My depression room is off the charts 💀

[nir]

I hate how depression makes it so hard to fucking clean. My entire apartment is a disaster, but all I did today was spend money on takeout and make the mess worse.

Anyone else living in a fucking hovel on their own accord? It's basically bedtime where I live but I feel so upset that I didn't get any cleaning done. Might try to break down some boxes and take out some trash at least before I sleep.

The funny thing is, I have OCD. I just don't have the OCD that makes me be tidy...obviously, lol.

 

[stayedtoolong]

I feel this so much! I only have to take care of my room and it's a fucking TIP! If I had a whole apartment to myself it would be a hazard issue.

Rooting for you!

 

[Dingusguy]

Mmm I know that feeling, you just made me take a look at my room and I think I've just noticed how fucking long it's been since I last actually cleaned my little cave here. And now I can't un-see it.

Depression is the worst demotivator there is huh?

 

[nir]

I feel this so much! I only have to take care of my room and it's a fucking TIP! If I had a whole apartment to myself it would be a hazard issue.

Rooting for you!

I have this issue where if I can't see something, it's like it doesn't exist in a way that matters anymore. It's like I never properly developed object permanence. Like I *know* that a room is a mess, but if I close a door...no longer bothers me. My room can be a mess, but as long as I have a small rectangle on my mattress to sleep on, I can just fall right asleep. Makes it really easy to ignore my problems until they're at a massive level.

Mmm I know that feeling, you just made me take a look at my room and I think I've just noticed how fucking long it's been since I last actually cleaned my little cave here. And now I can't un-see it.

Depression is the worst demotivator there is huh?

It's honestly embarrassing how bad I've let my place get. I remember being 18 and being so excited to move out and have my own place. Now I'm 26 and have realised how shit I am at being an adult. I'd like to think it's partly mental illness, but by god it is also partly being lazy as all hell.

 

[CatLvr]

I feel this so much! I only have to take care of my room and it's a fucking TIP! If I had a whole apartment to myself it would be a hazard issue.

Rooting for you!

Beat me to it, but yeah!! I feel this in my soul SO bad. Some days all I can get done is taking care of my critters. That HAS to happen. No ifs ands or buts, which is good because it FORCES me to do something. And of course when I'm feeding everybody they are being silly so that makes me smile a little bit. But no matter what, I try to make my bed before I get in it st night. I can't explain it but it makes me feel better.

 

[stayedtoolong]

I have this issue where if I can't see something, it's like it doesn't exist in a way that matters anymore. It's like I never properly developed object permanence. Like I *know* that a room is a mess, but if I close a door...no longer bothers me. My room can be a mess, but as long as I have a small rectangle on my mattress to sleep on, I can just fall right asleep. Makes it really easy to ignore my problems until they're at a massive level.

I can relate to the mattress bit. I just ignore everything, keep the lights off and push it down my mind so I don't have to deal with it and keep my bed as clear as I can.

Beat me to it, but yeah!! I feel this in my soul SO bad. Some days all I can get done is taking care of my critters. That HAS to happen. No ifs ands or buts, which is good because it FORCES me to do something. And of course when I'm feeding everybody they are being silly so that makes me smile a little bit. But no matter what, I try to make my bed before I get in it st night. I can't explain it but it makes me feel better.

I've often heard that having a pet can help keep some routine in your life. That's really good.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Yes, my place is utterly disgusting. The one thing that properly motivates me to do anything is the prospect of other people seeing it. Doesn't help that my job is messy and full of clutter and I work from home.

Weirdly, my hygienne is fine though. Funny how we can let some things go but not others.

I don't know whether I can really blame it on something legitimate or, whether I'm just supremely lazy in this regard.

 

[astr4]

are you me haha i'm also 26 f with ocd and a depression room

it's gotten so bad i started living in the guest room 3 years ago and uhhhhh well it's now spread to both rooms and the bathroom

just piles of water bottles and tissues in corners

piles of dirty dishes in the other corner

pile of laundry in the third corner

and then bed

 

[nir]

are you me haha i'm also 26 f with ocd and a depression room

it's gotten so bad i started living in the guest room 3 years ago and uhhhhh well it's now spread to both rooms and the bathroom

just piles of water bottles and tissues in corners

piles of dirty dishes in the other corner

pile of laundry in the third corner

and then bed

wow, we're genuinely so alike. hello internet twin!

My guest room is "storage", to put it politely. Aka I have tossed so much random shit in there and then just close the door and pretend it doesn't exist.

