Chronic Pain and Clutter

If clutter isn't overwhelming enough, what happens when you add chronic pain to your daily life?
The dishes and vacuuming actually used to get done until your pain started, and now, just the thought of getting up to do those things hurts. You have doused yourself in medications either pharmaceutical or homeopathic and you are now exhausted or loopy. I have witnessed it many times myself. While helping Clients declutter, I often get to know their internal pain as well as their external pain.  I have Clients with RA, MS, Lupis, back problems, neck issues, hand troubles, etc. We start off fine, and then before you know it they are in pain. I hear pill bottles rattling, hot patches opening, and braces break out of bags to be put around wrists, knees, or ankles.

Depression often sets in after the person realizes they can no longer care for themselves, which now means their heart is in pain too. So what can you do to pull yourself out of that funk? How can you actually get your home back again? Here is are 5 tips that I give my Clients when their chronic pain gets them down.

1. Good Housekeeping is not coming tomorrow. Your home does not have to be Better Homes and Gardens, not many homes are. Be happy with good enough. Striving for perfectionism is only making things harder, and the expectations on yourself are much too high.
2. Delegate. Let go of that pride and let someone help you. Family, friends, people from the church, folks from work, pay someone, whoever. Let someone in to help you pick up. Living in embarrassment and shame is just as unhealthy as the clutter piling up. Who cares what people think. You are in pain, and you need help. 
3. Slow and steady wins the race. Get a grabber online and pick things up from the floor and put them into a small wastebasket. Carry the small waste basket out. Take baby steps. Don't do all of the dishes, just do some. Work for 15 minutes at a time cleaning up. Do what you can but do not over exert yourself. Once that spot is clean do not clutter it up again. 
4. Simplify. The less you have to take care of the less you have to take care of :) Cut down your dusting and vacuuming by donating some of those dust collecting items to someone else. A charity, a friend, a neighbor, whoever, just keep what you can care for. It just is another thing to
   
   take care of. Let go of items that you don't need and especially don't want anymore. Give your chronic pain a break by not over committing yourself to extra dusting, filing and washing do to excess papers, nick nacks, clothing etc.
5. Beauty. You are beautiful. Don't forget who you are, you were born naked and free. You are not what you own. What you own does not make you a better or worse person. Be yourself. Accept yourself, chronic pain and all, and embrace the beauty in living. 

Do you live in Northern California? Need help getting organized and your home cleaned?
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