There are some people who won’t even understand the title of this post. They don’t know what it’s like to wonder where to start when cleaning a messy house.
They’ve never been paralyzed by a mess. Overwhelmed doesn’t even really cover it.
They’ll think – “what does that even mean?!” (These people always have clean houses, and they can organize their junk drawer with their eyes closed. Or at least they could if they had a junk drawer. But they don’t. They don’t know what it’s like to be ashamed of your messy house.) They’ve never experienced a truly messy house.
And there’s some people who will roll their eyes at the drama of it, and they’ll think “Just clean it up. Take the action, do the things.” These people are also likely to leave nasty comments about how this post is sort of stupid. (I won’t publish them.)
But then there’s other people – maybe you’re one of these people – who know what it’s like to stand in the middle of a messy room and feel absolutely paralyzed by the mess. (Me!! I AM ONE OF THESE PEOPLE!) These people will get what this post is about.
We are the people who wonder desperately “where to start cleaning my house?!”
You might even have a secret fear that your house looks like hoarders (you know, that TV show where food is molding under the couch and the neighbors are complaining?)
And I want to share some good solid advice with these people (you), on how to move forward with cleaning when you feel paralyzed by a mess.
Because I’ve been there, but – thank goodness – I’m not there anymore.
Step one in cleaning a terribly messy house sounds overly simple, but please don’t overlook it just because it’s simple:
You pick up one thing.
(Tune out the rest of the mess for now. You’re just dealing with one thing.)
Pick up one thing – the nearest thing to you – and ask yourself, “Where does this thing go?”
Does it have a home in your home? Does it need to LEAVE your home (donation/garbage)?
Then put that thing where it goes. (If it needs to be donated, make a box for donating and call that it’s home for now.)
And pick up another thing. Find it’s home or give it a home or get it out of your home.
And repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat.
I swear this works. It’s tedious yes. But it’s not overwhelming. It’s one thing at a time… and one thing at a time, you can clean up the mess.
Now, let’s talk about this in detail, but I know the above seems over-simplified.
You’ll need some structure and routine to keep you on track!
IF your mess is as bad as I image it is, picking up one thing at a time and putting it away is actually going to take days (and that is ok), but a PLAN will help you keep moving forward.
Start by printing a simple home cleaning planner – with daily + weekly task lists, spring + fall cleaning checklists, and room by room cleaning checklists to make sure it all gets DONE.
If you regularly lose a weekend to a cleaning ‘blitz’ – that doesn’t actually accomplish anything because you just bounce from room to room – a planner with checklist will help.
CLICK HERE TO GET OUR HOME CLEANING PLANNER!
(THIS POST PROBABLY CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. OUR FULL DISCLOSURE POLICY IS REALLY BORING, BUT YOU CAN FIND IT HERE.)
Related: A Simple Solution to Clutter & Disorganization
When you want to clean up “the mess” in your house but don’t know where to start:
With your printed cleaning schedule in hand, you can start to tackle the mess.
You know what I’m talking about when I say “the mess”.
It’s not like you had a clean house 6 hours ago, but a kid’s birthday party has turned your home into a danger zone. Little piles of melty ice-cream everywhere and paper cups behind the couch.
No, that kind of mess isn’t THAT hard to clean up. (If you have THAT kind of mess, you really just need this stuff.) Although this advice will apply to how to clean a trashed house as well – any mess, little-people-parties included.
I’m talking about THE MESS. The big bad mess. When you have let the clutter and junk take over. There’s piles of laundry in the living room, you can’t see the kitchen counters, can’t remember the last time you cleaned out the fridge. You may or may not find a bag of potatoes – or what used to be potatoes – sitting at the back of the pantry.
If you take a moment to look around your home you might even feel shame and despair. But you also look around and feel that sinking feeling that says you won’t EVER be able to clean it up, because you just do NOT know where to start.
It’s hopeless.
THAT kind of mess.
This is the sort of paralyzing mess that for some reason, wants me to live in it. (I don’t. I work very hard to not allow my home to be messy. I am not a naturally tidy person, which is baffling because I LOVE it when my home is tidy, and I grew up in a tidy home. I don’t know where I developed the messy habits.)
I have learned that it is far easier to KEEP my home clean than to have to try cleaning a messy house once it gets to the paralyzing mess stage.
But, if you are still there, paralyzed in your mess… well, I get it and I have the path to the light at the end of the tunnel for you.
Related: How to Conquer Clutter When it’s Emotionally Difficult
Related: Tackling Clothing Clutter: Confessions of a Clothes Hoarder
First, two things to consider (to start cleaning a messy house):
If you are so overwhelmed that you don’t believe it’s possible to clean your house, you might need to ask for help and that’s ok, but then be willing to let the helper help. It’s really frustrating to have someone ask you to help them and then not be allowed to do anything. If you feel like you need to be in control, that’s something you’ll have to address.
