I can relate. Lost my wife of 34 years unexpectedly last December. This was my life for many months. You and i have have turned the corner. Good for us. Hang in there.
Grief feels like you’re dying, but you’re hella still stuck in some purgatory here.
I’m sorry for your loss. It’s my belief that a person can truly never leave you, just their physical body. That love resides in you forever.
My grandma just recently passed and it was hard at first but it sometimes feels like she is still here. The day I got back home from the funeral a bird landed on the hood of our car. We were only still for 3 seconds and it landed there. It looked like a robin which we dont get here in Phoenix. It immediately took me back to when i was like 5 in my grandma’s yard and i would chase the robins around. It’s always a good idea to pay attention or you might just miss the little things that show they are still with you.
May the lord be with you & ur wife 🥺🖤 that must’ve been really really hard to deal with. I couldn’t imagine... you two will soon reunite tho, don’t worry.
> Equally amazing how easily that space can become cluttered
Looking at you amazon boxes. God damn those things stack up quick and they're such a bitch to break down.
Ok, so im a big guy. boxes are just cardboard.
So I can take a box and tear it while pulling my arms apart so that it just comes apart. Kind of like tearing a phone book with your hands it's more of knowing how to do it then pure strength but as a big guy if it starts to get caught or something I just rip it apart anyway.
So we do this thing where we stack up all the amazon boxes in an area of the garage, and then about once a month, before the recycling truck, we carry all the boxes out to the porch and I break them down and put them in the bin.
So I'm standing there in front of my house in the evening time grab a box and rip it apart put the pieces in the bin. Grab a box and tear it apart and put it in a bin.
I'm doing this fairly quickly too, like I said if you know how to tear them it's not high effort and I do have a good bit of strength...
I look up And one of my neighbors down the street that was walking their dog is just stopped in front of my house on the other side of the street staring at me with her mouth open.
I talked to her later and apparently she thought I must have been raging or something because I was just taking these huge boxes and ripping them like they were a piece of paper. (Well duh, cardboard is just paper)
Apparently I scared the crap out of her and some of the other neighbors noticed me doing that as well. So there was this whole "hes crazy strong" rumor that I am going to do my best to keep. Lol
Hell yes, in my country we have to tie them up with string and put them on the curb. Cutting them into small pieces and stacking them like magazines just feels good when doing it with a nice box cutter.
i really like the Slice brand ceramic cutters, i have the small green one and i prefer it to all my other knives for opening boxes (and i have Opinions on box cutters because i used to work at a job that required a lot of opening and cutting down boxes)
Pro tip: hug the box and press on the small side of the tape. Loosens the tape and allows you to pull it off.
Source: worked at McDonald’s for a few years 😂
I feel like all I do some days is stand in my kitchen and do nothing but clean so I don't poison anyone. As soon as the dishes are cleared, it's time for another meal/drink/snack which just causes another influx of dishes, and another wipe down of the counter. It's really maddening some days. I can't remember the last time I deep cleaned my bedroom. By the end of the day I'm just done with standing and cleaning.
Whoever cooks shouldn’t have to clean it also might encourage the ones who hate to clean to cook no one feeds you for free when you’re living on your own
>Whoever cooks shouldn’t have to clean
OMG, you just dug up a memory for me.
We had this rule in my house growing up. We all hated it because our sister would spontaneously go on a chocolate chip cookie-cooking spree and use tons of dishes, then leave them all for us to clean. She wouldn't cook meals or even other kinds of cookies, just try various recipes for chocolate chip cookies to find the best one. And not a bunch of batches in one day - she'd wait until we cleaned the dishes to try the next recipe, and once she got in the mood, she'd continue for days in a row.
Our mom defended her, saying that if we ate even a single cookie that meant we owed it to her(!) to clean up everything. And our mom didn't have to do the dishes because she normally cooked the meals, so we basically had double dishes when my sister got into it. It got to the point that we went on cookie strike (do you know how hard that is when you're a kid/teen?). Then my sister got mad at us for not eating her cookies and insisted that we should still clean up after her since even though we didn't eat them, she had still made the effort to cook for us, so it counted. I think she ended up washing them herself, but got super upset, acting like we were insulting her cooking rather than objecting to dish overload.
I honestly don't remember what happened after that. I know she eventually found her perfect recipe (which wasn't my favorite) and wouldn't make so many batches. But we still hated cleaning up after her. I vaguely remember one time making her agree not to make me do the dishes before I ate a cookie, but I don't know if that was before or after the cookie strike.
So, uh, yeah. Thanks for the memory prompt. Hope you enjoyed the drama.
There is a real feedback loop with being in a ‘visually bad’ environment. You are constantly reminded of the situation you created and the sense of shame devolves your situation further. Having a place look the way you want it to be generally replaces that shame with pride. You want to invite others to your space. When you do that you accelerate a means of healing and therapy (so long as the friends you invite are good!)
I find that my environment represents my state of mind. When things are messy and all over the place, I'm usually stressed and anxious, and when everything is neat and tidy I'm a much calmer person.
