How to clean a depression room pt. 2

Hey if you haven't read Part 1, head over there to give it a squiz. Part 1 is about how to set your head straight so you're ready to do the physical work of cleaning.

Part 2 is also mostly about getting your head right, because in my experience, that's always the hardest part.

There are two major things I've seen people struggle with when it comes to a big cleaning jobbie: task initiation, and task switching. We're gonna go over task initiation, then we're going to start cleaning the depression room with the 5 Things Method, and finally you'll see how this concept works tandem with task switching.

Task initiation is just being able to start something. Think of a petrol car, where it takes more energy to start the engine than to keep it idling. For a lot of people - especially those with depression, Autism and ADHD - task initiation is an 800kg boulder between you and getting shit done. Even with simple things like unpacking the dishwasher or folding a basket of laundry, just getting started is the hardest part.

Luckily, once you know this, there are lots of things you can do to trick yourself into starting! Dr. William Dodson coined the term interest based nervous system, and if you think you've got one of these, maybe his framework of Novelty, Interest, Urgency and Challenge will help you overcome the inertia.

Put on a new episode of your favourite podcast or listen to some music - that's novelty and interest.

Make yourself an appointment and set a timer - that's urgency and challenge. Literally put in your phone calendar: 10AM, fold laundry (30min). Your brain is very dumb and will be tricked by this.

The other thing I would suggest to help with task initiation is body doubling. If you've not heard of this before, it's simply the idea that it's easier for some people to work if they've got a buddy along side them.

As we went over in Part 1, shame is a powerful block when it comes to cleaning. But if you have a trusted friend, family member, or neighbour, having someone (who doesn't shit you to tears) drink a cuppa and chat to you while you tackle that basket of laundry really does make all the difference.

Cleaning with the 5 Things Method
You've got all your gear ready from Part 1? Remember? The containers, the gloves, the garbage bags? Crank up the podcast because we're going in, baby.

In the very excellent book How to Keep House While Drowning, KC Davis shares the "5 Things Method" of cleaning. She says there are only five kinds of clutter: Rubbish, laundry, dishes, things with a home, and things without a home. Davis says to get a container for each type, and deal with them one by one.

In my work, I've found these categories don't always apply. Recently, I helped an Autistic person clean their flat for the first time in years, and their categories were "Rubbish, tech stuff, art supplies, loose papers". I do a weekly clean at a house full of brilliant and chaotic children, and this week the categories were "Food, loose papers, playing cards, candles, clothes, books". Everyone's house is different so choose what works for you.

I encourage you to read Davis' book for a full rundown of the method, but here's the quick and dirty version.

Have a look at your space, and choose your categories. One of them is probably rubbish. Try to keep it to less than five - more than that and things get too granular to be useful.

Now grab one of the baskets from Part 1, choose one of your custom clutter categories, and here's the really important part, this is everything you need to know:
Top to bottom, left to right.

Pick a point in your room, any point. Now go top to bottom, left to right. If you're picking up clothes, grab every single item of clothing and stuff it in your Clothes container. Top to bottom, left to right. Ignore everything that isn't clothes. You'll get to that stuff later. Your enemy right now is task switching.

Task switching

If task initiation is the 800kg boulder between you and getting shit done, think of task switching as one thousand 800kg boulders. Every time you stop what you're doing and have to start again, you're creating another massive obstacle between you and finishing the job.

This is the beauty of KC Davis' 5 Things Method - it reduces task switching. When you batch similar tasks, you're reducing wear on your body, and you're not losing momentum. Think about it like a professional cleaner: it might only take thirty seconds to stop picking up clothes and put that book in the bookshelf, but if you do it for twenty books, you've just wasted 10 minutes of your 2hr booking. It's just physically and mentally heaps more efficient to pick up all the books and whack 'em all on the shelf at the same time.

You're not on the clock or cleaning eight hours a day, but efficiently using your physical and mental energy is going to make the work of cleaning that much easier.

I'm sharing these concepts because even for me, a professional cleaner, sometimes I walk into a client's space and feel completely overwhelmed. But just a few hours later, they have a safe and functional home again. I can't clean everyone's house, but I can share the tools I've learned along the way, and hopefully help your space feel a little more functional too.

Everyone's physical and mental capacity is different, everyone's home is different, everyone's needs are different, so if these tools don't work for you, or you wanna share something that does, leave us some tips in the comments!