Trouble cleaning trash and breaking habits.

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Mike_Garrick
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06 Sep 2012, 10:15 am

So I need some suggestions.

As a kid my mother never cleaned, I mean almost literally never.
Once a year we would rent a dumpster and throw a years worth of trash and dirty dish's away in the course of a few weeks.
This has left me with a 2 pronged problem.
Firstly messy and trash is a childhood imbedded safe zone in my mind.
When I'm stressed or unhappy I actually like being in a room full of trash, it makes me feel safe.
Secondly, cleaning is stressful for me because I relate it to throwing away cat hair"allergic to cat" filled piles of trash, living dish's, and rat nests.

This is a problem because I don't throw away trash very often.
I have empty water bottles, soda cans, used foam plates, plastic utensils, plastic cups, cardboard box's, grocery bags,paper towels and just general trash occupying more space in my apartment then actual stuff I own.
I'm embarrassed to answer my door, and extremely stressed during the two days a week my landlord is in the office for fear she might need to talk to me and knock on my door.
Last year she gave me a warning when she put in new windows in all the apartments and found my apartment in frankly the cleanest condition it had been that year.
My mom helps me clean my apartment around once a year but within two months I stop keeping up with the cleaning and trash starts to pile up again.

I've been cleaning my apartment the last two weeks because there's a yearly inspection happening next week but I've only cleaned maybe a third of the trash in my apartment. Which was honestly around 8 large black like leaf bags.
I can't imagine I'm going to get another chance after this and she'll probably be checking on it at least monthly if I don't get kicked out as it is.


So how can I fix this?
Trying to live in a clean house for me is like asking a normal person to live in my trash filled apartment,
Every time I finally try and clean I'm overloaded, and to embarrassed to take more then a few trash bags out a day.
But it never bothers me until its at a point where I could get in trouble for it and by then its kind of to late because the more I clean the more I get stressed, and the more stressed I am the less I actually want it to be clean.



solitarymonkey
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06 Sep 2012, 11:23 am

im gonna have a think on this one for ya. just wanted you to know someone is gonna respond :)



Metalwolf
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06 Sep 2012, 12:50 pm

Is it possible to hire a cleaning crew or a maid service? I know this can be helpful if a person needs something cleaned up but they don't have the energy or time to do it.

Edit: As a tip, you might want to stop buying foam plates and plastic utensils. These build up awful fast, and they are all too easy to leave around and forget about. Instead I would try using a few real plates and forks (only a couple each, to prevent build up in the sink) since once you have used them, you are forced to wash unless you want to eat with your hands.

I would also put any extra furniture and clothes into storage, since cleaning around that stuff (at least for me) can be tiring and thus a huge disincentive.

These tricks helped me get rid of a lot of hassle in keeping up the apartment, because my apartment used to be real messy and a major chore to clean when inspection time came. I also started having important mail put into electronic format instead, to avoid having to sort through mounds of paper to shred and toss. It wasn't easy, but I found it better to rearrange how stuff was brought in and used then attempt to force myself into a cleaning schedule that made me exhausted.


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Last edited by Metalwolf on 06 Sep 2012, 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mike_Garrick
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06 Sep 2012, 1:00 pm

Metalwolf wrote:
Is it possible to hire a cleaning crew or a maid service? I know this can be helpful if a person needs something cleaned up but they don't have the energy or time to do it.

I don't have the money for it and I wouldn't really survive someone coming into my apartment and going through my stuff to clean my apartment every week.