And often there's just not the energy to do it? Like my mental body is heavy, and cleaning rarely feels like it's worth the effort. Or, it feels like my attention in this is very loose, and just warps to match my environment, doesnt warp environment to match me.
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Sometimes adderall fixes this, which is a crazy thing to experience. On adderall, it feels really easy/minor to do stuff like get out of my chair to throw my burrito wrapper away, like it incurs no mental cost? And that's insane - is that how clean people feel all the time?
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When I do get my house clean, I'm a little better at *keeping* it clean by making sure I pick up everything immediately, but this feels unnatural, effortful, and quickly drops off if my routine is disrupted at all (which it often is by travel or parties).
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Rn my kitchen sink is stinky because I tried to pour bad milk down it and it didn't go down. Experiencing a stinky sink is a better experience for me right now than switching my brain over to a mode where I want to clean the sink. I have so much I'm behind on, why focus on sink?
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This stuff extends to my personal life/work, too. I am behind on emails and taxes and projects and promises. I'm *always* behind on them; when I get an email, the mental effort of responding is often worse than the messiness of not responding. My computer files are a disaster.
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I'm so thankful that sometimes a project catches my attention and then I spend nearly every waking hour thinking about it and working on it. So stuff does get done, but it's in sessions of hyper-obsession. I don't know how to do low-grade, distributed attention!
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It feels like some part of my brain, the part that's supposed to "keep up" with small things, be detail oriented and switch modes often, is just constantly exhausted and lumbering behind everything else mumbling 'sorry, pardon me, sorry'
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Besides the practical problems (have failed projects/missed opportunities cause of it) It's come with a lot of vague background shame. People make fun of messy people, express disgust in comment sections where someone complains about a messy roommate.
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I'm stressed about people entering my living areas; my spaces feel "for me," not for them, because the orientation of items is hyper-customized to my chaotic living, not the template of clean. I have some very clean friends who get actively distressed when they hang out with me.
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(Also extends to things like eating - I hate paying attention to what I eat, managing when to eat food in my fridge, washing pans and moving items around in the correct sequence to do cooking and then putting stuff back and then you have to do it AGAIN?? I *hate* it.)
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(also fwiw I did a sleep test and have mild sleep apnea and low blood oxygen when sleeping; it's possible this is contributing to my bad attention, and I plan on trying a cpap machine to see if it helps)
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Try these myofunctional tongue exercises to see if some of that doesn’t help with sleep along with mouth taping. See page with suggestions.
bodyepiphanies.com/boise-sleep-pr
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Sounds pretty reasonable. Fighting entropy is endless. It's a matter of degree, but keeping everything clean all the time can't be the right tradeoff. For me, mess is ok, but I try to keep actual stink down.
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If you want to try a light version before getting a cpap machine: dental splints have basically stopped my light sleep apnea and take a whole lot space and money than a machine.
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Please do. There was a study at the University of Wisconsin, I think, on sleep apnea. They actually determined it was unethical to have a control group after it had been underway, because even a mild case of sleep apnea increases the chance of death *from all causes* by 200%.
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Mouth taping has been a game changer for me & some of my friends. One had a sleep study done which was fine, but probably had minor sleep apnea. Mouth breathing causes airway collapse so nasal breathing is probably helping w that. Tape is like 5¢/night.
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Been taping my mouth shut when I sleep for 3y & the effects have been dramatic: improved sleep quality (subjective & objective: fewer wake-ups, lower breath & heart rates), decreased nasal congestion, improved sense of smell, & no longer a mouth breather
insidehook.com/article/health
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Have you ever been tested for Lyme disease? I had many of these traits that I wrote off as just being personality quirks when it was really a low grade chronic infection. It also gave me mild sleep apnea.
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I kind of accepted that there's only so much mental and physical effort I'll ever be willing to put into cleaning, so I try to design systems that more efficiently use it. E.g. I have bins for different types of clothes so that I can toss them in those rather than hang them up.
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