122 - Neurodivergent Cleaning Tips When Routines Don’t Stick

Summary

In this episode of Decluttering Untangled, Heather Tingle discusses the often-overlooked distinction between cleaning and decluttering. She shares her personal struggles with maintaining a clean home post-decluttering and explores the challenges posed by executive functioning. Heather offers practical strategies for effective cleaning, emphasising the importance of habit stacking and lowering friction in cleaning tasks. She also addresses the unrealistic standards many people set for cleanliness and encourages listeners to redefine their expectations, reminding them that it's okay to seek help, whether through hiring a cleaner or using tools like robot vacuums. Ultimately, Heather reassures her audience that they are not alone in their struggles and that it's essential to be kind to oneself in the journey of maintaining a home.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction and the Distinction Between Cleaning and Decluttering

02:44
The Reality of Cleaning After Decluttering

06:01
Understanding Executive Functioning and Cleaning Challenges

08:47
Strategies for Effective Cleaning

11:54
Lowering Friction and Making Cleaning Easier

14:44
Redefining Cleaning Standards and Accepting Imperfection

Transcript

Heather Tingle (00:00.952)
Hello, Untanglers, and welcome back to another episode of Decluttering Untangled with me, your host, Heather Tingle. Now, first of all, I want to say I hope you can hear me okay, because my cat has attacked my microphone and now it has got a great big dint in it. So apologies if the audio is not what we are used to, but hey-ho, nothing stops us. And apparently nothing stops my cat either, so there we go. Today, I would like to talk to you about something that I...

I kind of don't really love admitting to, but it is something that a couple of my untangling clients have asked me to talk about, and that is cleaning. Now, I think it's important to know there is a massive distinction between cleaning and decluttering. Apparently many people, especially social services, for example, will ring me and ask me about how much I charge for cleaning, and I have to tell them I am not a cleaner, and if you saw my house, you would understand that.

because I honestly thought that once I decuttered my home, it would be easier to clean. That is the case. I also thought that once I'd got a decuttered home, I would clean more frequently. That is also slightly the case, but I think that comes with a caveat in that my home isn't always clean. And yes, it is easier to clean now, but the reality is there might be less stuff, surfaces are clearer.

systems are better, but I still do not clean consistently. And I think that is, it's an important confession, I guess, that I thought that decluttering would switch on my cleaning switch. It didn't, but what it did do is make it a hell of a lot easier to do once I needed to do it. And that is really useful. But because of that, it kind of became a negative because what happens then is I only need, oh, it'll not take me long to do.

So I don't have to do it today. And because it's easier, I'm putting it off. So I still don't think clean consistently because I'll either hyper-focus and then blitz it or I will do it when something forces me, when someone's coming over, for example, or I've got an appointment or I'm just at the point where I can write my name in the dust. There is not a lot of in-between. So I do not have all the answers for this one. And it's a very...

Heather Tingle (02:24.266)
unusual podcast for me to do where I admit that I do not know how to do something, especially something as simple, he would say, as cleaning. But I'm here to reassure you. I'm here to tell you the truth and reality. And I'm also here to give you maybe a few suggestions of things that do work for me, even though they are not perfect, because we don't live in a perfect world, let's face it. But if I can give you a few suggestions, and these are things I think I'm gonna carry on exploring once this episode.

is out there because I think I want to be able to do it for myself as well as for my clients. So what I see at the moment is something I call pinball cleaning. So you start in the kitchen, you notice a sock, you take the sock upstairs, you see the bathroom sink needs wiping, you do that, you start wiping, you find an empty bottle, you take that to the recycling, notice the bins full, start doing the bins, and somehow you're in the lounge, stuffing cushions and nothing's actually done. Like you've not finished anything, you're back where you started and you totally forgotten what you were actually doing. You're moving constantly, you're busy, you're expending energy and time.

but nothing actually feels complete. It doesn't feel like you've got your stuff together, if that makes sense. And I think that's really important to know that this isn't laziness, it's just executive functioning action. You know, it's just not working how other people's do. And I think it's also important to note that cleaning requires so many different things because you need to tidy first, generally. And then usually by the time you've tidied, you're too tired to then start cleaning. Obviously,

Once you decluttered your home, oh my God, I actually like tidying. I love tidying. I will tidy and it's all good and it feels good and I know where things live and it's easy for me now. Cleaning, nah. Cleaning requires, after you've tidied, it requires starting, sequencing, staying on a task, finishing it, starting another task, transitioning between tasks. Like that is a lot for our brains. So I think in the olden days, I would say.

