#unfuck your habitat

[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.

[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!

[a-curious-studyblr]

Tidying up tip: I learned this from unf*ck your habitat, take a before and after tidying up pic of your space on your phone. It's hard to see the improvement of the tidier space, so looking at the pictures is motivating and like a pat on the back!

[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?

[english-ness]

In honor of @unfuckyourhabitat being back on tumblr and because it was direly needed -I did two 20-10 tonight with music in the background and a tea break in between

There remains a major problem in this bedroom/office (too much stuff & not enough storage) but this will be more livable at least. And the cables are properly put away, and the library books ready to be returned (late, of course, but as long as they’re returned).

When I started

After the first 20/10

At the end

[omisspearl]

Bone weary tonight, but I have made it my habit more often than not to do 15 minutes (by timer) dishes/kitchen clean up and 10 minutes room cleaning.

At the same time I have added a combination of the flylady "clean your sink" and @unfuckyourhabitat make your bed. The latter really gets the generationally emphasized struggle to keep ones various levels of disabled brainbody shambling forward. I have also started making my bedtime routine start at 8 PM. Likewise a ruthless purge of my physical possessions is ongoing to reduce the chaos to manage.

I have a degree of specific skepticism that everything is one minor life change away from falling apart, but man the shame/ego damage of living undiagnosed and then unsupported neurodivergent is something else.

[palabasa]

found out that unfuck your habitat actually had a book out and looked it up, all hyped up, only to see the desc comparing it to the life-changing magic of tidying up. eugh. it immediately put my hackles up bc 9 times out of 10 when books try to tout themselves as better than konmari the authors are talking out of their asses

i'm still gonna give it a read to see if it's got anything good, i'm just a Lot more wary of it now. makes me sad since UFYH was the main system i used when i was majorly depressed in high school 😔

[still-bejeweled-and-shining]

whohoo! I tried unfucking my habitat a lil' bit, now that classes are about to start and my room was an absolute mess. Somehow, I managed to clear a LOT of stuff from my shelves in like, three 20/10s. I'm feeling great! And it was wayyy easier than I expected it to be. I still have many things to do to unfuck my room (cleaning out the drawers, organising my closet, etc) but at least I don't feel like staying outside of my room all of the time.

[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.)

[sunmontuewrites]

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

[mydeclutterjourney]

5 things turned into 16 things...

I decided this week I would try to pick 5 items from each room of my home and dispose of them, donate them or put them away elsewhere in the house. I did my bedroom and en suite on day 1 and day 2 respectively. But because I missed day 3, I decided on day 4 I would double the items in the bathroom to 10. And then I was on a roll, so I picked out another 6 taking my total to 16. There were a few empty containers, some expired medication and quite a few hair products I've never gelled with (pun intended).

But with how easy it was to rustle up 16 things to get rid of yesterday, I've decided I'm going to start planning in 5 thing declutters in smaller areas of my home. Instead of looking at rooms as a whole, I'm going to look at 5 things from my dresser drawers, 5 things from my wardrobe, 5 things from my bookcase etc. I still have way too much stuff, I can't display things nicely and it's very easy for me to default back to mess, so this will hopefully reduce items in concentrated areas. It will also combat "project mentality" where I only actively declutter if I can see a large amount of things to go at once.

[little-homestead-in-the-suburbs]

Operation functional home Take two-week six I think

Lost momentum as I returned to my school year work schedule and the weekly routine changed.

Have managed to keep dishes, laundry, trash, and cat litter boxes mostly contained and usually not excessively smelly.

Pm a positive note I am developing better bedtime routines that are helping me have better quality sleep.

Recent accomplishments:

Got the barn kittens neutered, and the female kitten rehomed

Got my tire replaced after it picked up a screw and ordered a full spare kit (that was a 6 hour ordeal)

Changed my bed sheets and got the new mattress protectors on in the process

Started cleaning out my personal email and have deleted several years of junk mail

[the-forbidden-fruit-project]

Open Access Resources

To kick off the project, here is a master list of open source archives, organizations, and other educational projects. I will frequently add to this over time and will gladly accept suggestions for more. These aren't in any organized order, they're just added as I think of them or are informed of more.

