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Post by hiding on Jan 29, 2015 21:20:38 GMT -5
I read an article in Real Simple for January 2015. I had hoped to find it online so all who wanted to read it could. But no such luck. The name of the article is Domestic Perfection Comes with a Price. It is interesting that the woman in the article was actually asking for help from the magazine. It sounds bizarre to me, but the woman's compulsion to be constantly cleaning and organizing was getting in the way of her life.
She uses cleaning and organizing to sooth her anxieties. When she's upset she cleans or re-organizes. It's so extreme that she neglects her husband and friends. She doesn't get enough sleep because she's up until 2, 3 in the morning cleaning. Finally, Julie Morgenstern was called in to help. Note that Morgenstern also helps hoarders/messies.
The cleanie woman discovered that she uses cleaning and organizing to avoid feeling and processing her emotions. She looks at cleaning and organizing as ends in themselves rather than using those behaviors to support her life.
Unlike with us, there is a lot of positive reinforcement for a person who keeps a sparkling clean, organized home and office. That makes it even more difficult to recognize that the extreme cleanine may be at odds with her/his behavior and is suffering too.
It struck me while reading the article that messies/hoarders and cleanies/organziers are 2 sides of the same coin.
I can hear you saying, "Even if that's true, so what? How does that help me or help you?" Maybe it doesn't. But it seems important to me and this is one of the few places I can express thoughts without immediately getting a figurative pan of ice water thrown on me.
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Post by bobolink on Jan 29, 2015 21:28:34 GMT -5
Have you ever watched the series Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners? The pair compulsive cleaners with hoarders/squalorers. The cleanies clean up the messies homes. It is very revealing. I thing it is a BBC show. It doesn't seem as exploitive as some American hoarding shows.
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Post by hiding on Jan 29, 2015 21:43:10 GMT -5
I have not seen that Bobolink. Sounds interesting. I'll see if I can find it online. Thanks.
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Post by Unswamping on Jan 29, 2015 21:43:26 GMT -5
hiding. Thank you for posting this. I think you are right that the excessive cleaner organizer and us are two sides of the same coin. Maybe not everyone on this site, since we are all different. But some of us, myself included have had times in our lives where our houses have been very clean and organized. I have ocd and when my house was in that state, it was extreme. I could never have any one in because i would get so upset if they moved something and what kind of dirt they would bring in. Over the course of my life, ive bounced from the extreme clean to extreme squalor. I would like to find the middle ground where my house is clean enough, not perfect, just a nice, lived in, clean house. I used to use cleaning as a way to avoid dealing with unpleasant emotions. When i was angry, i used to scrub the kitchen floor on my hands and knees. I would cleaning until the feelings went away. My hoard was in storage and i actually kept very little in my apartment. Which was a good thing because everthing had to be cleaned and organized every day.
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Post by BetsyMarie on Jan 29, 2015 22:57:07 GMT -5
Just like compulsive overeating vs anorexia. Anorexic individuals often get kudos for being 'svelt' - hence making it more difficult to address the underlying food/eating disorder. And both conditions, like cleanies/organizers, help distract one from feeling states they don't want to experience.
Coincidentally, I have a friend with anorexia who also keeps an absolutely spotless home. Probably some control issues going on there - if you can't control disturbing things outside of yourself (you know - 'life'), you can control everything within your immediate sphere.
(edit - I'm not suggesting everyone who is neat has 'issues'.)
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Post by Unswamping on Jan 30, 2015 1:00:33 GMT -5
BetsyMarie thats an interesting analogy. When i was going through the crazy cleaning time, i was also suffering from anorexia. Looking back, when i was obsessively cleaning, i was also stuck in anorexic behavior. When my house was squalorous, i was overweight and compulsively overeating. Maybe once i find get better at managing my emotions, i can have a neat and clean (but not obsessively clean) house and a healthy body.
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Post by lesaulerouge on Jan 30, 2015 1:10:50 GMT -5
I have watched that programme (I think it is on one of the Channel 4 channels rather than BBC?), even though it isn't my normal sort of viewing at all. I have felt very sorry for some of the OCD diagnosed cleaners, one woman in particular, she had no social life, no partner etc and was fairly lonely. She worked well with the hoarder whose home she was helping to organise and clean and at the end it said that she had managed to cut back her cleaning a little and join a dating website, which was what she was hoping for. It certainly does show another side to the issue, and with compassion.