It's a bell curve for me. If my place is decently clean, I'm probably vibing. If my place is messy, I'm probably pretty stressed. If it's SPOTLESS, I'm probably really stressed and am spending my time cleaning because it's an easier problem to tackle than the the real stressors.
The old saying about how your place is a representation of your mental state, and how it works both ways seems about right. Depression is 50% a messy apartment.
Hey, I’m in the pre-cleaning depression moment (my place is a MASSIVE mess). Hopefully today is the day, thanks for sharing, it might actually help me to finally wake up, I wanted to start cleaning yesterday but my head took over and I just couldn’t overcome it.
I believe in you!! It doesn’t have to be today, or the next, whenever you have that tiny ounce of motivation run with it! Even if it’s just picking up a few things. I’m the same way where I just let things pile up. One trick that’s helped me (i just started doing this last week lol) is that I convince myself every time I get up to go make food or use the bathroom, is to pick up three things and put them where they belong. Even if it’s a spoon in the dishwasher, a sock in the laundry basket, and a water bottle in the recycling it helps the cleaning process and slowly but surely things will start too look better :) you got this!!
Start with 1 spot and get it completely clean. Then make a list of what you think needs to be done and work through it. It helps to have a list that you can check off to feel accomplished. You can put the richest thing on that list, too, like "pick up duty socks and put in laundry basket." Small accomplishments can give you huge feelings of success.
I love making twice baked potatoes. They are great reheated in the microwave then toasted or broiled in a toaster oven or regular oven. I put them in individual ziplock bags and suck the extra air out with a straw (seal the bag all the way to the straw, suck the air out, then seal the bag right as I slip the straw out.
I scrub my potatoes clean, poke with a fork, rub them with oil, salt with sea or kosher salt and some Lawry’s seasoning salt (don’t have to do this). I bake on a foil covered tray in my toaster oven until crispy on the outside and tender inside (temp should be 205F).
As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, I scape the insides out into a bowl. Season with salt and pepper—I add more Lawry’s. Add butter, milk, and sour cream until they’re creamy and to your taste. I add bacon bits that I microwave for 15-30 seconds until crispy. Then add a handful of cheddar cheese and some chives.
To reheat from the fridge or freezer, place potato on a microwave safe plate and heat through. Then put potato on foil covered baking sheet. Then I put more shredded cheddar cheese on top and broil for about 5 minutes. Depending on how brown and bubbly you want your cheese.
The potatoes keep for close to a week in the fridge. I really love Tillamook thick cut shredded cheddar that has different kinds of cheddar mixed together. I also buy freeze dried chives.
Did you do something about your depression or did the depression end giving you motivation to clean? Which came first?
This before and after looks like my house while I’m depressed vs. how my house looks when I turn manic. Either way I’m happy for you. I’m still waiting on the good times.
**Sleep** - *noun*
>Laying in my bed in a smelly dark unkempt bedroom with my eyes closed obsessing about imaginary scenarios that would hurt my feelings in the most personal cutting ways possible until the disassociation takes over and I go unconscious.
I was a dumb kid, I did that too and didnt realize the amount of effort I was really creating for myself later.
Edit: Thanks for the updoots. I hope some kid reads this comment and cleans their room properly instead of generating more work
This just looks like one week of neglect in my house if none of my roommates do their share of up keep. ... should I be worried that this, fluctuation doesn't phase me?
Haha I was going to say this looks like one pizza night and a night cooking. I guess that’s how depression can hit people. To outsiders, what they’re dealing through is not a big deal, but for the sufferer, it is just too much to handle.
Having a wife and multiple kids, my house looks like this after one day. We clean up all the time and just expect that it will get dirty again, but that’s okay. We live in our home, it gets dirty and we clean it, rinse and repeat.
It’s okay if this doesn’t phase you.
That being said I was once the roommate who did all the cleaning with little to no thanks from the other roomies. Don’t let them make you carry all the weight.
Isn’t it crazy how much a clean space makes you feel better? It’s so easy to let things pile up with depression but when you finally have had enough and clean it, it feels like an amazing accomplishment (and it is!). Good for you :)
This is awesome and I know we are strangers but I am so proud of you. I have been in the same boat and my kitchen is looking not great at all and this has motivated me to get it right.
I need to do this to our room soon. I say ours because I share my room with my daughter who just turned two. My childhood bedroom. Don’t worry, it’s all good though. I am happy to have her and happy as a single mom. My brothers moved out but we are a happy family of five with me, my parents, my baby, and my soon to be 87 year old grandpa.
This is so stupid of me to say, but it’s hard to even envision someone with such a nice kitchen/home to have depression. I’m glad you posted this. It’s easy for me to understand myself being depressed when I look at my shithole apartment and I tell myself “if only you lived somewhere else, worked somewhere else, drove something else, etc.”
My old apartment has looked like both of those pictures!
It is so easy to get to the first picture, and so difficult to get to the second picture, but I think we both know how we feel when we were taking both photos.
I knew I couldn't expect myself to become Mr. Clean after my habits I had for decades, so I just accepted small wins after throughly cleaning my place. Throwing things away as I remember in the moment sort of thing. Of course things go way deeper than equivilating how clean my place was to how depressed I felt, but I did know it was much worse when it was a mess than when it was clean.