I don't know how normal people do it. Sometimes I visit my sister and she is always apologising for "the mess" and all I can think is omg....you think *this* is messy?

 

[Gangrel]

offtopic, just wanna say i love your hissi pfp

 

[nir]

offtopic, just wanna say i love your hissi pfp

Thank you! This website reminded me of a macabre version of the Neoboards, which I spent so much time on as a lonely kid. Felt only right to have my favourite avatar as my profile pic here :)

 

[Ramsay Fiction]

Thank you! This website reminded me of a macabre version of the Neoboards, which I spent so much time on as a lonely kid. Felt only right to have my favourite avatar as my profile pic here :)

I also wanted to comment on your pfp. I have this website open in one window and Neopets open in another lol.

To stay on topic to your thread I am notoriously bad when it comes to mess. Executive dysfunction, laziness, not caring, idk what it stems from in the end but the mess has gotten so terrible in the past I've had to essentially throw the entire room away. We're talking maggots and roaches level of bad. I've gotten a little better now, but I still leave a mess on my desk and my laundry is always in a pile.

 

[Higurashi415]

Haha I understand. Depression makes me messy aswell and as a result I've been pretty much living in my room to avoid fucking up things around the house (I live with my brother).
My desk is currently split between mugs, tissues, cereal and empty bottles of water. Oh and dishes.

 

[nir]

The riveting update: paid someone to come get some of the broken furniture out of my apartment. This cleared up a lottt of space and is making things easier to clean. I've bagged up lots of garbage (I keep a lot of paperwork - from school, past jobs, etc, etc - man does it take up space!) but I don't want to bring it out until garbage pickup day, or else I'll fill up the garbage cans out back and the other tenants won't be able to use them. Wouldn't be fair.

I have really ugly flooring in my bedroom and Amazon accidentally listed some peel-and-stick tiles for a price that was a decimal point cheaper than it should have been (lmao), so tomorrow if I'm up to it I might be putting some temporary nice flooring down. I feel like if my apartment looks nice, maybe I'll treat it nice? Idk. Worth a shot.

The downside is that because I did a decent job, I just spent a fuckton of money ordering food to "treat myself". I am so bad with spending money. Something I need to work on for sure. But progress is progress and my apartment is looking a bit better.

 

[nir]

Well, I have ants. FML.

I meant to spend all day today cleaning my apartment. Instead, I stayed in bed and ordered food. I am so fucking lazy, it's incredible. I wish this stuff bothered me like it does other people. I don't understand how my body is so good at adapting to clutter and trash just being everywhere. Gonna try to clean tonight...we'll see what happens. Wish me luck. Any advice would be highly appreciated.

 

[ForestGhost]

Hello fellow squalor friend~ :p

I also recently attracted an ant colony into my bedroom owing to some plates of discarded food I left on the floor, which I totally forgot about due to the all the other refuse piling up on top of them. I tried vacuuming them up for a while but it seemed like they just kept endlessly respawning. Clearing out all the food and crumbs and stuff in the area was pretty much the only thing that worked, I guess it just kinda... starved them out eventually?

My space is still a total mess, but not waking up to bites all over my feet is better at least.

 

[notwhereIbelong]

Ugh, I have SO many empty food wrappers on my desk from binges, the room is also filled with dust and clothes (both dirty and clean) just scattered everywhere. My room has definitely seen worse, but it's not doing good either. I've been telling myself I need to clean up for the past month pretty much, maybe the time for it has finally come

 

[CatLove56]

I hate how accurate this is.

 

[willitpass]

My apartment is rarely clean. It's been straight up disgusting before. Right now it's in the middle. The toilet has pink mold again. The bathroom sink is starting to get clogged again too. I cleaned up some of the trash off the floor but it's already piling up again. I've got a huge pile of dirty laundry on the bedroom floor and I've been sleeping with my basket of clean laundry in the bed next to me for days now. Couldn't tell you the last time I vacuumed. There's trash all over the living room again. I spilled Miralax on the counter last night and haven't cleaned it up just yet. It's a miracle I don't have bugs really.

