The Messy House: 8 Ways to Tell if you are Overwhelmed or Just Being Lazy
When your house is a disaster and you feel like no amount of cleaning gets any improvement from your perpetually messy house, you might start to feel like it’s all your fault for being lazy. My guess is that you’re probably not lazy after all. Laziness defines someone who doesn’t want to work, doesn’t have initiative, and doesn’t care. The fact that you’re reading about ways to improve your messy home’s condition right now is a testament to the fact that you DO want things to change!
It is easy to want to give up when a project seems too big or too hard to take on. This is precisely how hoarding houses get to the point of no return. At some point, your house is just too overwhelming and you don’t know where to start. Hoarding houses don’t get that way overnight, and an out of control house isn’t that way because you want it to be a wreck.
There’s an important point to note here: Being overwhelmed is NOT the same as being lazy.
We could also substitute the word “distracted” in for lazy. I know there are times when I’d much rather do something fun instead of a chore I dread. I’m not paralyzed with inaction, I’m just changing my priorities with that choice.
Quiz: How to Tell If you Are Overwhelmed or Just Lazy
So how can you identify if you are paralyzed and ineffective because of the state of your messy house or if you’re just being lazy? Take the quiz and ask yourself these 8 questions:
1. Do I start to clean and give up after a few minutes because there’s nowhere to put stuff?
2. Is every room in my house equally messy?
3. Is there no clean place I can go in my house to feel peaceful or happy?
4. If I clean for an hour, does my house look just as bad as it did before I started?
5. Does cleaning my house make me feel more depressed?
6. Am I so ashamed of my house that I don’t let friends or family come over?
7. Do I worry that my family will think I am a failure because our house is always a wreck?
8. Am I the only one who tries to clean and organize my house? Does my family make messes and leave them behind for someone else to clean?
What your score says about you.
If you answered yes to:
1-2 questions – You might just be lazy about your house right now. Ask yourself truthfully if you’re letting cleaning, organizing, and picking up after yourself fall by the wayside because you have other things you’d rather be doing, like going out with friends or binge-watching Netflix.
3-4 questions – It’s possible you’re being lazy from being preoccupied with other more interesting or fun things to fill your time. Only you know for sure and it really depends on which questions got yeses! You might be able to create a housekeeping schedule for a few days of the week that will help you stay on top of recurring messes.
–> If you scored either of those, go read: How Do I Set Up a Housekeeping Plan?
5-8 questions – You are probably so overwhelmed with the state of your house that mere motivation and trying to do better alone will not help at this point. You need a proven strategy and simple steps to see visible results so you can gain momentum. I have just the solution!
Don’t suffer anymore from the depressing and life-impacting consequences of being overwhelmed by your messy home. My Disaster House free 5-day email course will give you one easy-to-accomplish step each day that will deliver real, visible results.
Why Your Messy House Might be Making You Sick
The stress levels you endure from being in a messy, cluttered space cause your cortisol levels to skyrocket. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone and, according to Mayo Clinic’s article “Chronic stress puts your health at risk,” chronic stress can create or magnify other health problems. Some of these are “anxiety, depression, digestive problems, headaches, heart disease, sleep problems, weight gain, memory and concentration impairment.”
Reading through that list of health problems, you can probably identify one or more that apply to you. Besides the stress-induced health risks, we can’t ignore the effects of dirt, mold, and bacteria. If you’re breathing in things from your environment that aren’t supposed to be there, you could be more prone to upper respiratory issues or allergies, especially if you also have pets in the house.
Your health and well-being are TOO IMPORTANT to let them be destroyed by disastrous, stressful surroundings. This is especially the case when the only thing standing between you and a cleaner house (and reduced risk for those health consequences) is a strategy and some systems that will help you keep it from getting out of control again.
Disaster House Free 5-Day Email Course
This post has been re-written and improved! Below is the original post from 2009- Housekeeping Heaven: The L Word – Laziness: The following is a guest post written by Courtney, a blend of 1950’s housewife and modern housewife. She keeps things simple. We published this post on June 9, 2009.
Today I want to talk about something that happens to every homemaker and yet none of us ever feel comfortable admitting it to anyone. Spouses cover your ears – I’m about to say the “L” word. Laziness. It happens to the best and worst of us. While we daydream of our yearly vacation, the house gets out of control.
While I fully believe in taking a couple of days off during the week, you may or may not be the type of person who can handle what happens to your home when you’re not in control of the clutter for those two days. So what do you do? What do you do when laziness strikes and the clutter gets out of control?
I’ll be the first person to tell you that it’s okay to hire a maid from time to time. You should consider hiring a maid when your clutter has spun out of control. Sometimes clutter can be overwhelming to deal with and when you’re just not feeling up to it, it’s hard to work your way through it. Let someone else knock out the bulk of it. That may be all you need to pull yourself out of a funk. You can then pick up where you left off and clean only what clutters at that point. Still, in this economy, hiring a maid (even if it’s someone you know) may be out of the question. So then what?
Don’t try to tackle the entire house in one day. Schedule one room per day and concentrate on that. Once you’ve really cleaned one room, it’ll be easier to “clean sweep” every day after that. A “clean sweep” is just quickly going through the room and putting things where they belong and wiping down countertops. Say you start with cleaning the kitchen only today. Tomorrow, when you’re scheduled to clean bathrooms it’ll be easy to also clean the kitchen. The day after that, clean a bedroom and then go back through and clean sweep the bathrooms and kitchen again. Your home may not be cleaned as quickly as a maid could do it, but after one week, you’ll be in control of the clutter and have your home back.