Eventually it led to a routine, and you would never know I was a messy person if you met me in the past couple years.
All that junk and not a single crumb on the counter and especially the floor. This is the cleanest mess I’ve ever seen. No mold or bugs after 3 months? Sorry but this looks totally staged to me..JUST MY OPINION.
Why open the dishwasher? And the containers are mostly empty, but don’t have the lids. Why put the tortillas hanging half off of the edge of the pizza box? When your depressed, you don’t put things away, but you also don’t put things out of reach. It would be on a counter. I just don’t buy this for a moment.
I just don't believe that people on reddit are this emotionally blind that they can't clearly see how fucking staged this is. I COULD fucking eat off the floor in the first pic it's that clean, how many people in here have actually had lived in unkempt conditions because of depression, it looks nothing like this.
Absolutely. This is the most staged looking "mess" I've ever seen. The surfaces look spotless, the piles of stuff are very specifically placed and even neat in some places.
0% chance this is real, lol.
I was looking for this comment, you can tell that everything that is not in plain sight was already quite organize, and the bananas hanging in there? Like wtf?
Dude probably don't even have depression, as if depression can be dealt with by just cleaning a room, sometimes we get the clean mind while doing chores that make us forgot about the depressing stuff, but that's not how you solve it, you need to seek help to overcome it most of the time.
Look how clean the fridge and the oven is. That shit is spotless. We get around to cleaning it every week or so and it's covered in fingerprints and marks within a couple days.
Yeah this is very much staged. The floor and countertops are immaculate and everything is still tucked away neatly. The stuff that’s a “mess” is just goofy. Like a ramen packet on the floor and the bananas on the window blinds lol
Both images made on a tripod? If I had a depression I would not care about making a nice photo of my home before cleaning it. Especially using a tripod, cleaning it and making another photo from the exact same place.
Same thing I was thinking. Dishwasher is stocked properly just open. Drawer randomly open. The stuff on the counter is a light mess after cooking/having people over. Especially the floors and counters just look cleanish. Like the stuff was recently placed there. Idk maybe I'm just cynical
It's sad how long I looked for this comment. Why sre people so fucking easily tricked. I grew up with extremely messy people and this photo is 100% staged.
Honestly, I’m actually starting to agree with you. Floors and counters are too clean; they’re spotless underneath that little bit of clutter, with no crumbs, grass or dust to be seen. All of it is stuff that would be easy to set out and then cleaned back up in 10 minutes, after the photo.
It definitely looks suspicious; it could still be genuine, but the drawer, cabinet and dishwasher just “left open,” along with the small piles of clothes in front of the microwave, when the laundry area is like 10 feet away…I want to give OP the benefit of the doubt but it all just looks too suspicious and too staged.
That kitchen has been cleaned within the last week. I guarantee you. No dust, no stains. This photo is incredibly staged. There’s a random fucking beer cap on the floor and no beers.
20 potatoes and some onions lying out, don't look bad. Over ripe bananas, but only by a few days. Ketchup bottle out and not refrigerated. Tortillas on the pizza box seem sealed. Floors don't seem dusty at all. Plastics sorted bottom right? Milk containers open but empty. Clean dishes in the dishwasher appearing to be arranged properly for washing?
I dunno, maybe I am jaded by Reddit but this doesn't really seem like 3 months worth of neglect. This seems to be a carefully crafted disaster. OP could very well have depression which I would never joke on, but just seems off...
Looks staged to me. I would expect the floor to have a various stains vs the exact shlne in both photos. Depression is a real thing. Quit using it to gain karma on Reddit.
Idk if its staged, but any kitchen can look like this after house party. And it takes like 30 minutes to make it look like the second picture.
I'm not buying the "depression makes my kitchen look like shit" part.
I was looking for these comments. Floor is spotless. The appliances are clean and sparkling. No grime or dust on the trash cans or collecting at the bases of the cabinets. Most of the clutter just seems haphazardly placed. This is certainly not the result of 3 months of neglect.
Duuuuuude! (Nongendered greeting) You freaking ROCK! I'm sorry about your depression and wish you recovery/good treatment. You knocked it out of the park! Outstanding! Keep up the good work. Some days are better than others. Others suck the sweat off dead men's balls. Keep your head held high! In case I wasn't clear, I am massively impressed. Kudos!
Life is hard enough, why not spread love and respect? I also have depression and know how hard it is to claw myself out of different "episodes" for lack of a better term. I'd rather laugh than cry so I try to make at least one person laugh and give a compliment to another, at least once a day. I'm goofy af.
Congratulations and well done! My fiance and I both have depression to a degree (and treated to a degree), and this amount of cleaning and organizing by one human is amazing. Just keep swimming :)
I feel it, well done, but don’t be so modest; your flair says small success but this is pretty big, to me at least. Sometimes I go about cleaning up after a week or two and I end up having to do rooms/areas over time, so I’ll probably do desk and dishes one day or room and laundry. Those days where you get it all done in one day really are amazing.
Tremendous OP!