Disclaimer: I can't guarantee that everything in this master list will be totally accessible to everybody due to a disability, and I apologize if there is anything that isn't. If you notice an accessibility issue, or any other issues with what's on this list, tell me and I will add a disclaimer under it or fix it if it's an issue from me.

Everything on here is free, though.

Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.com)

Project Gutenberg is a completely volunteer-run online library founded by Michael Stern Hart in 1971. He was the inventor of e Books and believed in making books as easily accessible and distributable as possible. The website has over 70,000 public domain digital books and they add more very often. There are options to read their books on the website browser, through multiple downloadable file types, in plain text, without pictures, and some even have human or machine narrated reading options. There are many books on the website that are not in English or have non-English translations. You never need an account or are required to share any of your personal information with them to access anything on the website.

Open Library (www.openlibrary.org)

Open Library is another digital archive of online eBooks available for free. It is part of the broader Internet Archive. They share a similar goal of uploading every book published for easy and free access. Some of their books are public domain and others aren't. The ones that aren't you need to borrow from the site, either for one day or 14 hours depending on if the book is fully borrow-able or not. All the books they have also have audio versions, and their open access books are downloadable in either PDF or e Pub form. You need an account to borrow books from them, but not to read their open access books.

Crash Course (www.thecrashcourse.com)

Crash Course is a YouTube channel founded by Hank Green and John Green in 2012, initially created through the YouTube Original Channel Initiative and has since branched out into it's own company funded by community donations on Patreon. As stated on their website, "[The people at Crash Course] believe that high-quality educational videos should be available to everyone for free." They make fast-paced, easily understandable and processable educational videos on a broad range of topics ranging from science to humanities. They have over 45 published courses to date which include topics above a high school or primary school level. As far as I'm aware, all of their videos have closed captions and you don't need to have the ability to see the videos to understand any of their courses. They also have videos in Spanish and some directed towards children.

SciShow (www.scishow.com)

SciShow [pronounced Sigh Show], like Crash Course, was also founded by Hank Green in 2012 as part of the YouTube Original Channel Initiative. It's very similar to Crash Course, but they cover scientific topics exclusively. They have three separate YouTube channels currently alongside the original Sci Show channel: Sci Show Space, Sci Show Psych, and Sci Show Kids. Each respectively focuses on astronomy, psychology, and kid's content. The first two aren't currently making videos anymore, but they still have all their videos up on those channels. Most of their content is centered around more obscure topics that many people don't understand, have misconceptions about, or haven't heard of. Like Crash Course, I believe their videos all have captions and don't require the video footage to be seen in order to understand, but I would need somebody to verify that for me to say for sure. Unlike Crash Course I believe their videos are often shorter and more condensed because they don't normally cover broader topics.

Unfuck Your Habitat (www.unfuckyourhabitat.com)

Unfuck Your Habitat is an open source website full of information about cleaning and tips for doing so. The website has a strong focus on making cleaning easier for people that are mentally ill, physically or mentally disabled, or have a lot of trouble cleaning for personal or environmental reasons.

Their way of approaching things is very blunt and simple, and they use language that isn't complicated or confusing. It could potentially come off as not being serious, which some may like and some may not. They curse a lot so if you don't like cursing you might have a problem with it.

It's full of text based articles and as far as I'm aware there isn't any option for audio. Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with how screen readers work yet so I can't say for sure if it's possible to use one on their website. They also have two books written by Rachel Hoffman with similar names:

Unfuck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess

Cleaning Sucks: An Unfuck Your Habitat Guided Journal for Less Mess, Less Stress, and a Home You Don’t Hate

You need to pay for those, though, and I don't know if they have audio book versions or if you can read them with a screen reader.

[render-bomb]

When you haven't cleaned a room in a while so you have to do multiple 10 minute bursts 😢😴