Oh, boy! Do I ever understand that "paralyzed perfectionist" thing!!! BTDT. I work every day at overcoming it, and the good news is that I HAVE made progress.
HERE, Stepping out of Squalor, is the right website for you. Children of Hoarders is the website for your daughter. She can vent all that she wants to there. Here, you will get cheers and encouragement for so much as picking up ONE SINGLE TINY BIT OF TRASH!!! I mean it. They don't "get" the value of that at COH. All they want is for the ENTIRE mess to vanish instantly--POOF!!!
Well, the mess didn't happen instantly (in most cases, that is), and it likely isn't going to disappear instantly, either--nor should it. Here, you will learn how to work your way out of your mess one step at a time, and the most important thing of all is that you will learn how to keep it from happening again. That doesn't mean that you won't ever backslide; nearly all of us do. However, with the skills that can be learned here, one doesn't have to stay in squalor forever.
H-m-m-m--I have a little "problem" with something that you wrote. You said that your daughter will allow your grandchildren to stay with you, but that she and her husband always stay at a hotel. I have to tell you that that is HIGHLY unusual! In most cases, the parents NEVER allow the grandchildren to visit grandparents at a highly squalorous house, much less STAY OVERNIGHT with them. It sounds to me like mom and dad want a night at the hotel without the kiddies around!
!!!
In the meantime, you still have several days to work on the situation. Are you expected to cook dinner for the clan or will you be eating at a restaurant? That makes a big difference as to how much you have to focus on your kitchen at this point. If you are expected to cook, you will need to clean out the fridge enough to put fresh groceries into it. You will have to excavate the stove. You will need to wash dirty dishes, and you will need to clean off table(s) and chairs so that people will have a place at which to eat.
If you expect to eat at a restaurant, but you still expect your grandchildren to stay with you, you will need to focus on cleaning a bathroom and a bedroom. The bedroom doesn't have to be "perfect", by the way. You just need to have a bed that they can get to that has clean bedding on it. You will need to have some chairs and/or a sofa cleaned off enough that your visitors will have a place to sit elsewhere in the house, too.
If you are in a situation where you have narrow paths, pick up ONE item every time that you make a trip through the house. If it is trash, throw it out; if it something that belongs in another room, put it there. If you want to donate it to Goodwill, put it in a bag or box labeled for such. I have to warn you, though, that this might be a time to implement the concept of "amnesty." "Amnesty," in this case, means that you are absolved from the responsibility of donating or recycling anything at this time. This is an "emergency" cleaning situation, so feel free to toss out ANYTHING that you need to in order to make space in your home. When you get things better under control ( and you CAN!!) in a few weeks or months, you can work out a system for making donations and recyling items then.
I know that your daughter's words hurt you and that they still rankle. Please, for your own sake, let them go. Let the shame go. All that those feelings do is suck the energy and the motivation right out of your very soul. I'm sure that there are things that your daughter isn't good at either. I'd never make it as a nuclear physicist, an astronaut, or an artist, but I have value in this world, nonetheless. Obviously, I have my own housekeeping issues or I wouldn't be a years-long member of this community.
Some people come to this site, and they manage to completely clean up their homes in a matter of weeks or months. Others, like me, take it very, very slowly. I have been changing life-long beliefs that have contributed to my housekeeping problems. I, too, have been schooling myself that "good enough IS good enough!"
Just this weekend, I had an "epiphany" of sorts. I was doing some chores that would be termed "maintenance." As I went about my tiny tasks, I had that nasty little voice in my head telling me that I was an abject failure. So, I decided to "take on" that nasty little voice in my head. I decided to analyze why on earth doing MAINTENANCE, of all things!, would make me feel like a failure. After all, it is the maintaining of already-cleared areas that keeps us from falling back into squalor. It is maintaining that most us need to learn to do. NOT maintaining is one of our greatest weaknesses. So,--I had this "chat" in my head.
ME: "I feel like an abject failure!"
Voice 1: "Why?"
ME: "Because I'm having to clean this again."
Voice 1: "So? Things get dirty."
ME: " I know, but. . ."
Voice 1: "But WHAT?!!!!"
ME: (With sudden insight) "I have this OTHER voice in my head; she's standing there with her hands on her hips, saying very scornfully to me. . . "well, if you'd just done it right THE FIRST TIME. . .!!!"
Now, the "logical " side of me knows that that is just crazy-making stuff. THINGS DO GET DIRTY! It doesn't matter if "you did it right in the first place." They WILL get dirty again. (There's that universal law of entropy, for heaven's sakes!) Yet, the "emotional" side of me feels ashamed and like an abject failure because things don't STAY cleaned up after I've cleaned them up. Naturally, I like to avoid doing things that make me feel ashamed and like an abject failure, so I tend to let the maintenance slide, and my cleaned-up spaces don't stay cleaned up for very long.
It's just like with owning a car. When I bought my first car, fresh out of college, I felt like it shouldn't require ANYTHING other than gasoline. After all, it had cost THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS--here's that phrase again--IN THE FIRST PLACE! Well, I quickly learned that, like it or not, cars do REQUIRE maintenance if one wants them to operate well for very long. They need oil changes, new tires, alignments, etc. I adjusted. I keep my car maintained, and I DON'T feel like some kind of abject failure whenever I do it, either.
Now, I have to start thinking about maintaining my house with the same laissez-faire attitude that I have about maintaining the car. No shame or feelings of failure will be allowed! I just need to do the work.
Well, I didn't intend to write a novel or a preachy lecture to you when I started this post. You'll have to forgive me; this is what happens when my thyroid medication "kicks in."
!!
Welcome to the board. We really, truly, are glad to have you here!
Arid