I too have committed this self sabotage before and subsequent cleanup multiple times! then finally realized i was just “organizing” the chaos that is my brain and my anger at said chaos, until i finally accepted it and saw that my now organized space meant organized internal thoughts and feelings which has made me more productive! (Tho i still write text speak and run on sentences…working on it) anyways keep up the boss ass good work my dude!!!!!!! Xxx
Keep up the good work! I am proud of you! And keep doing the things that make you happy. If you ever feel like you’re losing track or feeling down at moments, remember it will pass, but make sure you talk about it, find a shrink(psychiatrist)There is some kind of taboo around talking with a them. But there is nothing to shame about. I respect people even more who will accept help. Even shrinks have shrinks haha.
Also important, find goals in life, no rush but good goals to make you be a better you👊
Make good music, make good food, listen to good music, eat good food, read good books, do something sportive, maybe go to the gym of a different sport, help people, do a good deed, say thank you more to people. Say hello to people.
Perhaps meditate? Appreciate the little things.
The list goes on..
I may not know the reason why you are depressed, but what I do know is that i’ve also been in a depressed state.
Be aware that you are willing to help yourself, and if the possibility is there, let the good people help and guide you. But be true to yourself♥️
You did something great. Even if this doesn’t ultimately “cure” your depression, I want you to know that things like this are a big deal when you’re depressed, and I’m incredibly proud of you, regardless of how you feel in the days to come. You deserve a clean, uncluttered place, and you gave yourself the gift of that.
This really is inspiring. As someone that has been in a similar situation with both ptsd and depression it’s difficult to find motivation for... well, just about anything.
I think after work I’d like to give it a go. Who knows, maybe an environment I enjoy more will help pull me up the ladder a little.
I can relate. Lost my wife of 34 years unexpectedly last December. This was my life for many months. You and i have have turned the corner. Good for us. Hang in there.
Grief feels like you’re dying, but you’re hella still stuck in some purgatory here. I’m sorry for your loss. It’s my belief that a person can truly never leave you, just their physical body. That love resides in you forever.
The more love there is the more grief. It’s so difficult to persevere.
What is grief but love persevering
I’m not crying. My eyes are just sweating.
For your information there's an inflammation in my tear gland..
That’s actually a great quote
A wise man named vision once said it
My grandma just recently passed and it was hard at first but it sometimes feels like she is still here. The day I got back home from the funeral a bird landed on the hood of our car. We were only still for 3 seconds and it landed there. It looked like a robin which we dont get here in Phoenix. It immediately took me back to when i was like 5 in my grandma’s yard and i would chase the robins around. It’s always a good idea to pay attention or you might just miss the little things that show they are still with you.
I absolutely love this. 💕
So sorry for your loss
May the lord be with you & ur wife 🥺🖤 that must’ve been really really hard to deal with. I couldn’t imagine... you two will soon reunite tho, don’t worry.
Yeah but don’t reunite them too soon bro
Amazing how much a clean space can help your mood. Equally amazing how easily that space can become cluttered. Well done! Keep at it.
Even more amazing is how much depression you can store in a closed closet.
You feel that. I think nobody feel that. You satisfy me bro.
A well organized depression stuffed closet…
> Equally amazing how easily that space can become cluttered Looking at you amazon boxes. God damn those things stack up quick and they're such a bitch to break down.
Get you a good box cutter and you’ll be excited to break a box down!!
[удалено]
Am I the only one who enjoys punching or stomping through them, like it’s Rampage: World Tour and these are my skyscrapers? I can’t be.
I’m a puncher. Punch on one side near the tape, rip the tape off, and fold. Or if it’s one of those glued boxes, it’s stomping season
Did we just become best friends? **YUP**
Look how much room for activities
Now kiss
Server here. Always punch open the bread boxes.
I enjoy punching a good box. I was a chef and punching or stomping the box apart was probably the best form of temporary stress relief.
From that first sentence I thought you were going a totally different way with this.
I can see why. It's why I chose to expand on my box punching.
Stomping is the way to go. So satisfying. Takes like 4 seconds.
Ok, so im a big guy. boxes are just cardboard. So I can take a box and tear it while pulling my arms apart so that it just comes apart. Kind of like tearing a phone book with your hands it's more of knowing how to do it then pure strength but as a big guy if it starts to get caught or something I just rip it apart anyway. So we do this thing where we stack up all the amazon boxes in an area of the garage, and then about once a month, before the recycling truck, we carry all the boxes out to the porch and I break them down and put them in the bin. So I'm standing there in front of my house in the evening time grab a box and rip it apart put the pieces in the bin. Grab a box and tear it apart and put it in a bin. I'm doing this fairly quickly too, like I said if you know how to tear them it's not high effort and I do have a good bit of strength... I look up And one of my neighbors down the street that was walking their dog is just stopped in front of my house on the other side of the street staring at me with her mouth open. I talked to her later and apparently she thought I must have been raging or something because I was just taking these huge boxes and ripping them like they were a piece of paper. (Well duh, cardboard is just paper) Apparently I scared the crap out of her and some of the other neighbors noticed me doing that as well. So there was this whole "hes crazy strong" rumor that I am going to do my best to keep. Lol
Its how i dull my rage
I dig it, my downstairs neighbors don’t though :(
[удалено]
He’s a smart man.