 

[Just_Another_Person]

I think this is the post I most related while being in here. My apartment is a mess and it's been more than 2 years than I moved here... and yet there are things I didn't put in place lol I also have OCD, the "super hygiene" type, yet it doesn't apply to my apartment

 

[pyx]

i too live in abject squalor

 

[nir]

Well, I decided to do the whole "don't aim for perfection and keep your daily expectations low, slow and steady, blah blah etc etc" method and embarrassingly I think it's working, LMAO. I only have a few small tasks I aim to do a day instead of deciding I'm going to do 3000 things, get panicked I can't do them all, and lay in bed doing nothing instead. It feels weird because I do the things I choose to do, and I still have energy to do more but I let myself rest instead - this feels so counterproductive. However, this apparently is the key to preventing burnout. So instead of having one SUPER productive day that burns me out for a week-to-multiple weeks, I do a few things a day and don't get burnt out at all???

Idk, it feels almost too good to be true. I'm sure I'll mess up at some point, but there is visibly progress in my house now. So that's good. I'm trying to not go to bed with my apartment looking worse than it did when I previously woke up. We'll see how this goes. Fingers crossed :)

My apartment is rarely clean. It's been straight up disgusting before. Right now it's in the middle. The toilet has pink mold again. The bathroom sink is starting to get clogged again too. I cleaned up some of the trash off the floor but it's already piling up again. I've got a huge pile of dirty laundry on the bedroom floor and I've been sleeping with my basket of clean laundry in the bed next to me for days now. Couldn't tell you the last time I vacuumed. There's trash all over the living room again. I spilled Miralax on the counter last night and haven't cleaned it up just yet. It's a miracle I don't have bugs really.

I am writing this with a large amount of clean laundry on the bed next to me. I need to get more shelves to put things away in, but I'm waiting until Prime Day to order them, so for now...I sleep next to the lump of my clean duvet cover and when I wake up I momentarily think it's a human and panic. But at least it's clean!!

Hello fellow squalor friend~ :p

I also recently attracted an ant colony into my bedroom owing to some plates of discarded food I left on the floor, which I totally forgot about due to the all the other refuse piling up on top of them. I tried vacuuming them up for a while but it seemed like they just kept endlessly respawning. Clearing out all the food and crumbs and stuff in the area was pretty much the only thing that worked, I guess it just kinda... starved them out eventually?

My space is still a total mess, but not waking up to bites all over my feet is better at least.

Oh my god I hope this kind doesn't bite. So far, no issues, but I found one on my bedside table yesterday and wanted to scream :D

Took out a big bag of garbage today. Hoping it helps. They need to move back outside!!! Go home guyss

maybe the time for it has finally come

I believe in you!! I know how hard it is. The TikTok cleaning community (specifically the reeeeally messy ones) and the r/hoarding subreddit have given me some motivation and really good tips. It's just nice to find people who are in the same boat and also don't shame you for where you're at. Shame makes me wanna just keep living in squalor. Just know I am not judging you and if I knew you irl, I would be helping clean that space of yours!! But I don't know you irl, so hopefully my positive thoughts are enough to help even a little. I believe in ya and you deserve a nice, clean space to live in :) We both do. And we've both got this, even if it takes longer than it would for most people.

I think this is the post I most related while being in here. My apartment is a mess and it's been more than 2 years than I moved here... and yet there are things I didn't put in place lol I also have OCD, the "super hygiene" type, yet it doesn't apply to my apartment

OCD is so wild. The brain...who the fuck knows what is going on up there.

"I want things to be very clean!" ok mr. brain

"But I'm okay living in a dirty house." what???

"But this ONE SPECIFIC THING needs to be clean, or else I'll lose it!!" that doesn't even make sense.

"And I'm gonna spend so much time panicking about the ONE SPECIFIC THING that I won't have energy to do anything else that needs to be done :)" why are you like this

add on the suicidality and it's just a whole ~treat~ to live like this :')

i too live in abject squalor

youuuu are not alone my friend!! I took a shower and there were ants...in my shower. doing what? who knows. maybe my apartment was too dirty for them and they also wanted to feel clean. ha. ha. fml :)

at least we're in this together though <3

 

[ForestGhost]

Glad you've had some success! Babystepping it has also helped me conquer the executive dysfunction a bit. I've at least been able to declutter slightly, taking out some trash and sorting through at some of the clothes I had just left discarded on the floor. Haven't been able to scrub and clean the (ever growing number of) grimey places, that seems a bit harder to attack :c

I think my most ridiculous clutter I still haven't addressed is my growing number of unopened Amazon packages sitting on my dining table. I mean what the hell, this is stuff I decided would be useful enough to spend good money on, but I can't even get myself to open them. I don't even remember what half of them are anymore, frankly.