The odd time when my home DOES return to this state of overwhelming mess (like- um – if I have a baby and forget how to do “life”) I ask for help when I need it.
Also, consider addressing the clutter and disorganization in your home – FOR GOOD. Sometimes just cleaning up isn’t enough.
Addressing the clutter in my home took me a LONG way towards never feeling paralyzed by the mess anymore. But I didn’t know where to start, and I actually needed someone to TEACH me how to do it.
If your house is constantly buried in clutter and mess, check out The Organized Home Course by Hilary from Pulling Curls. It is created just for people like us, who need to be given bite-sized tips & lessons on organization so we know where stuff is, save time & feel more peace at home. (Because we do ACTUALLY deserve to feel at peace in our homes!)
This is the perfect course for organizing a messy home if:
- You always need hours of notice before having guests because you’re embarrassed about the state of your home.
- You’re always worried you misplaced an important document or won’t be able to find things when you need them.
- You’ve ever wondered why can’t YOU enjoy peaceful time on the couch or enjoying your family instead of always stressing out about the state of your home?
If you need someone to TEACH you how to address clutter and get organized, Hilary is your girl, and you can get 10% off the course here with the code MOP10.
But even if you choose not to ask for help or deal with the clutter, you can clean up the mess.
Remember:
You pick up one thing. The nearest thing to you – and ask yourself, “Where does this thing go?”
Does it have a home in your home? Does it need to LEAVE your home (donation/garbage)?
Then put that thing where it goes. (If it needs to be donated, make a box for donating and call that it’s home for now.)
And pick up another thing. Find it’s home or give it a home or get it out of your home.
And repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat.
I swear this works. It’s tedious yes. But it’s not overwhelming. It’s one thing at a time… and one thing at a time, you can clean up the mess.
Work through one room per day (or half a room per day) according to the cleaning schedule you made.
Once your house is tidy, these 6 daily habits for a clean home will help you KEEP it that way.
Related: Secrets for Keeping the House Clean With Small Kids
Related: 7 Tangible & Life-Changing Benefits of Decluttering
If you try to do this but get distracted or stuck or struggle with how to motivate yourself to clean a messy house:
Here’s where asking for help can be awesome – because there is an automatic built in job for the helper. (Plus having someone else involved can be really good cleaning motivation!)
Have someone (a patient someone) hand you one thing at a time and ask “where does this go?”
And repeat.
Having someone else there to keep you on track might be the only way to keep yourself going the first time you do this.
But you CAN do this 🙂
Once things are put properly in their homes (or out of your home) tackle the “dirt” – which you will inevitably find under “the mess” – with the most natural, safe, and cost effective household cleaners you can find. (For me that’s been Norwex – this one tub of cleaner has lasted me for THREE YEARS and I have no qualms about getting it on my skin. They even have a system for washing windows and mirrors with ONLY water!)
More From Mommy on Purpose:
Where do you start when you’re drowning in CLUTTER?
Clean kitchen habits you can adopt today
I am a wheelchair user and have a hard time cleaning. I also have a hard time getting a large task started. Any advice would be great.
My problem… *feels* more complex than “The Mess” made out of miscellaneous clutter. I’ve been in IT for over a decade, and I have lots of dongles, cables, PCI cards, sticks of ram, old hard drives, monitors, driver disks, and other bits of hardware in boxes in various rooms and just strewn about the house. The process of “where does this go?” I have tried before, and the answer is always “I don’t know.” The next advice you give is to donate or throw it away, but I cant, because I might need it later. And I know people say that about the silliest things, “I might need those dead batteries later,” or that “broken lamp, I can fix it”, etc etc, but I really *will* need this stuff later. Spare parts for fixing things, driver disks I may not be able to re-download later, cables for older hardware you can’t find anymore, or don’t want to buy again if (and more likely, when) I need it later. I need all my things, but I have no idea where to put them. And I can’t for the life of me figure out how they’ve all gotten so *dirty*, there’s just dust everywhere.
Steve, my dad was in the same boat. He used the garage and later one room in the house. A walls of bookcases, with bins and drawers long table along one wall. Went along way. Perhaps the key making a place, an organized place for everything. Plastic drawers, book cases, or even using cabinets could help. I think your issue strewn about the house. Again one area/ or one room….