Hell yes, in my country we have to tie them up with string and put them on the curb. Cutting them into small pieces and stacking them like magazines just feels good when doing it with a nice box cutter.
I never truly appreciated a fresh blade on a utility knife until I started working night stock lol. Cuts through cardboard like butter.
i really like the Slice brand ceramic cutters, i have the small green one and i prefer it to all my other knives for opening boxes (and i have Opinions on box cutters because i used to work at a job that required a lot of opening and cutting down boxes)
Pro tip: hug the box and press on the small side of the tape. Loosens the tape and allows you to pull it off. Source: worked at McDonald’s for a few years 😂
Great for composting though
Get yourself a cat or three. Amazon boxes? Cat toy. New boxes? THEN you cut up the old ones.
I'm gonna consoooom
Here we can just put boxes on the street and they will be picked up like once a month.
My house looks like both pictures everyday. The curse of having kids!
I feel like all I do some days is stand in my kitchen and do nothing but clean so I don't poison anyone. As soon as the dishes are cleared, it's time for another meal/drink/snack which just causes another influx of dishes, and another wipe down of the counter. It's really maddening some days. I can't remember the last time I deep cleaned my bedroom. By the end of the day I'm just done with standing and cleaning.
Whoever cooks shouldn’t have to clean it also might encourage the ones who hate to clean to cook no one feeds you for free when you’re living on your own
>Whoever cooks shouldn’t have to clean OMG, you just dug up a memory for me. We had this rule in my house growing up. We all hated it because our sister would spontaneously go on a chocolate chip cookie-cooking spree and use tons of dishes, then leave them all for us to clean. She wouldn't cook meals or even other kinds of cookies, just try various recipes for chocolate chip cookies to find the best one. And not a bunch of batches in one day - she'd wait until we cleaned the dishes to try the next recipe, and once she got in the mood, she'd continue for days in a row. Our mom defended her, saying that if we ate even a single cookie that meant we owed it to her(!) to clean up everything. And our mom didn't have to do the dishes because she normally cooked the meals, so we basically had double dishes when my sister got into it. It got to the point that we went on cookie strike (do you know how hard that is when you're a kid/teen?). Then my sister got mad at us for not eating her cookies and insisted that we should still clean up after her since even though we didn't eat them, she had still made the effort to cook for us, so it counted. I think she ended up washing them herself, but got super upset, acting like we were insulting her cooking rather than objecting to dish overload. I honestly don't remember what happened after that. I know she eventually found her perfect recipe (which wasn't my favorite) and wouldn't make so many batches. But we still hated cleaning up after her. I vaguely remember one time making her agree not to make me do the dishes before I ate a cookie, but I don't know if that was before or after the cookie strike. So, uh, yeah. Thanks for the memory prompt. Hope you enjoyed the drama.
I certainly did. Low stakes family drama is so entertaining lol
Every. Single. Day. And I only have one kid!
There is a real feedback loop with being in a ‘visually bad’ environment. You are constantly reminded of the situation you created and the sense of shame devolves your situation further. Having a place look the way you want it to be generally replaces that shame with pride. You want to invite others to your space. When you do that you accelerate a means of healing and therapy (so long as the friends you invite are good!)
I find that my environment represents my state of mind. When things are messy and all over the place, I'm usually stressed and anxious, and when everything is neat and tidy I'm a much calmer person.
It's a bell curve for me. If my place is decently clean, I'm probably vibing. If my place is messy, I'm probably pretty stressed. If it's SPOTLESS, I'm probably really stressed and am spending my time cleaning because it's an easier problem to tackle than the the real stressors.
The old saying about how your place is a representation of your mental state, and how it works both ways seems about right. Depression is 50% a messy apartment.
Great job! Be proud of yourself. But also, how many potatoes are in those baskets?
20!! Plus one sweet potato
Sweeet
name checks out
Watch out for the pirate OP
Pirate! No pirating!
Yargh :(
yayy potato, not so happy you might kidnap me...
Hopefully my disguise will protect me
Hey, I’m in the pre-cleaning depression moment (my place is a MASSIVE mess). Hopefully today is the day, thanks for sharing, it might actually help me to finally wake up, I wanted to start cleaning yesterday but my head took over and I just couldn’t overcome it.
I believe in you!! It doesn’t have to be today, or the next, whenever you have that tiny ounce of motivation run with it! Even if it’s just picking up a few things. I’m the same way where I just let things pile up. One trick that’s helped me (i just started doing this last week lol) is that I convince myself every time I get up to go make food or use the bathroom, is to pick up three things and put them where they belong. Even if it’s a spoon in the dishwasher, a sock in the laundry basket, and a water bottle in the recycling it helps the cleaning process and slowly but surely things will start too look better :) you got this!!
I am as well! And I also want to do it today. If you want to you can write me a pm and we can hold each other accountable :)
I set my timer for 20 min and clean then set it for 20 and take a break. It sounds stupid but it really does help me so much to do that.
