Depression and Cleaning: 7 Tips for Cleaning Your Home When It Feels Impossible – Everyday Health

Get the facts about depression, including its symptoms, causes, and many treatment options. Learn what experts say about talk therapy, antidepressants, and lifestyle changes that can help improve mood.
Major depressive disorder (or simply “depression”) can wreak havoc on your ability to perform even the seemingly smallest of tasks. For someone in the throes of depression, cleaning your home may feel like a monumental undertaking.

However, for some people this can be a catch-22. “A messy house can be a bit of a self-fulfilling problem for people struggling with depression. The symptoms make it challenging to care for your space, but an unkempt home can prompt depression symptoms,” says Mairanz.

If you’re struggling to keep up with house cleaning duties due to depression, here are some simple ways to help you start tackling them.
Try it by identifying your three most important house cleaning goals. Focus on completing the first of those tasks, then try to tackle the others one at a time.
Concentrating on just those small steps makes it easier to get started and build that inertia to keep going, says Karen Lynn Cassiday, PhD, a clinical psychologist and managing director of the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago. “It’s like jump-starting a car when you have a battery that doesn’t work,” says Dr. Cassiday.
“People with depression will start to criticize themselves and say, ‘I’m so lazy,’” says Cassiday. This negative self-talk can actually end up hindering your productivity rather than motivating you to get things done, she says.
If you notice that you’re speaking negatively to yourself, it can help to immediately replace those thoughts with positive ones. Positive self-talk can help increase self-esteem and boost motivation, which in turn can lead to improved productivity, adds Cassiday.
When people with depression have good days and they struggle less with their symptoms, they may use those feelings as motivation to complete a task, says Cassiday. For example, they may clean their kitchen because they know it will bring them a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment later on.
But you can’t rely on feeling good as your motivation strategy all the time. Part of the reality of having depression is recognizing that there will be some days when you don’t feel good — but you’ll still need to get things done on those days, too.
“So we have to teach people to first learn to ignore the part of themselves that says, ‘I need to feel good in order to do it,’” says Cassiday. “You can’t wait for feeling good. You have to think about something that’s really important, which is that action that creates motivation.”
Cassiday recommends choosing tasks that create a “high impact” first to help you better recognize the value of your efforts.
What that means: “A bed takes up a large chunk of space in a room, so if you actually make it, it has a rather large effect in terms of the aesthetic appearance as compared to, say, picking up five pieces of trash,” she says.
If a family member or friend can assist you with cleaning duties, the extra help may jump-start your motivation.
“People with depression tend to withdraw and self-isolate. Reaching out to a friend or loved one is a big step toward combating depression and can have immediate effects, not just on the physical space, but also on the emotional,” says Mairanz.
If possible, Cassiday says, do your best to ask for help before you feel embarrassed by a mess. For instance, if you haven’t been able to fold and sort laundry for a few weeks, it’s a good idea to try to reach out for help before the situation becomes unmanageable.
Also, if you have the resources, hiring a cleaning service may be a valuable option.
Actually write them down, Cassiday says. Include cleaning-related accomplishments as well as other wins. She calls this a “what I did list,” as opposed to a “to-do list.”
“When people are depressed they tend to vastly underestimate the effect and value of their efforts,” Cassiday says. “This helps you see that you are actually getting somewhere.”
You may also need to adjust your expectations when it comes to keeping your living space clean. Realize you may not have the energy or focus that you used to — and that’s okay, says Cassiday.
It’s important to remind yourself that a messy or disorganized house doesn’t mean you’ve failed in any way. “You are not alone with having a hard time with this, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We all go through ups and downs with our mental health, and our space is often a reflection of that natural process,” says Mairanz.
Julie Marks is a freelance writer with more than 20 years of experience covering health, lifestyle, and science topics. In addition to writing for Everyday Health, her work has been featured in WebMD, SELF, Healthline, A&E, Psych Central, Verywell Health, and more. Her goal is to compose helpful articles that readers can easily understand and use to improve their well-being. She is passionate about healthy living and delivering important medical information through her writing.
Prior to her freelance career, Marks was a supervising producer of medical programming for Ivanhoe Broadcast News. She is a Telly award winner and Freddie award finalist. When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and four children, traveling, and cheering on the UCF Knights.
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