You could get some really nice staking storage cheap at ikea
Clean dust free and tidy
Thank you so much for this article! I so badly want to have a clean house, but get so very overwhelmed every time I try to get started. I usually start something in one room and then have to go do laundry and then the million other things that come with work and raising 3 boys and nothing ever gets finished!!! I then get discouraged because I feel like I’ve been working on this all afternoon after coming home from work and have nothing to show for all the work!!! My mom used to clean when we all went to bed, but she was a stay at home mom and didn’t have to go out to work the next day. :-/
I am sitting here looking at my messy kitchen and thinking about the tons of laundry I need to do. Maybe I’ll drink an energy drink, turn on some music and clean after my boys go to bed! 🙂
Am 14 and my parents leave me 2 clean the whole house it’s so small so there just juck everywhere the mess HORRIBLE!! I start to cry and have trouble catching my breath. Even when it’s clean there still junk and dirt everywhere. We have 2 cats 6 kittens and 4 dogs it’s a mess!! And it’s all suppost to be done when they get home
Not sure how recent this comment is, but I am so sorry you are dealing or have been dealing with that:( It’s bad enough when you decide to clean on your own, but someone making you do it feels horrible! I also relate to the panic attack feeling of trouble breathing and needing to cry. My family went on vacation recently and I decided to stay home to work and I wanted to clean our one story house but keep getting too anxious or disgusted to clean… Our dishwasher is broken, I have a phobia of spiders which like to find their way into our house, there’s not enough space for all of our stuff, dust is everywhere and there is grime between cracks in the kitchen with a moldy garlic smell that I have yet to deal with. Wish I we weren’t struggling financially cause otherwise I would hire soo many people haha (house cleaners, pest control, interior designers…etc).
This was the most loving and honest representation of my struggle. Thank you ♥
Oh…my..G… i just googled…am paralzed in front of my mess… and thank you. In my 20’s I was cleaning people’s home.
Now, my, over 3500sq Ft home filled with 5 boys and a avid semi pro biker working from home husband..
My house turned into a nasty mess. I just threw all the school papers in the paper bin bc i do that in June every year..
But now.. i have clutter, stuff, toys, computer accessories, cables, back packs, violin, guitars, keyboard, ..skates boards..and tons of shoes.. i start one thing, then jump to another one..then by sorting donation, I keep keeping again stuff..
I have hard time separating myself from souvenirs..and crap..
You gave me some ideas.. and HOPE… i was really PARALYZED in front of a pile of books, stuffed animals, shoes, and dirty laundry in one place…
Thank you..am not alone.. i hired cleaning lady (every other month) and floors have to be picked up so they can work..it takes me days just to prepare the arrival of the cleaning ladies..and i have 3 jobs too…
i cook a lot and entertain a lot my friends and neighbors..
Well..i have few days before going back to work.
Steve, sounds like you need a storage system for all your cables and other parts. Maybe a cubbyhole system or bookcases where you can put labels on everything. It’s hard to know where to put things you need, but don’t have a clean space to put them. It’s a vicious cycle of “I need to clean the living room, but in order for me to get the Christmas decorations out of there, I have to clean the spare room of all the other stuff that has no home, but then I have to figure out where to put all that stuff”. I live in the country, and I don’t have a municipal garbage curb side pick up, so I have to take my garbage to the compactor site. That’s another thing I can always talk myself out of doing. – “I’ll go next week”. Then it piles up. Yikes! I would love to just move to another place and leave it all here.
Thank you so much for your article! I thought I was the only person out there who has trouble with keeping there house cleaned. I feel so overwhelmed most days and guilty. Thank you again and I will take your advice and start with one thing at a time and a lot of prayer.
This blog article is a true answer to my prayers!!! Thank you for the ideas and inspiration. Lové the intro 😉
Stock the bathroom and kitchen with dispensers of all-purpose cleaning wipes for quick spot cleanings when necessary.If you aren’t in the habit of putting things away daily, add “declutter” to your cleaning list. It’s much easier to clean a home that’s free of surface clutter.
I live in England and don’t know what Norwex is. It sounds amazing, is there an equivalent I can get in the UK? As for the potatoes in my vegetable rack….I think they are growing legs. Thanks, so much. It’s so easy to believe that the gene for being tidy was absolutely skipped somewhere down the line , I’ve been shuffling my Mess from one room to another for years and I dare not look under my bed. But! I will take them all out one at a time. So blooming simple….why on earth didn’t I think of it before? Thanks a lot, Stella
Ok wow, major goals here. I am starting to get up earlier too and notice that it definitely makes a difference. Great blog post! Thanks for sharing
Amazing article, and some amazing comments, too!
To readers I wanted to say, there IS light at the end of the tunnel. My father was quite a serious hoarder, and though I only went as far as a serious clutterer and collector, I used to have many days of overwhelm with my own mess. I wanted to add a few things that worked for me, and has gradually (over years) helped me to have more order and fewer things.