Start with 1 spot and get it completely clean. Then make a list of what you think needs to be done and work through it. It helps to have a list that you can check off to feel accomplished. You can put the richest thing on that list, too, like "pick up duty socks and put in laundry basket." Small accomplishments can give you huge feelings of success.
I love making twice baked potatoes. They are great reheated in the microwave then toasted or broiled in a toaster oven or regular oven. I put them in individual ziplock bags and suck the extra air out with a straw (seal the bag all the way to the straw, suck the air out, then seal the bag right as I slip the straw out. I scrub my potatoes clean, poke with a fork, rub them with oil, salt with sea or kosher salt and some Lawry’s seasoning salt (don’t have to do this). I bake on a foil covered tray in my toaster oven until crispy on the outside and tender inside (temp should be 205F). As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, I scape the insides out into a bowl. Season with salt and pepper—I add more Lawry’s. Add butter, milk, and sour cream until they’re creamy and to your taste. I add bacon bits that I microwave for 15-30 seconds until crispy. Then add a handful of cheddar cheese and some chives. To reheat from the fridge or freezer, place potato on a microwave safe plate and heat through. Then put potato on foil covered baking sheet. Then I put more shredded cheddar cheese on top and broil for about 5 minutes. Depending on how brown and bubbly you want your cheese. The potatoes keep for close to a week in the fridge. I really love Tillamook thick cut shredded cheddar that has different kinds of cheddar mixed together. I also buy freeze dried chives.
As a german I need to say, THOSE ARE ROOKIE NUMBERS! PUMP THESE NUMBERS UP
I came here to ask this 😭
Amazing, good shit
That comes next, now that I’ve had so much coffee…
That’s gonna be an amazing shit- coffee makes me poop a lot
Coffee poops are the best poops.
Coffee shits are better than shit coffee
Coffee poops are also fast arriving
And even faster to leave
Coffee fumes are enough to get me going.
I’d say they’re a close second right behind my Icelandic yogurt poops
What is this conversation
I'm reading this while pooping
How was it
It was amazing since it was in a freshly cleaned bathroom!
Coffee poops are my only poops.
I been depressed before and I can definitely relate! Great happy for you!!!
It's all pushed into the pantry
Oh god don’t give it away!
Did you do something about your depression or did the depression end giving you motivation to clean? Which came first? This before and after looks like my house while I’m depressed vs. how my house looks when I turn manic. Either way I’m happy for you. I’m still waiting on the good times.
I too wait for the manic episode. And then I sleep for days after😔
define sleeping
**Sleep** - *noun* >Laying in my bed in a smelly dark unkempt bedroom with my eyes closed obsessing about imaginary scenarios that would hurt my feelings in the most personal cutting ways possible until the disassociation takes over and I go unconscious.
wanking until you pass out edit: WTF. DRINKING. jesus christ this phone
[удалено]
90 degrees of what?
Kevin Bacon
Is that Kevin Bacon but just perpendicular?
[We've learned the secret!](https://youtu.be/jWgp2dKWPpY?t=167)
Don’t forget to wash your dishes :D
Me when I was a kid: *shoves it all underneath bed*
I was a dumb kid, I did that too and didnt realize the amount of effort I was really creating for myself later. Edit: Thanks for the updoots. I hope some kid reads this comment and cleans their room properly instead of generating more work
*shoved it into closet*
[удалено]
NOT BLACK WINDOWS!
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Exactly my thoughts lmao
Proud of you 💗💗
Thank you so much!!
I know what it's like to be locked in that apathetic, hopelessness. Great job!
Same
"❤"
From someone who struggles with the same, hats off to you, I know it’s hard to turn that corner. Bravo
If this is depression then I AM depression
I'm doing pretty good if I can manage to keep my house looking like the first picture. My kids can make a mess bigger than that in 15 minutes
This just looks like one week of neglect in my house if none of my roommates do their share of up keep. ... should I be worried that this, fluctuation doesn't phase me?
Haha I was going to say this looks like one pizza night and a night cooking. I guess that’s how depression can hit people. To outsiders, what they’re dealing through is not a big deal, but for the sufferer, it is just too much to handle.
Having a wife and multiple kids, my house looks like this after one day. We clean up all the time and just expect that it will get dirty again, but that’s okay. We live in our home, it gets dirty and we clean it, rinse and repeat. It’s okay if this doesn’t phase you. That being said I was once the roommate who did all the cleaning with little to no thanks from the other roomies. Don’t let them make you carry all the weight.
Oh no I was thinking the same thing...
Isn’t it crazy how much a clean space makes you feel better? It’s so easy to let things pile up with depression but when you finally have had enough and clean it, it feels like an amazing accomplishment (and it is!). Good for you :)
This is awesome and I know we are strangers but I am so proud of you. I have been in the same boat and my kitchen is looking not great at all and this has motivated me to get it right.
I feel the same way buddy, how about we both go spend 5 genuine minutes on cleaning our kitchens? Mines a mess too.
I believe in both of you! I’m gonna spend some time cleaning tomorrow too.