People would say to you, just build the habit. I cannot do habits. Habits do not stick. They do not stick in my brain at all. I have to consciously think about it every single time. They're not easy. What I can do, however, and I can do really well is habit stack. So for example, one of the things that when I had my PA coming in, she came in on a Monday and we would do the cleaning and tidying on a Monday as well as a million of other things.

Heather Tingle (04:48.332)
because Mondays was really important to do the bins because Tuesday is when the bin men come to take the rubbish away. So that works really well for me because there's an external consequence. So if I don't do the bins on a Monday, I will miss a collection because in the olden days, what used to happen was I would put my bin out first thing on a Tuesday morning and it'd be after they'd been and then I would have to put it back in again. now Mondays is my bin day. I don't miss a collection. I don't have to worry about

anything like that, like it is done. But things like wiping things down, mopping floors, hoovering the floors, weekly bathroom routines, like I've tried the organized mom method. It just massively, massively overwhelmed me and felt like so many demands I could not keep up. And if I'm honest, I was resentful over and did not enjoy it at all. So there's lots of things out there that kind of give you these routines.

but that's not how my brain works. Like it responds to urgency, it responds to novelty, it responds to fun, it responds to panic. And historically, cleaning used to be somebody else's job. So in the olden days, like in my grandparents, or great grandparents time, it would be the husband went out to work and the woman stayed at home. And without going on a full on feminist patriarchal rant.

Why is it still our job to do? Now I've got to do it because I am the only adult in this home. So yeah, it is of course my job. But if you work full time and you also have a partner that works full time, do you do the cleaning jobs between you? Like is it shared? A lot of the time I see with a lot of my clients is actually it tends to be the person who is working part time.

or is working full time or whoever is caregiver, that is the person who does the cleaning. So it used to be, know, beforehand, it used to be you would have entire days for doing certain jobs. So Mondays was wash day, Tuesday you would clean the step, Wednesday you would do the laundry, Thursday you would do this, days were for baking, days were for floors, days were for cleaning the paintwork.

Heather Tingle (07:02.732)
We don't have those days anymore because we're too busy working. We parent, we manage school emails, we answer WhatsApp messages, we do emails, we run business, we try and rest and do looking after our bodies and going to the gym. Well, some of you do, I don't. We exist now in a world that the roles aren't as defined. We find it very difficult to switch off. And so of course it feels harder and it is not a personal flaw. Decluttering, however, does make life easier. So...

There is less stuff to move, less to dust, less visual noise. It doesn't suddenly give you a neurotypical brain, however. So if task initiation is hard, it's still going to be hard. So instead of trying to become someone who just cleans every day and does different things, I've been thinking about what actually works and how, what things work for me and maybe how we can adapt them a little bit better. So what works for me really well, and this is why I do not mind doing it all, is category cleaning.

So if I had to go into a room or an entire house and say, clean it, I would feel really overwhelmed. But if you gave me a category to do, I don't feel as overwhelmed. So instead of cleaning the kitchen, I would say, okay, I'm gonna empty all the bins and get all the rubbish together. I can do that, that is a lot easier. I can gather all the laundry, yes, I can do that. I can do the dishes and put them in the dishwasher or empty the dishwasher or wash the pots. That is a task I can do.

I can go around the house collecting all the pots from the room, especially if you've got a teenager, you'll understand where I'm coming from. All the recycling I can do, that is a separate thing. Dusting, dusting shelves, I can move from room to room and dust shelves. Like I can do that. What I can't do is do one after the other, after the other, because first of all, my physical health does not allow it, but also it is too demanding for my executive function. So I would look at tasks.

as individual tasks and try and get them done over the course of a week or two weeks and have them as individual tasks rather than cleaning each room. Hopefully that makes sense. So that would be my first strategy to try because I know that that absolutely works for me. And people always ask me, how often, you see this on the internet all the time. How often do you change your bedding? Because it should be done.

