-old carpet, formerly blue. It has a lot of old food crumbs on it, plus at least one partial Peanut M&M. Also present are bits of plastic from miniatures, some soda bottles, and caps for bottles.

I hurt too much today to drag the vacuum upstairs. Instead I used a good old 🧹 broom and dustpan.

Twenty minutes later:

Same carpet, still cruddy, but no longer a crawly critter magnet.

Time for mandatory relaxation!

[sunmontuewrites]

At my dad's sorting his house out...