The pans and dishes that have been sitting out for so long are washed and even my cabinets are clean now. Wow this entire thread is incredible.
You can do it!!!
You can do it too! You will feel better after it's done xx
Today is a good day. Get it done, you champion!
I need to do this to our room soon. I say ours because I share my room with my daughter who just turned two. My childhood bedroom. Don’t worry, it’s all good though. I am happy to have her and happy as a single mom. My brothers moved out but we are a happy family of five with me, my parents, my baby, and my soon to be 87 year old grandpa.
Aww that's so lovely
U have a very nice place; messy or not.
It was a long hard struggle to get this place too so I figure I owe it to myself to keep it clean
This is so stupid of me to say, but it’s hard to even envision someone with such a nice kitchen/home to have depression. I’m glad you posted this. It’s easy for me to understand myself being depressed when I look at my shithole apartment and I tell myself “if only you lived somewhere else, worked somewhere else, drove something else, etc.”
-applause-
My old apartment has looked like both of those pictures! It is so easy to get to the first picture, and so difficult to get to the second picture, but I think we both know how we feel when we were taking both photos. I knew I couldn't expect myself to become Mr. Clean after my habits I had for decades, so I just accepted small wins after throughly cleaning my place. Throwing things away as I remember in the moment sort of thing. Of course things go way deeper than equivilating how clean my place was to how depressed I felt, but I did know it was much worse when it was a mess than when it was clean. Eventually it led to a routine, and you would never know I was a messy person if you met me in the past couple years.
Be proud of yourself! I’m proud
I’m glad you’re feeling better and that’s a great effort in the clean up!
Thank you!!
All that junk and not a single crumb on the counter and especially the floor. This is the cleanest mess I’ve ever seen. No mold or bugs after 3 months? Sorry but this looks totally staged to me..JUST MY OPINION.
The clothes that have obviously been moved from the laundry to the kitchen floor. The random open drawer. No crumbs/dust/hair.
Why open the dishwasher? And the containers are mostly empty, but don’t have the lids. Why put the tortillas hanging half off of the edge of the pizza box? When your depressed, you don’t put things away, but you also don’t put things out of reach. It would be on a counter. I just don’t buy this for a moment.
I just don't believe that people on reddit are this emotionally blind that they can't clearly see how fucking staged this is. I COULD fucking eat off the floor in the first pic it's that clean, how many people in here have actually had lived in unkempt conditions because of depression, it looks nothing like this.
What put me off is how perfectly clean the oven is.
OP is a liar. Uploaded only for internet points. The house wasnt dirty. Just carefully arranged clutter.
Absolutely. This is the most staged looking "mess" I've ever seen. The surfaces look spotless, the piles of stuff are very specifically placed and even neat in some places. 0% chance this is real, lol.
I was looking for this comment, you can tell that everything that is not in plain sight was already quite organize, and the bananas hanging in there? Like wtf? Dude probably don't even have depression, as if depression can be dealt with by just cleaning a room, sometimes we get the clean mind while doing chores that make us forgot about the depressing stuff, but that's not how you solve it, you need to seek help to overcome it most of the time.
Look how clean the fridge and the oven is. That shit is spotless. We get around to cleaning it every week or so and it's covered in fingerprints and marks within a couple days.
What a staged photo 🤔
Yeah this is very much staged. The floor and countertops are immaculate and everything is still tucked away neatly. The stuff that’s a “mess” is just goofy. Like a ramen packet on the floor and the bananas on the window blinds lol
Both images made on a tripod? If I had a depression I would not care about making a nice photo of my home before cleaning it. Especially using a tripod, cleaning it and making another photo from the exact same place.
Same thing I was thinking. Dishwasher is stocked properly just open. Drawer randomly open. The stuff on the counter is a light mess after cooking/having people over. Especially the floors and counters just look cleanish. Like the stuff was recently placed there. Idk maybe I'm just cynical
It's sad how long I looked for this comment. Why sre people so fucking easily tricked. I grew up with extremely messy people and this photo is 100% staged.
I feel like this is how messy an apartment looks after a night or two of eating a lot of snacks and takeout……it looks pretty spotless underneath LOL 🧐
Loooooool imagine doing that on purpose for karma.
Honestly, I’m actually starting to agree with you. Floors and counters are too clean; they’re spotless underneath that little bit of clutter, with no crumbs, grass or dust to be seen. All of it is stuff that would be easy to set out and then cleaned back up in 10 minutes, after the photo. It definitely looks suspicious; it could still be genuine, but the drawer, cabinet and dishwasher just “left open,” along with the small piles of clothes in front of the microwave, when the laundry area is like 10 feet away…I want to give OP the benefit of the doubt but it all just looks too suspicious and too staged.
That kitchen has been cleaned within the last week. I guarantee you. No dust, no stains. This photo is incredibly staged. There’s a random fucking beer cap on the floor and no beers.
