Growing up in my life, when my parents wanted me to clean up my messes, they would ask me “What’s wrong with this picture?”. I would draw a blank, but now I realize that I could never fathom the executive functioning that was necessary for me to complete the necessary skills to clean up my messes.

As such, as I came of age, this became a constant struggle between my parents and I. We were always conflicting with each other about the cleanliness of my space when I lived with them or whether I cleaned up the bathroom. Eventually, my parents came to terms that was just the way that I was, and I would move out from under their roof.

As I began to live on my own, I was still struggling with the executive functioning necessary to execute the necessary tasks to keep my apartment clean. I rarely cooked meals on my own and I began to have hoarding tendencies to the point where it got out of control. It made my first apartment look like a mess and I had nice furniture in it. However, due to the circumstances beyond my control, I had to leave them for my own safety when I left that apartment and as such when I moved into my current apartment, the furniture was less quality.

But I still didn’t value cleanliness in the way that I did for many years. Probably because I haven’t taken care of my mental health for many years. The only thing that mattered in those years was being able to do what I needed to do to survive as a human being. Cleaning became secondary and in reality I did not have the ability to fathom the skills necessary to start the process to clean up the items. Even though many times the way things presented themselves was not the way that they were supposed to be, that was not what mattered to me at those moments. What mattered was what kept me engaged and going.

Once I took better care of myself mentally, things got better and there became more of a desire to make my apartment look more desirable. Picking up things that seemed out of place and a desire for cleanliness became more of a habit because I knew I would feel better about my living environment if I took care of it to the point where I could enjoy it more instead of making it more of a hassle to deal with when it became necessary to do so.

Because I became well mentally, I was more ready to be more cognizant of when things fell out of place. There was more of a desire to want to keep my apartment clean and make it as beautiful as possible. My mental health was no longer defeating me. I could take tasks in small chunks and process them as I was able to. Once they were executed, I could move on to doing more things and as they became cleaner, I was proud of the accomplishments that I have made. I was making more of a ‘normal’ life for myself that actually made me feel more like the person that I knew I could be, proud of the space that I called home. You can do anything that you put yourself up to and this was another thing that makes life better.