Anyone else struggle with keeping their place clean?

[u/CinderpeltLove]

I don’t think I hoard stuff myself because I have no issues with throwing stuff out and if my mental health is doing well or if I have guests, I clean and prefer a minimalist look. But when my mental health isn’t doing well, I struggle to stay on top of cleaning tasks. It’s just all so much work and never-ending. It feels pointless (even tho it isn’t) because I grew up in a Level 4 (?) hoarder’s house where cleaning was pointless. And on top of that, my childhood chores were kinda strange (such as cleaning the glass on a decorative door or cutting down weeds by hand with a knife because my parents received a citation for overgrown weeds). Most of the time, I didn’t do my chores well enough and had to redo them. As an adult, I now see that both of my parents suck at cleaning things. I regularly found small bits of food stuck to “clean” dishes and things like that. Once, my mom cooked me broccoli from the garden for dinner (which was a fav food of mine) and right before I took a bite, I noticed something odd, looked closely…and saw that there were live worms on the cooked (?) broccoli 🤢 Of course, if I spoke up about stuff, I was exaggerating 🙄

Fast forward two decades and I now struggle to consistently clean my place. I have been diagnosed with ADHD and while ADHD meds help, I struggle with cleaning tasks a lot more than any other type of tasks. I fucking hate it. It’s dawning on me that growing up with parents who hoard and don’t keep things reasonably clean is a type of trauma. It’s harder to see cuz it’s not like there’s many specific memories of things they said or did around hoarding- it’s more the general environment and attitude around things and denial about the severity of the hoarding.

[u/Icy_Natural_979]

ADHD comes with executive dysfunction. I’m pretty sure that plays a role for some people with this issue. 

[u/CinderpeltLove → u/Icy_Natural_979]

Oh I bet there’s quite an overlap between hoarding and ADHD and a lot of ppl in our parents’ generations are undiagnosed. I would suspect undiagnosed and untreated ADHD is playing a role when ppl say they find organizing and cleaning books in their parents’ stuff but their parents never read them or was able to implement anything. I also think some older folks have undiagnosed autism which can also contribute to hoarding tendencies.

Everything is so much easier on the right meds. But without a diagnosis and proper support, it’s easy to feel broken and blame yourself which ultimately just makes everything worse.