Heather Tingle (09:26.858)
every other day or it should be done every week. It's like no, it should be done when you feel like it needs doing and you've got the energy to do it. So what is right for you is not going to be right for other people. Do not use other people's standards to work against, like create your own standards. So if you want, if you currently mop the kitchen floor once a month and you want it to be more, then try once every two weeks. Don't try and do every single day straight away because you're not going to hit it.

So have a look at each individual task and work out how you can habit stack it or how you can work with your brain to make it actually manageable. If however, you are a pinballer, don't fight it, work with it. Can you set pinballing time in?

So a 20 minute timer, you're allowed to bounce between rooms, you're allowed to move around, you can do what you can do, give yourself some rules maybe, like no opening of drawers or reorganising cupboards or getting sidetracked, like no side quests to reduce the visual noise, then to maybe pinball in between just cleaning what you notice. So a lot of the time we'd look, we're in the rooms and we'd look down and we don't look up, so we don't look at light fittings, we don't look up at the cobwebs. Now I love looking up and seeing a cobweb because it gives me an immense sense of...

faction to then sort the cobwebs out. And I know I'm a plant-based person, I shouldn't be letting go of like homes of spiders, but I'm sorry spiders, you can go somewhere else. So give yourself like a dopamine here to see progress, little pockets of progress everywhere and work with that, that is okay. And one of the big ones that has definitely worked for me is lowering the friction. So if something never gets done, ask where the friction is, like what is the struggle? So is it that...

The cleaning thing is hard because the cleaning materials are all downstairs. Okay, so can you create a space in the kitchen, in the bathroom for cleaning materials? If there's not a cloth upstairs, can you bring a cloth upstairs? For me, at one point I did have two vacuum cleaners. I had one downstairs and one upstairs because it was so heavy I could not bring it up the stairs. Now it's a little bit easier because I've got a cordless one. So if your Hoover feels like you're wrestling a bear and you're doing weightlifting, can you get a different one?

Heather Tingle (11:43.241)
or consider, and I know we're very privileged if you can afford it, get a robot hoover. Now, I know some of you will think that sounds really indulgent, and if I'm honest, I'm battling with that right now. I am in the process of thinking about it. But if hoovering is a thing that tips you into overwhelm, if crumbs on the floor are like a sensory nemesis, if dragging a heavy hoover around is difficult and too hard to make you start, then why force it? So having...

something that makes life easier. So when I've talked about the fact I've got a tumble dryer and I've got a dishwasher and I could not live without either of those things because they make it doable. So a Hoover, I should say vacuum cleaner, it's not Hoover is it, it's a vacuum cleaner, is not laziness, it's removal of friction. It's outsourcing the boring bit to a machine and that's okay for a lot of neurodivergent clients. It's the difference between I cannot cope, the floor's filthy, everything's horrendous, everything's too much, to well the floor's sorted so I can do the rest, that's okay.

And I think there's probably something quite deeply satisfying and also terrifying if you're an animal owner about watching it chundle ground like a determined little tortoise. I am quite interested to see how pets get on with it. No doubt my cat will attack it, but there you go. But the key thing is robot hoovers only work in homes where there's floor space and you can tidy. So it may give you the impetus to at least do the floor on a consistent basis because you can't set the hoover off until the floor is clear.

And that's another argument for decluttering first because then tidying becomes easier. So consider removing the friction. Another strategy that I found that I am definitely gonna try with this one is keeping on task is hard. And I think I'm gonna do a whole new podcast on this one, cause I'm aware about timing. But one of the things that I've seen, I'm quite intrigued by is someone who got like a scrunchy kind of bracelet, put it on their arm and then clipped all the individual tasks.

on the bracelet and then removed a task off the bracelet once it had been done. And it was like a physical reminder of all the things that they had to do. And if they got sidetracked, that bracelet kind of brought them back to all the tasks that they needed to still do. So I think that was quite a good, clever one to try. So another strategy to try is like reset triggers instead of habits. So not eye clean every day, but think of it as little habit stacks, I suppose, again.

