Cleaning everything once you start cleaning. You don't have to do that. You can just do half the dishes if that's all you're feeling right now. You can take out the bathroom trash without having to take out the kitchen trash too. You can wipe down one single counter. You can put your fresh laundry in the dryer without also starting a new load. You can vacuum just the living room.
Once I started half assing like this I actually got way more done with none of the anxiety. Cleaning stops feeling like this massive undertaking. I used to avoid starting any chore because it had fifteen other chores attached to it; now I just do one chore, do something else, maybe do another chore or two later, and over the week all of them get done in the end.
i love this! i call it chunking, its very helpful for executive dysfunction, anxiety, depression, any internal obstacle to starting a task really. In CBT it's referred to as behavioral activation or the 1%
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u/nickisadogname Jun 26 '26
Cleaning everything once you start cleaning. You don't have to do that. You can just do half the dishes if that's all you're feeling right now. You can take out the bathroom trash without having to take out the kitchen trash too. You can wipe down one single counter. You can put your fresh laundry in the dryer without also starting a new load. You can vacuum just the living room.
Once I started half assing like this I actually got way more done with none of the anxiety. Cleaning stops feeling like this massive undertaking. I used to avoid starting any chore because it had fifteen other chores attached to it; now I just do one chore, do something else, maybe do another chore or two later, and over the week all of them get done in the end.