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Post by toomuchstuph on Jan 30, 2015 2:06:39 GMT -5
hiding Thanks for posting about this article. What you wrote makes a great deal of sense. It leads me to a confession that I've made here before. I like to clean. There. I've said it. What I don't like to do is the decluttering, dealing with things, making decisions parts. That's where I most often get stuck and stall out. I don't clean as often as I might because there are piles everywhere. Piles of papers, clothes, books, shop-n-drop, etc etc. I believe that I'd clean more often if I could just bring myself to really deal with the stuph. I've scaled back on bringing it in - but it seems more still does come in than goes out. As far as cleaning though, there is a very Karate Kid "Wax on. Wax off." thing about it to me. It made sense about the woman who used cleaning to soothe anxieties (the organizing, not so much!) Cleaning for me is a very mindless activity. Not that you have to be stupid to do it  just that it doesn't require a lot of decisions. You can vacuum a rug or dust a table without thinking a lot about what you're doing. And at the end, there is immediate gratification! A rug with fluffier nap and no lint, dirt etc, and a nice shiny table. I've actually done what the woman in the article has done - used cleaning to turn off my mind about something troubling. Granted, I haven't done it often! ;-) So, I think I can really understand the jist of the article. I guess I just see cleaning and dehoarding as two very different activities with very different thought processes.
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Post by Irisheyes on Jan 30, 2015 10:32:41 GMT -5
toomuchstuph - Exactly! It sounds as if you and I are on both sides of the same coin. It feels almost like an identity crisis at times, liking to clean, liking things clean and organized to the nth degree, but the rest of it, just as you describe, can be overwhelming.
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Post by ohblondie on Jan 30, 2015 11:50:22 GMT -5
toomuchstuph I am kinda like you. I like to clean when I am organizing but I am not so good on the maintenance clean. I mean - I like to empty out a cupboard or drawer, clean it and polish it - then put the contents away in a neat and orderly fashion. And weed out what I don't need or want. But no one has the time to clean their house every week using that method. And this is how piles get created. I empty a drawer, clean it and organize it - then I don;t always know what to do with the rest (if it isnt an easy toss decision)
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Post by hiding on Jan 30, 2015 13:58:34 GMT -5
You folks bring up an insightful point. Now that I think about it, I also like to clean. What hangs me up is all the necessary decision making in the de-cluttering. That explains why I so much enjoyed the janitor jobs I had, especially the one where I had a large auditorium to clean. There was no stuff in the way on the floor of the auditorium, just a nice, large empty space. I could really get into the rhythm of sweeping, mopping, and buffing. No stopping to move things, no need to go around anything. I was subbing for someone out on an extended medical leave or I would have stayed with that job. The boss said that he had never seen the auditorium so clean! Ha, if he had seen my house he would not have believed the same person who cleaned at work lived in such a landfill.
Toomuchstuph, I also think that cleaning and de-cluttering are 2 distinctly different activities with distinctly different thought processes. That makes so much sense! Thank you. I feel like we're getting somewhere with these discussions. I wish we all could be in the same room, having hot beverages and scones.
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Post by ohblondie on Jan 30, 2015 15:33:01 GMT -5
hiding I agree. Two separate and distinct thought processes
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Post by Bethel on Jan 30, 2015 20:11:09 GMT -5
This is something Flylady actually does a pretty good job addressing.
Obsessive cleaning is also very hard on the family, in many of the same ways that hoarding and squalor are. You can't use anything. You can't invite anyone over. All that. The only thing different, as you folks have already mentioned, is that society praises a super clean freak.
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Post by dayeanu on Jan 31, 2015 19:29:19 GMT -5
I could have that woman come visit me for about oh, six months, and maybe she'd unwind, while sorting me out to her heart's content!
Seriously, I'm sure it is no joking matter, living with such a compulsion.
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Post by dayeanu on Jan 31, 2015 19:41:59 GMT -5
Well, now that I've read the rest of the comments......I have posted on my private thread before......I actually like to clean. It's the bringing too much stuff into the house, deciding where things go, deciding to let things go, etc., that cause me problems.
I really don't know how to explain this, but I am a super organizer. Almost perfectionist organized. And so, when I CAN'T line things out, each with it's own little space, each not touching the other, nothing stacked, sorted into colors and shapes, etc, it is very grating on my nerves.
It is almost less grating to have it thrown into a heap, than it is to try to "organize" it less than perfect.
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