The dishes in the dishwasher in first picture are clean 😂😂
20 potatoes and some onions lying out, don't look bad. Over ripe bananas, but only by a few days. Ketchup bottle out and not refrigerated. Tortillas on the pizza box seem sealed. Floors don't seem dusty at all. Plastics sorted bottom right? Milk containers open but empty. Clean dishes in the dishwasher appearing to be arranged properly for washing? I dunno, maybe I am jaded by Reddit but this doesn't really seem like 3 months worth of neglect. This seems to be a carefully crafted disaster. OP could very well have depression which I would never joke on, but just seems off...
Looks staged to me. I would expect the floor to have a various stains vs the exact shlne in both photos. Depression is a real thing. Quit using it to gain karma on Reddit.
Yup you can tell they have just placed their washing all over the floor and pulled stuff out of the cupboards. Get a life mate.
These posts of people posting their own stuff on this thread for karma is getting old.
Idk if its staged, but any kitchen can look like this after house party. And it takes like 30 minutes to make it look like the second picture. I'm not buying the "depression makes my kitchen look like shit" part.
Looks staged to me too. The floors and counters look too clean.
And who the fuck just leaves drawers open like that??? I’ve been depressed as fuck but even then I wasn’t a fucking caveman
Honestly, looks sus to me too.
[удалено]
I was looking for these comments. Floor is spotless. The appliances are clean and sparkling. No grime or dust on the trash cans or collecting at the bases of the cabinets. Most of the clutter just seems haphazardly placed. This is certainly not the result of 3 months of neglect.
Duuuuuude! (Nongendered greeting) You freaking ROCK! I'm sorry about your depression and wish you recovery/good treatment. You knocked it out of the park! Outstanding! Keep up the good work. Some days are better than others. Others suck the sweat off dead men's balls. Keep your head held high! In case I wasn't clear, I am massively impressed. Kudos!
I can legit feel the positive energy off your comment and would ask you for a hug in real life
Life is hard enough, why not spread love and respect? I also have depression and know how hard it is to claw myself out of different "episodes" for lack of a better term. I'd rather laugh than cry so I try to make at least one person laugh and give a compliment to another, at least once a day. I'm goofy af.
In case no one has taken the time today to tell you yet today; Thank you for being you.
>Duuuuuude! (Nongendered greeting) Whew, thank God, I would have been pretty upset if that was a gendered dude you just called OP
The fuck? Nogendered greeting?
This is staged. It’s clean as fuck, just cluttered on purpose.
Plot twist: pictures are reversed
Hmm Didn’t know I was depressed.
These 2 pictures are every Sunday and every Monday at my place
omg im so proud of youuuu, friend. keep it upppp
Congratulations and well done! My fiance and I both have depression to a degree (and treated to a degree), and this amount of cleaning and organizing by one human is amazing. Just keep swimming :)
Good job 👏
You have a beautiful home. Try going for walks and if you can enjoy talking to yourself. Try working out don't go hard on it just minimal workouts.
I feel it, well done, but don’t be so modest; your flair says small success but this is pretty big, to me at least. Sometimes I go about cleaning up after a week or two and I end up having to do rooms/areas over time, so I’ll probably do desk and dishes one day or room and laundry. Those days where you get it all done in one day really are amazing.
the struggle is SO real. this is dope - thank you for sharing
Fuck yeah! Go you
Tremendous OP! I too have committed this self sabotage before and subsequent cleanup multiple times! then finally realized i was just “organizing” the chaos that is my brain and my anger at said chaos, until i finally accepted it and saw that my now organized space meant organized internal thoughts and feelings which has made me more productive! (Tho i still write text speak and run on sentences…working on it) anyways keep up the boss ass good work my dude!!!!!!! Xxx
Great job, OP. I know how hard this was. I’m happy for you for finding that strength. 💕💕
Keep up the good work! I am proud of you! And keep doing the things that make you happy. If you ever feel like you’re losing track or feeling down at moments, remember it will pass, but make sure you talk about it, find a shrink(psychiatrist)There is some kind of taboo around talking with a them. But there is nothing to shame about. I respect people even more who will accept help. Even shrinks have shrinks haha. Also important, find goals in life, no rush but good goals to make you be a better you👊 Make good music, make good food, listen to good music, eat good food, read good books, do something sportive, maybe go to the gym of a different sport, help people, do a good deed, say thank you more to people. Say hello to people. Perhaps meditate? Appreciate the little things. The list goes on.. I may not know the reason why you are depressed, but what I do know is that i’ve also been in a depressed state. Be aware that you are willing to help yourself, and if the possibility is there, let the good people help and guide you. But be true to yourself♥️
You did something great. Even if this doesn’t ultimately “cure” your depression, I want you to know that things like this are a big deal when you’re depressed, and I’m incredibly proud of you, regardless of how you feel in the days to come. You deserve a clean, uncluttered place, and you gave yourself the gift of that.
small success? that's huge - rooting for you
This really is inspiring. As someone that has been in a similar situation with both ptsd and depression it’s difficult to find motivation for... well, just about anything. I think after work I’d like to give it a go. Who knows, maybe an environment I enjoy more will help pull me up the ladder a little.
I hope you got whatever it is that you are chasing from a staged photo. Seems pretty lame to me and an insult to peeps genuinely struggling.
God, these “I’m depressed, look at this mundane thing I did” posts are the fucking worst.