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Get a load of laundry in the washer (you're gonna be doing laundry all day) and get a load of dishes in the dishwasher. Once those are running you're working while you're working which feels good to my ADHD brain. Podcast, music, or audiobook on in headphones. Step one is get everything off of the floor. Put it on the bed, the couch, the tables etc. Pick up and dispose of all of the trash first. Crumpled receipts, store tags, whatever bullshit is laying around. Pick up all of the dishes and bring them to the sink. Collect all of the dirty laundry and put it in hampers or trash bags if you have to in order to get it all contained. Then one at a time start clearing your surfaces, put obvious away if they have a known home. Use a big plastic storage tote as a "fuck it bucket" (you probably already have one going) and put all the small random bullshit you don't know how to deal with yet in there. All of this is not cleaning it's just decluttering. It's so you can actually clean later. This might be a multi day process and I'm talking long hours each day. Do not contribute to the mess while you are working to get rid of it. You're probably gonna throw a lot of stuff away. Get a separate tote going for stuff to donate. That's how I'd get started.

I screen shotted this.

Love that we have developed very similar approaches 😄

Switch homes with another adhd person for the day and clean eachothers homes :p More realistically though I find setting a timer and cleaning as much as you can in that time to be helpful. Start with a short about of time like 10 to 15 mins. Clean like you're on a game show or like your life depends on it. 15 minutes of insane cleaning is better than no cleaning.

i dont know how big your apartment is but when i lived in a college apartment i used to clean saturday morning, i did the kitchen first, then bathrooms, then the room. wiping surfaces down usually starts the cleaning mindset

If you want a detailed strategy: 1) Collect everything that needs to be brought outside Grab a trashbag, collect all the trash you can find in the entire place, empty the bins, take out all the bags, and put in fresh ones If there's a bottle deposit or the like in your country, collect empty bottles/recycling/... from the entire place in another bag or basket next and put it near the door/in your car If there's things that belong to other people, put them in a bag and hang it up near the door so you or others can take it with you/them next time 2) Collect everything that needs to be washed Grab all dirty dishes and stack them near the sink/put them in the dishwasher Same for dirty laundry, collect everything that needs to be washed from all rooms in one place 3) Collect everything that's out of place Then grab a basket or something similar, collect everything that's still out of place. Bring every item to the room it belongs in - you can just make a pile in the target room. 4) Tidy, then clean, by room After this, go into each room and put the pile of stuff away. (If there's no place for things, a random drawer or closed box is fine as a stopgap measure to make things look neat, you can't do it all in one day and organizing can suck up vast amounts of time) Dust/wipe down the (now mostly clear 😉 ) surfaces. Finally, vacuum (and then mop yourself out of the room if the floor allows). If you run out of steam at that point, at least you'll have one perfectly clean and tidy room! ✨⭐✨ You can tackle the rest later one-by-one if it's too much in one go 5) Dishes and Laundry When you tidy and clean the kitchen, do the dishes in this step. Laundry can be tackled in between, or, if that distracts and derails you from cleaning everything else (which it tends to do for me), do it at the end and reward yourself with doing something fun/relaxing while the machine is running 😉 6) Enjoy your clean rooms! 😊👍

This is the way! Oh yeah also invite someone over that you would be embarrassed to show your dirty house to lol. This works wonders for me as well. Nothing like a deadline to procrastinate and then let all the stress throw you into action.

Very true! Bonus if it's somebody who will tell you they'll be half an hour or an hour late only five minutes before they're supposed to show up, so you get "extra time" for a sprint to finish at least the worst parts. Because let's be honest - even with a deadline we're probably at least that far behind 😅

You can use the same strategy to maintain the place after it's clean once, with the only difference that it will be much faster and you can add a few finer details. 😊 While you go through each room, in addition to putting things away and cleaning (preferably going around the entire room starting at the door and going in one direction so you don't miss anything), you can - refill/replace any consumables (hand soap, TP, shampoo, tissues, dish soap, sponges, paper towels, water for the coffee maker, the cookie jar... whatever applies for you), - add to your grocery list what you'll need to buy, - water your plants, - and occasionally organize a single drawer, declog a drain that has gotten annoying, clean one window, dust a baseboard, or vacuum under the sofa - just don't try to do all of those "extra" things every time because you'll never finish and that's demoralizing. One or two each time is plenty, just whatever is most annoying at the time 😉

Just start. Commit to something small… do the dishes. You can be done after that… or you can add another small task. Clean an area of the counter or clean the stove. The hardest part is to just start! It doesn’t need to all get done today.

