How to Get Motivated to Clean When You're Overwhelmed
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When you’re overwhelmed, it’s hard to do anything; let alone clean your house.
An overwhelmed mind is easily susceptible to negative thought patterns and thinking. The most important thing you can do when you’re feeling overwhelmed is be kind to yourself.
Give yourself time to relax and reflect on what’s happening in your life. Lean into your emotions and just recognize them as they arrive. Don’t resist your feelings, and don’t judge yourself for feeling this way.
If you can be kind to yourself and give yourself room to experience your thoughts as they are, without judgment, you’ll take the first steps out of this overwhelming realm of thoughts.
Did you know? Cleaning (or lack of) has a dramatic effect on your mental health. Cleaning your home can help you regain control of your life, and living in a clean and tidy space does wonders for your peace of mind.
Here are some tips to get you motivated to clean even when you’re feeling completely overwhelmed.
Start with the easy stuff
Cleaning your entire house is a mountainous task. But how do you climb a mountain when you can barely muster the energy to make it to the base of that mountain?
The key is to break your house cleaning into manageable chunks of teeny-tiny steps.
Ask yourself what’s the easiest thing I can do right now?
Maybe you enjoy folding clothes or putting clothes in the washer.
Maybe you despise cleaning, but enjoy organizing your desk drawers.
Whatever it is, start small. Like, the smallest task you can think of and it shouldn’t take longer than 5 minutes. The smaller the better.
If you dislike cleaning, forcing yourself to spend a couple hours deep cleaning the bathroom when you’re already overwhelmed is a recipe for disaster.
Instead, focus on finding enjoyment by completing a tiny task.
Once you complete this small task, you’ll feel better. Maybe you’ll even want to continue onto something else. If not, that’s okay too. There’s always tomorrow.
Here are some ideas for short, simple tasks to get you started:
- Dust surfaces in the living room.
- Clean bathroom mirror.
- Make your bed.
- Put dirty clothes into the hamper.
- Sweep your kitchen floor.
Turn cleaning into a fun experience with music or your favorite podcast
Many professional housekeepers listen to music and podcasts while cleaning. It makes the time go by faster, and it can help you get “into the zone”. It’s a lot easier to stay focused on finishing your cleaning tasks if you’re present in the moment and undistracted.
Also, your brain will start to associate cleaning with enjoyable experiences, and you’ll look forward to doing it.
Instead of dreading cleaning the house, you’ll get excited to start a new episode of your podcast, or listen to your favorite band’s latest album.
You’re associating an enjoyable experience with something that feels like a chore. In doing so, you’re rewiring your brain to look at cleaning in a totally different light. House cleaning becomes a productive and positive activity in your life, rather than a stressful and annoying chore.
Reward yourself with small wins
When you finish a task, reward yourself!
Take a break for 15 minutes and relax. Have a piece of chocolate. Pour yourself a glass of wine. Watch some YouTube videos. Pick something you like to do, and treat yourself.
No matter how small the task was, when you reward yourself after completing it, you’re rewiring your brain and building confidence with a healthy reward system. Each time you complete a task and reward yourself, you’re implementing small habits that will make a huge impact on your daily life.
As you reward yourself for small wins, try spacing out the reward until after 2 tasks are completed. Then 3.
Pretty soon you’ll realize that you’ve been cleaning for the past 30 minutes and you’re almost done for the day!
Habits > motivation
Instead of trying to find spurts of motivation to clean, incorporate house cleaning into your lifestyle by making it a daily habit. Don’t wait around for inspiration to strike you.
Strike inspiration by taking action!
As the saying goes, just do it. There’s a lot of wisdom in those words. If you wait around for motivation to hit you, the day is going to fly by and your house will still be dirty.
There is never a perfect time to start cleaning, and if you wait around for the perfect time to roll around, nothing will get done.
Instead, set a timer on your phone for every day at the same time. When your time goes off, start cleaning.
It doesn’t matter how long. It could be for only 5 minutes. But the important thing is that when the timer goes off, you don’t think. You just do it.
The hardest part is getting started. Once you start cleaning, it’s a lot easier to keep cleaning. You may find that instead of cleaning for 5 minutes, you’re starting to clean for 10,15, and 30 minutes at a time.
If you can incorporate cleaning into your daily or weekly routine, it will be much easier to keep a clean house consistently. When your home is cleaned on a consistent basis, your feelings of overwhelm will improve and you’ll no longer have to wait around for motivation to strike.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
If you have family members around the house, it might be a good idea to enlist their help.
An extra pair of hands allows you to clean your house twice as fast, and is a great way to bond with your family members or roommates.
By asking for help, you’re not only speeding up the process of cleaning your house; but you’re also strengthening your connection with the other person.
As human beings, we thrive on social connection. When you clean with someone else and accomplish tasks together, you’ll feel better about yourself.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help around the house. Cleaning should be a concentrated team effort by all members of the household.
Take before and after pictures
Another tip that can help you out if you’re feeling depressed or overwhelmed, is to take before and after pictures of your home.
Taking pictures of your home can actually help inspire you to start cleaning. Before and after pictures will hold you accountable and are a great way to see the results of your hard work.
Get before pictures of your kitchen, living areas, and bathrooms. Try to leave everything as-is and don’t tidy up before taking pictures.
If you’re embarrassed by the mess in your home, don’t worry! You’re the only one who is going to see these photos and no matter how messy your home is, there is no reason to feel embarrassed.
After taking a few pictures of your home, you don’t need to clean right away.
First, spend 5 minutes looking at the pictures and try to visualize how tidy the space will look when you clean it.
Simply envision yourself cleaning the space and then relaxing in it when you’re done. Tell yourself that you will take an after picture when you’re done to compare the difference between the pictures.
When you take pictures you’re accomplishing a simple task and you’re documenting the process of cleaning. This gets the act of cleaning out into the open and external world, and out of your overwhelmed mind.
When you’re feeling stressed out or overwhelmed, your thoughts can consume you and eat away at your motivation.
Cleaning and decluttering your home doesn’t need to be a stressful event. If you can implement a few of these tips, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to maintain a clean and organized home day to day.
If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, please seek out professional help.
At Seatown Cleaners, we love cleaning and we hope we can inspire you to find enjoyment in cleaning too.
