Spring Cleaning with Depression

Welcome to my step by step guide to Spring Cleaning with Depression!

This morning, when you woke up, you thought for a moment about not going immediately back to sleep. Congratulations! Today might be your day!

After you wake up again (about 45 minutes later), you are on your way to spring cleaning.

Drink coffee. Take your kids to the bus stop, even take the dogs for a little spin (walk the long way home and call it a walk).

Get back home. Take a shower. It is now 10am, and you should be proud.

If you are still feeling like you might be able to accomplish something today, then dress for success. That means sports bra (which works because all your regular bras are dirty), yoga pants (you have a clean pair downstairs because your husband folded laundry while watching netflix last night, while you were already asleep), and a tank top.

Now, there is an expression "swallow the frog," which means that you should do the hard thing first. This is a terrible idea. Start with the easiest thing.

Be sure to make several trips up and down the stairs because you keep forgetting to grab what you need. Get your music going, and please don't take too long to decide on a station because you don't have that kind of time to waste. The magic of energy might disappear without notice.

It is 11am, you are dressed, your music is on, your laundry basket has managed to make it to the laundry room with dirty laundry inside. Run the laundry (the easiest task).

Put the superhero sticker from your shirt onto the washing machine and marvel at how it never occurred to you before that you could totally cover the machine in stickers and it might make you smile every time you do laundry. Or will it stress you out because it isn't clean and simple? You decide to leave the sticker on the machine (and another smiley face sticker you find) and figure out how you feel about it later. Laundry is in the wash.

Now you are going to clean the cleanest bathroom, the guest bathroom that no one uses. It will not gross you out and it will feel easy. Your music choice is really working for you, who knew 90s school dance would get you going like this?!

Now you realize the guest bed still has the old sheets on it from when your brother-in-law was here three weeks ago. Take the sheets off. You will make the bed again, once you remember to grab the clean sheets from upstairs.

You found windex under the kitchen sink when you went up to get more paper towels. You don't typically use windex (bc vinegar water works and it's easy enough) but maybe you should just use the rest of this bottle so you can throw it out. So you windex the bathroom mirrors and the glass doors (inside AND out).

Your friend has called and she's bringing lunch over because she's amazing. You switch the wash to the dryer (immediately!) and tell the unmade bed you'll be back later. The windex bottle has three tablespoons left in it and is sitting on the table downstairs. It will likely remain there for another month or two.

Friend arrives and you eat lunch for 45 minutes. Then she asks if the dogs (who have been marching up and down the stairs with you with very puzzled looks on their faces) need a walk. You decide they DO need a walk. SO take a 30 minute walk. Then hang out for another 30 minutes.

It is now 130pm and you have one load in the wash and one in the dryer, and a clean bathroom and unmade bed. And clean windows.

Your friend has left and you think you should probably at least make that bed. You go upstairs for the sheets, see the pile of unfolded laundry on the bed and the sheer sight overwhelms you. SO you sit down and think for about 20 minutes about how you can do this thing. Honestly, you only thought that for 5 minutes, the other 15 was checking email and social media. Anything to distract you from the impending doom of laundry and other unfinished tasks that slowly started to scroll like movie credits in your brain.

You get a lucky strike of clarity and step away from your distraction. You remember what you came for and at 2pm, you grab the sheets, go down and make the bed. The music was no longer giving you nostalgia or pep, so you left your phone playing "My Heart Will Go On" to your laundry pile on the bed upstairs. Downstairs, while you made the guest bed, you came up with an idea for rearranging furniture. You did this rearranging and decided it was OK and left it that way. You aren't sure though. You also remember that one thing you wanted to set up in the guest room, but you can't do it right now. So you cautiously tack it onto the scrolling list and hope to God that you don't get paralyzed again by it.

Before succumbing to paralysis, you manage to switch the laundry, and though the dirty pile is getting smaller, the clean clothes pile is getting bigger. Which is overwhelming. Your energy is running out like you knew it would.

It is 230pm and your child will get home from school in an hour. You feel you deserve a break, so you lie down on the floor and let the dogs lick your arm and lie down beside you. This feels sweet, and you don't want to break the spell, so you stay there. An hour goes by like a flash.

Your child is coming home from school, your day of productivity is done. You made a bed, cleaned a bathroom, and ate lunch. And put clothes in and out of the washer and dryer. But you feel like you cleaned a 15 room bed and breakfast. You wish that you could be normal, that you could power clean a house in 3 hours, but that happens about as often as a full solar eclipse, except you don't have the ability to plan for it.

That's the end of day 1 of spring cleaning with depression. You have no idea when day 2 will happen. It needs to be tomorrow... but you already know that's not going to happen. At least your guest room has clean sheets.