overwhelmed by mess

A cluttered home creates anxiety

My anxiety has been getting to the worse of me the last few weeks. It tends to worsen when I've been home for an extended amount of time or when our house gets cluttered and unorganized. I'll be fine one moment and completely overwhelmed the next. It'll happen in a split second and I honestly just panic and feel the need to clean everything all while freaking out. My poor husband will drop what he's doing and help clean with me just so I can calm down. 

So what did i do to help?

I started tackling one room of our house a day to keep up with household chores. This worked out great for a few days until other things took priority. For example, I'll be cleaning the kitchen but then the towels have to get done so laundry gets started and that meant cleaning up our laundry room/mud room. Then I'll be spiraling around the house trying to get everything done again. Obviously I meant well and it just didn't work. 

I realized that I'm a pretty visual learner and need structures and routines. I mean that's why I became a teacher to begin with. I remembered how successful I was at creating charts, graphs, to-do lists when I was teaching so I decided to create something I would need to stick with at home. 

So i created a weekly cleaning chart and it looked something like this

This would allow me to fully focus on one room without getting distracted. I'll still try to get other things done around the house but this will keep me accountable to tackling one room and fully accomplishing something for the day. 

If you're easily overwhelmed by clutter or a messy house, definitely create a weekly task chart. This way you won't go spiraling!