Poll Do You Have Trouble Keeping Your Home Orderly?

[shell]

Lately it seems like everything is an effort, I could sit and look at the mess for hours for hours, hating every bit of it. I'm a neat freak, so it really gets me down when I so tired all the time that I don't have the energy to clean the floors. The kitchen always gets cleaned and the washing done but lately all I want to do is sleep. I trimmed three plants in the garden this morning and now I'm warn out. Depression and lack of sleep really sucks.

 

[nyxsea]

I so can relate to everything that has been mentioned above. For years I have been unable to keep anything organized and tidy. I will clean one room..usually really well. In 2 hours everything I worked for is completely messy and out of place. If I decide to have some one over, it causes total panic in me with anxiety attacks. Then you will find me on my hands and knees with a toothbrush cleaning our corners. This must come from the fear that someone will "find out" that my LIFE is messy (inner & outer). I wish I could be a neater but it just doesn't help. Especially when I am depressed and not sleeping well, then everything goes ka-put. I eat off paper plates most days...that way I don't have to do dishes.

 

[thinlizzy4010]

I used to be far more OCD about my home, and would get exhausted keeping it tidy. I can control this enviroment!
A lot of my adult struggle has been realising that having a clean house isn't going to take the pain away. If I have a very very low time, or another trauma type event I still scuttle around "fixing" the house up and it sticks in the back of my mind that it is not quite as organised as I feel I need it to be. I suppose I feel that if I can control everything in my little world inside the home, I may be able to deal with and/or control the outside world better.

 

[Queen Boudica]

Frankly I am beginning to think that those people you see who have a perfect house, with clear surfaces and not a hint of piles of things anywhere. Well they are probably much more mental than I am.

Trying to keep a perfect orderly house with 3 kids, that would be insanity. No-one is going to write on my gravestone I kept a perfect house! They'll probably write, "She died when she tripped on one of the numerous toys that were left all over the floor" :(

 

[jo may]

Sometims i can do the housework but mostly I can't. I have no get up and go and I relie on my husband alot maybe a bit to much.

 

[Alicej]

I feel constantly overwhelmed, like the ten buttons being pushed at once. My mind goes from one thing to another and it's hard to get anything 100% done. Mostly I don't even see the clutter. And then I'm away and I come back and it is a shock. It gets worse because I don't keep up with the paper that comes into the house, and there are too many active projects spread out and piled up. When I see it, I feel exhausted just looking at it. And I wonder if it's some way of keeping me down, keeping the world at bay, reinforcing how alone and afraid I can feel.

OMG that's EXACTLY how I feel and what happens to me. I've only recently come to this forum, and I've now had this experience here a few times. So maybe all this stuff IS related to having PTSD, and I'm not just a deeply flawed human being after all... Thanks so much for sharing, I feel so much less of a freak and so much more entitled to just find some of this stuff more difficult than other people.

 

[Changing4Best]

I keep my home somewhat messy as a protest. You see, I was born into a family that had to have a super NEAT and ORGANIZED house. It was my parents' museum, and entertaining guests was of the utmost importance, much more so than a child's need. I kept my room messy too back then, and my mother in desperation would sometimes take a day off from work and "clean it for me". UGH! I could never find anything whenever she did that. I think she did it on purpose, just to annoy me. Who knows.... Now don't get me wrong, my mother loved me, this was all so they could entertain folks from her job, to impress them, so she'd get a promotion or something.

I loved the day after the parties. I got to eat all the food I was not allowed to touch BEFORE the parties. Cheese laced with wine, poppy seed crackers, candies... that at least made up for all the wait I had to suffer before and during the parties.

 

[Lina007]

It stresses me out when things are not in their place or clean, though, so cleaning is actually one of things that will make me feel better and I consider it a positive coping strategy because seeing my house in order and clean makes me feel good about myself and how I deal with PTSD.