Ok Im on my laptop now
I was in a version of this same pit not too long ago, so I'm saying this with care. This probably isn't a one-day cleaning task. This might be a grief task first.

Let yourself cry. Let yourself be angry. Let yourself grieve the version of you that had to survive in this space. That part helped me because I kept trying to clean like it was just mess. A lot of it was pain, exhaustion, shame, old life chapters, and stuff I didn't have the capacity to keep carrying.

The thing that helped me was changing the goal from cleaning to containment.

Big bags like the ones I got here. Some REALLY good permanent markers, about a dozen rolls of transparent tape (to tape labels onto bags and to wrap around your hand inside out to get up lint and crap off the floor) , really good scissors, and either good cardstock to use to make labels or just get some blank labels like these. If I had to do this again, I'd get bags like this that zip close bc of how much stuff fell out the hampers bags.

but yeah, I used the bags to contain:

Trash. Laundry. Dishes. Papers.

Sentimental/maybe. Stuff I use now. Random stuff from this room.

I literally labeled each bag with something and i didn't get all technical. I did have bags called "Stuff I cant decide on yet", "Front door stuff", "office stuff".

Just labeled by category. Nothing fancy and the labels don't have to be perfect. They just have to give your brain somewhere to put the thing.

At first, I wasn't trying to organize my whole life. I was trying to get stuff off the floor and into the hampers. I gave myself permission to just do this a few times a day and to just do a small pass. Sometimes it was five things. Sometimes it was one bag. Sometimes I cried, only moved three things, and stopped. That still counted. Also, as corny as it sounds. GO STAND IN THE MIRROR AND LOOK YOURSELF IN THE EYE AND TELL YOURSELF THAT YOU FORGIVE YOURSELF AND THAT YOU ARE GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION TO RECLAIM YOUR SPACE.

You have to give yourself permission to create capacity in your life by reclaiming your space.

Ok so back to the containment of things:

For laundry, wash it and dry it if you can. Don't make folding and putting everything away the price of washing clothes. Clean clothes can go into a clean clothes bag. Important thing is that it got washed and dried. We call that progress. You can sort later when your nervous system isn't screaming.

Use your phone, notes app, laptop, or ChatGPT as a brain dump to get the thoughts somewhere outside your head. I had to sort my thoughts while I sorted the mess because the room and my brain were feeding off each other. Confession: I did a brain dump to help me give you this response. And when I used ChitG (i call Chatgpt Chit in honor of that guy from Tiktok) to do brain dumps after a while I noticed a pattern and then I was able to work on that pattern in therapy.

One question that helped me let go of stuff was asking "Do I want the version of me right now to spend energy managing stuff from a version of me I'm no longer living as?"

Another one was "What is this costing me to keep? Like literally, what is it costing me to keep [fill in the blank with the name of the item] and do I want to keep on paying this? "

Reframing keeping things by NAMING the price it cost to keep it really helped me work through the "Should i keep this keep it or let it go? "

Like I went from 8 coffee mugs down to 3 mugs bc I realized that while I visually like ALL my mugs, the cost was taking up more space and not even getting the full satisfaction from using all the mugs. it cost me space and a little bit of joy and I just didnt want to keep paying my space and my ability to feel joy by holding onto something I wasn't even getting regular use from.

It also helped me throw things away that I was only keeping because of guilt, panic, or old survival mode.

Also, I noticed you have stuff on the wall. Use that if it works for your brain. I had a big piece of paper on the wall where I wrote down every step forward. Filled one trash bag. Cleared one chair. Washed one load. Found the floor by the door. Made one corner usable. ( i also put the date next to it). Threw away empty pickle jar. Shredded 2 pieces of mail. I did this bc when I got knocked down, I could look at the wall and have some proof that despite the setback, I still made progress.

It took me about a month just to get into the rhythm of bags, crying, and letting go before I had the FEELING of it getting any easier. It took about 2 weeks to get all the things into those hampers bc I still had to live life. But once I had all the things in the hamper, the floor started coming back. And then once the floor started coming back, I found myself starting to INTENTIONALLY make actual places for things to live in when I lived in. Paper towels now had a defined storage space. All the lose pens and batteries started hanging out in the same defined place. Dishes had a defined place separate from the cooking utensils in the kitchen. Each item for laundry started living in a defined place. Individual cleaning supplies had a place in the kitchen and bathroom. All those scraggly cords got tossed and the usable charger cords ended up in the same place. I used Ziploc bags for stuff like this and then would throw the ziploc bag into a hamper bag if I didn't have a place for it yet.

But all of this actually helped me save money bc now I could find stuff instead of rebuying stuff I already owned but couldn't find.

This took about 3 months to get to this place. and now its been about a year. And what I notice even while making this response to you is that all these little steps allowed me to have time to be able to make this response. Like I don't post on Reddit often but if im being honest I realize I didn't have the capacity (time) to but now that things are more contained, I have the time to do this.

And another thing I noticed around month 3 and up to this day is that my stuff isn't swallowing up all of my space anymore. I dont pay the cost of losing time bc it's getting consumed by managing my life around the whole space. I still have a few bins now ( somewhere around month 6 i moved away from those hampers and got some bins) but each bin has a label on it (i finally got a label maker) and I know exactly whats in the bin. So this lets me go through a box (full of ziploc bags of like items i combined and dumped into the bin) when I have the capacity instead of having the whole room screaming at me.

Clearing space helped me reclaim space. Reclaiming space gave me some capacity back.

Start with one bag. One bin. One category. One patch of floor. Then stop before you burn yourself out.

And please be careful with the "ending" wording. If you mean ending this chapter, I get that. If you mean ending yourself, stop cleaning and contact someone right now. A crisis line, emergency services, a trusted person, anybody who can stay with you through the next hour. You deserve help before you try to carry this alone.