 

[astr4]

i'm an arachnophobe but letting the spiders in my bathroom live because a) it's too messy to deal with them b) perhaps they will help catch the other bugs hanging around

you have perhaps inspired me to take out one black trash bag of my own… we'll see if i get up to take it out in the morning or if it eventually blends into the mess and ends up staying…

 

[vampire2002]

i do have contamination OCD, however not in a way that necessarily means i keep everything clean. i used to be that way years ago, but now i am burnt out by the constant mental battle. there are some things i keep clean that i use, and some things i don't clean that i just... refuse to touch. i do my best, but OCD is exhausting.
ironically, having contamination OCD can make it harder to clean in some cases because things feel too dirty for me to touch even to clean them. that, on top of the depression killing my motivation to do anything... makes things so difficult.

 

[NoPoint2Life]

i do have contamination OCD, however not in a way that necessarily means i keep everything clean. i used to be that way years ago, but now i am burnt out by the constant mental battle. there are some things i keep clean that i use, and some things i don't clean that i just... refuse to touch. i do my best, but OCD is exhausting.
ironically, having contamination OCD can make it harder to clean in some cases because things feel too dirty for me to touch even to clean them. that, on top of the depression killing my motivation to do anything... makes things so difficult.

I know what you mean. They say people with contamination OCD love to clean and that's the furthest thing from it! I'm so involved in trying to keep my every day things clean and sanitary that there's other stuff I don't want to touch because it's too much effort and I know it will lead to tons of extra hand washing. Like dusting I can't stand plus half the time anything bigger turns into a project because I'll get fixated on something. When I was inpatient last year, my parents had a cleaning crew come and do a deep clean in my area upstairs,. My father said he couldn't believe how disgusting certain things were. I go for ERP therapy and have definitely relaxed somewhat with some of my house cleaning. Like I can actually feel bored now because I have more time on my hands because I am cleaning less. Unfortunately, I still wash my hands tons. I was depressed before I had OCD and this just makes it so much worse. Like you said, you get burnt out fast.

 

[nir]

Well, I had to un-disaster a good chunk of my apartment because my shower broke and I had to have maintenance come in. My muscles are still sore from all the cleaning, lol. It's not fully done yet and I still have a messy bedroom, but it's weird to see how different it looks when it's clean-ish.

I need to try and keep it this way this time. I bought some furniture to be delivered to hopefully make it too comfy to neglect, lol.

Recently, I've been thinking about the long-term consequences of my chosen isolation. Having the maintenance person inside my apartment made me so anxious and awkward. Also, I was in the store the other day and some other shopper started chatting with me casually, and it was like my brain went blank. I've always been a little socially awkward, but it's at a whole other level now. How do I rebuild social skills as an adult? Is it even a possibility? I like my solitude, but I don't want to ruin my ability to be social. I feel like I've stunted myself accidentally.

Regardless, I have a lot of things to do before I need to worry about my social life. My house is still pretty messy, my looks are bad (seeing a surgeon soon.... quite nervous), my health is... not great. I forgot to take my Prozac many days in a row and had a horrible panic attack/dissociative episode last night, so fuck. That's on me.

Every time I take a few steps forward in one part of my life, I feel like I inevitably drop the ball elsewhere. How do people constantly juggle everything so effortlessly? Why am I so bad at being human???

Idk. A win is a win, as they say. Hopefully I can keep this win up for at least a little bit of time.

 

[LostLily]

Proud of you for taking the initiative to clean your place.

 

[nir]

Proud of you for taking the initiative to clean your place.

It sucks that I have to wait for impending consequence in order to feel like I can do something. I spent so much time *wanting* to clean my apartment, but the only thing that made it happen was the fear of the maintenance worker telling my landlord my place was messy.

I hope in the future I can do things for the sake of doing them. I feel like procrastination controls me so much. I can't keep living like this.

BUT I am super happy with all that I got done. It was a substantial amount in a very short time. It's a huge relief. Just need to keep the momentum going!!

 

[LostLily]

It sucks that I have to wait for impending consequence in order to feel like I can do something. I spent so much time *wanting* to clean my apartment, but the only thing that made it happen was the fear of the maintenance worker telling my landlord my place was messy.

I hope in the future I can do things for the sake of doing them. I feel like procrastination controls me so much. I can't keep living like this.

BUT I am super happy with all that I got done. It was a substantial amount in a very short time. It's a huge relief. Just need to keep the momentum going!!

Better late than never