I have a hard time when it comes to cleaning. Growing up, my parents were hoarders, and they treated me like a maid. I had to clean piles of moldy dishes a lot, I hated that the most. I couldn’t hang out with my friends until all my “chores” were done. One summer, every day, my mom left a long list of things to clean, and if everything wasn’t taken care of I’d lose “privileges”, such as my bedroom door. My other family members would literally call me Cinderella. To this day, my cleaning playlist is called Cinderella playlist. I think this caused me to have a particular aversion to cleaning, it makes me feel gross (ironic, I know). I get in a bad mood when I clean.

I joined the military right after high school to get away from them. You would think that would help with my organizational skills, right? Lol, nope 🙃

Currently, I straight up just don’t know how to keep a clean house, and I desperately want to change that. I’m pregnant and I can’t have shit thrown around the house with a baby around. My due date is in February.

So, today I began cleaning. I cleaned for 12 hours (with some breaks), and I feel like I barely put a dent in it. I have so much stuff and idk what to do with it, what to keep, and how to store things. I live in a small apartment where every storage place is cluttered. I keep throwing things away and I still have SO MUCH STUFF. I want to rent a dumpster and throw every single thing away and start completely over, but that’s not financially realistic for me. That’s probably too extreme of a solution anyway. Nothing is damaged.

I’ve looked for cleaning tips and the main thing I see is to work on sections. The problem for me is I feel like that is impossible in my house. For instance, I was working on my bedroom and I had things I needed to put away in the kitchen, so I went to the kitchen and there was no space to put things anywhere, so I worked on throwing things out to make space which led me to do the same thing in other rooms. No section gets fully clean which makes me discouraged and anxious.

I’m so overwhelmed. I keep trying to remind myself even though I feel like nothing is getting done, I am making progress. But jeez, why is this so hard for me?

Any advice? Words of encouragement? Any ideas on how to not feel disgusted when scrubbing things? I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about where to put everything and what to clean next. I don’t want to give up like usual.