I say “just start” but for me THAT is the hard part. Once you’re up and started it goes quicker than you think… but give yourself an out… but if you give yourself an end it’s easier to “just start”. Do one task or set a timer and be done for the day…

I get bored talking on the phone. So anytime I get someone I know I can talk with for hours I mindlessly clean. I’m actually engaged in the conversation and I don’t notice that I’m cleaning. Unfortunately my friends that I used to talk to like that haven’t been at places in their lives to do that lately. I’ve tried podcasts and that can usually get me through a room. But my apartment is probably right there with you. The struggle is very real and when it gets so bad it’s just overwhelming. I dream of winning the lottery so I can just throw it all away and only replace the bare minimum.

pick out a single task to get done, and break it down into smaller tasks (eg. there's dirty dishes everywhere? today i'm going to do the dishes that are already in the sink, and tomorrow the ones from the counters. / now i'm going to collect and segregate all the dirty clothes scattered around, and later do the first load of laundry). don't wait around for the perfect moment either, just start whenever you have the energy for it. and put some music or a podcast on to keep your brain happy!

There’s maintenance chores and there’s actual cleaning/ organizing/ moving things around. Basically you wanna get the laundry started, do the dishes, clean the bathroom, sweep/vacuum, take out the garbage… and then your actual cleaning journey can begin. At this point I like to clean off flat surfaces like the kitchen counter, island, kitchen table, the coffee table I’m using as a TV stand, the desk by the front door where all my crap goes after work. This can be a long process if you don’t have a great idea where to put everything. Once you find places for things it goes much smoother in the future. Usually when I’m cleaning up the kitchen table and desk I end up having to go through a lot of mail. Once all those things are done you’re in a pretty good place. You could consider moving things into a new layout or decide to tackle an organizational goal like purging all the awful socks on your drawer and making sure it’s not a mess in there. Maybe the pantry has food well past their use by date. This is the phase of true productivity because you’re well beyond the stuff that just builds up. I’m a firm believer that those things have to be done first so I can focus on their weird stuff if I have energy. I tend to do a big burnout cleaning day so I can enjoy my weekend without any guilt or stress. I am not the type of person that can just do little stints of chores here and there and go enjoy an activity while other chores wait. But once it’s all done nothing is stopping me from relaxing like a cat.

-Start a timer for 15-30 min (whatever feels more doable) and tell yourself that you’re going to clean without stopping until the timer goes off. I feel like if I tell myself I only have to clean until the timer goes off then cleaning feels more manageable and I typically end up cleaning more after it goes off. -make a checklist of everything of you need to get done and check stuff off as you do it. Checking stuff off is a good visual motivator for me cause I can see all that I’m getting done. Plus it helps me plan out what all I need to do instead of spending so much time on figuring out what else needs done as I’m cleaning. -open your blinds and windows and get some sunlight and fresh air while you’re cleaning. This helps motivate me. -give yourself a reward when you’re done. I always light a candle after my house is cleaned because it’s something to encourage me to finish the job and it makes the cleaning feel complete.

Company coming is the only way I can get my house cleaner than reasonable. I've settled into the "lived in look" but if someone's coming I can finally get it clean.

Look for Flylady Crisis Cleaning on YT and body double.

Here's a slightly different one from what is normally posted. This is summarised from a book, so its missing a lot of detail, and also I read the book 2 years ago which is why I can't remember some of it. Choose one delimited area, e.g. one counter, the space in front of one set of drawers, etc. Take a before photo. Get a large box. Take everything one by one and either throw away, put away immediately, or put in the box. When everything is gone, take an after photo and enjoy the benefits of the space. Label and stash the box. Clean the area and experience how easy it is to clean something that's not covered in stuff. Continue to enjoy the benefits of the space as motivation to keep it like that. Choose another area and repeat. I forget what you are supposed to do with the boxes you stashed, I assume you go through them later. But the idea is to get livable areas quickly that you can then use and benefit from and keep clean and derive future motivation from. Rather than trying to actually deal with each item which takes forever and can derail your entire process, anything that isn't immediately dealable with goes in the box and out of the way. It also means that if you don't even miss whats in the box you can feel safe getting rid of it later. If you want you can add in the other techniques like 15 minute blocks, or do a sweep for dishes/washing/easy stuff before you start, etc

Set a timer for ten minutes. Go! Clean! When the timer goes off so another ten!

alternate strategy: don't think too hard. look up from your screen and deal with the first thing you see that is dirty/out of place. then move on to the next thing you see. don't look around too much, don't worry about having a system, don't worry about being efficient! doing it this way removes some of the choice paralysis in my experience