The part where you talked about feeling suffocated, and doing one item at a time… I can relate to that. If you can do one thing at a time in one little area where you sit or work, you can create BREATHING SPACE. This can be important… a sort of “safe place.” For some it might be their bed or the chair or sofa where they sit at night, or a counter in their kitchen. If you can develop a habit of keeping your safe space safe… its like it changes your whole perspective on things. It doesn’t have to be big, either.
Gradually, to really get on top of things, we need to reduce what we own. I would find it very hard to let go, but with determination, I found that some days were easier than others to do this, and I had a few tricks to letting go that I wanted to share. I know the saying is, “One in, one out,” but first with clothes I started doing, “One in, two out.” Sometimes I would get rid of things before the shopping trip and sometimes after, but very gradually I got rid of that which I wasn’t using anyway. Clothes were a relatively easy area for me to start letting go, because I wasn’t attached. You start with whichever area is easiest for you!
Second, I found a technique that worked for me. I’d get a box. I have a t.v. in my bedroom. When I wanted a morning or afternoon watching t.v., I would fill the box from one area in my house. It might be the contents of a drawer or the top of a desk, or part of a cupboard, or toiletries, or my least favorite… paperwork… it could be almost anything. The t.v. or movie would be just distracting enough to keep me calm. And then I’d sort the one pile into two piles. The piles would be “KEEP” and “TOSS.” My goal was always to make the two piles roughly the same size. In other words… to get rid of about half. Sometimes i’d get rid of half, sometimes only a quarter. But i’d get rid of stuff. Sometimes, giving away things to people I knew would need them or want them would help me to let go. Sometimes putting the fewer things (like socks, for instance) back into a drawer that was no longer over-stuffed would feel so great that it would be easier to do it again with another box.
There are other tricks I used with myself but the main point i’m trying to make is really all you have to do is begin, and then doggedly keep putting one foot in front of the other and you’ll get there. Gradually you can get better at not bringing as many things home (when you know bringing stuff home is going to mean that suffocating feeling, it gets easier not to bring things home), of having fewer, better quality things instead of “more,” and other little habits (like maybe putting dirty clothes in the laundry basket every time) that help keep us on top of things.
Thank you for this article, and thank you readers for your tips and experiences, I enjoyed reading them also!
This is wonderful. I’m not a mother of human babies but I live with my fiance and his dad which neither of them ever want to clean anything. We have three dogs two of which shed like crazy so I feel like there’s no point in even cleaning their room (yes our dogs have their own room haha) then in a different room we have three lizards and a bunny. So I’m always feeding animals and taking them out giving them attention as all kids and fur kids and scaley kids need. So cleaning comes hard for me. Especially with adhd and depression. And to top it off I’m alone all day with just the kids until about 8pm when my fiance gets home but by then he doesn’t want to do anything but watch tv. Won’t even feed the dogs that he got before we got together. I’m going to try this the best I can with a meditation or something relaxing playing. There’s actually an app called headspace that has meditations for small chores like the dishes.
Thank you again!!
I agree with most of this, thank you so much for providing us this tips.
I’m a creative with ADHD/depression/a small puppy, and I needed to read this today. I am so bad at trying to be a superhuman and do all the things all at once and I stress myself out and then…I must nap from being overwhelmed. Time to rock this sheeet. 🙂
Honestly, the method i use is pretty simple and effective. I just set a duration like 30 minutes dedicated for cleaning my house or cleaning my swimming pool. So this way I know that there is an end to it and not just run off with the mind-set that it will never end. kinda like being in class room knowing itll end in 90 minutes instead of not knowing when itll end.
You don’t understand….a lot of this but s depression. The author hit the nail on the head.
Absolutely RIGHT Ann! And the MESS just makes you more deptessed🙃
You are so right Ann…. I moved into my moms house that was already a mess, and me being a mess to begin with has not helped. I can’t do the “pick up one thing and find a home for it” I need someone here to coach and work with me on this” I desperately need help
Yeah I agree. I think it is depression and then the mess just makes it worse…
I personally find it overwhelming to have someone constantly ask me where I want things to be placed. When someone is helping me clean/declutter/organize, I prefer that they make suggestions on where they think something should go. Sometimes they suggest a place that I hadn’t thought of or that makes more sense than where I had placed it before.
I am there right now. I let the dishes and laundry pile up and then have to rewash everything because it fell on the floor and is covered in dog hair. It seems like even when I get everything clean it ends up messing again in a day. Clutter is never ending.
Typical advice. Put things away. Put things in their place.
Nothing I own has a place. Nothing. Nobody ever addresses this problem.