Heather Tingle (14:11.948)
So while the kettle boils, give the kitchen surface a wipe over. Before the takeaway arrives, give yourself a five minute lounge reset, for example, while you're waiting for it to come. While you're brushing your teeth, can you wipe the sink at the same time? Or while you're in the shower, brushing your teeth maybe, can you just give the bath a spray with like mold cleaner, for example? Like are there things that you can do?

that will habit stack automatically while you're bored. And that way, if you're already doing it, you'll keep on doing it because the things that you have to do, like you have to have a shower, for example, then can you be doing something while you're doing that? So I've noticed that I can clean the grout while I'm rinsing my hair. It sounds really silly, but it really helps me get stuff done. And then the final thing that I wanna talk to you about.

is allowing yourself, if you have the option of this, and again, I realise the privilege, is paying for a cleaner. And I say this to clients all the time, if this is something you can afford, it's not a failure, because actually, for many people, the cleaner isn't actually about the cleaning, it's about external accountability, knowing that someone's gonna come every single week or once a fortnight, and that will give you the deadline that you're gonna reset, so you're gonna tidy before they get there.

You're gonna clean certain bits that are too disgusting for the cleaner to do before they come. And that forces a tidy and it forces maybe a bit of a clean. So the number of homes at stay managerial purely because the cleaner is coming on Thursday is huge and that's scaffolding and you're allowed to have that if you can afford it. But the last thing I want to say is that

it's really important to talk about standards and we put such high expectations on ourselves more so than anybody else. And I think a lot of people raised that spotless is the only acceptable level of cleanliness allowed. Now, unless you've got like, know, bacteria growing in every little surface, please don't beat yourself up about having a bit of dust, having a bit of cobwebs, having a bit of fluff on the floor. Like, it's hard. And if we can't...

Heather Tingle (16:24.814)
deep clean, sometimes we don't start so if you can't do it perfectly we don't do it at all. Maybe try giving yourself different levels so maintenance clean just to keep on top of it, it doesn't have to be great you may be not going around the edges but it's good enough every so often giving it a deep clean and then having a crisis clean so like crisis clean

when someone's coming round and they're going to look at a specific place. So maintenance is like surfaces and bins and maybe giving the Hoover a mop a once over every so often. Deep cleaning is like skirting boards grow out, finding those cobwebs, doing the light bulbs and all that kind of stuff. I'm sorry, but like who cleans walls? I do when I see there's that much fluff on them that's apparently just dust appeared from nowhere. You don't need to do that every week, every month.

do it when you see it and when you know what you want to be done, it's okay. And then crisis clean is like 10 minutes before someone comes around and they're not the same job. And most of the time we can cope with maintenance and that's all right. So it's again, just really to reiterate with all my systems, I still hyper-focus on it sometimes and do not have the perfect home.

I will suddenly clean my entire bedroom at 10 o'clock at night or I won't do it until I can see something that physically needs doing and then I'm annoyed because I've not done it beforehand. I haven't got all the answers with this one, but that's why I'm a declutterer, not a cleaner. But I have decluttered, but what hasn't changed is I've not become someone who loves cleaning and I'm never gonna be that person and that's okay. I can be okay with that because it no longer feels impossible to do. Cleaning on top of chaos is impossible. Cleaning on top of...

a decluttered home is manageable. It's not perfect, but it's manageable. So if you pinball, if you wait for hyper-focus, if your habits never stick, if you need the cleaner or the robot vacuum cleaner as a backup, that's okay. You're not lazy. You're allowed because homes were not designed with neurodivergent energy levels in mind. And we can design our homes and systems around us and how we actually work because let's face it, maintenance is boring and it needs redoing all the time. And boring is hard.

Heather Tingle (18:39.097)
For those of us that require dopamine-like, you know, boosts, it doesn't mean you're failing, it just means you need scaffolding. So please remember, be kind to yourself, remember you are not alone and keep untangling.