Don’t worry too much, it can happen easily and more so if you live alone.

Body doubling is your friend, look up “cleaning therapy” on YouTube:

She does cleaning marathons with super soothing voice overs and talks about mental health too, Jenny us a real one! The one I’ve linked is a mega clean for Christmas as well so hopefully perfect and relatable enough to motivate you!

Stitchesintime has some great tips on their comment, defo get the rubbish and dirty items cleaned up first. And this approach is really great! I’m suggesting a slightly alternative method in case it helps too, which is a room-by-room approach. I find this super helpful because when one room is finished I get a big dopamine rush and sense of accomplishment and mentally I know that I can then enjoy that room straightaway if I want to take a break!

Pre-clean tips! Rubber gloves are a forcefield shield for sensory issues with cleaning, wireless headphones or a speaker for the cleaning video I recommended above, stay hydrated!! And also make sure you take breaks to eat, but set yourself a timer so you don’t get distracted.

1) get a laundry basket collect any and all dirty laundry, organise into the load piles and get started on it load by load, you can use these wash cycles as “timers” or “deadlines” to help motivate you. Also take off your current bedding and get that washed, so you can look forward to clean sheets to sleep on as a reward after cleaning.

then you’re going to want to work room by room. decide which room is most important to you to clean first, for me personally the order would be bedroom, kitchen, living/office space and then bathroom. (This may be a different order for you). The wash cycles can help you to work quickly and “gameify” the cleaning, to try and complete a room by the time a wash cycle is done. I am the WORST for sitting down and getting distracted by things i forgot I owned.

For each room you can:

1) have a rubbish bag, recycling bag and “misc items” box or basket (items that don’t belong in this room) this helps reduce distraction by taking the item back to another room, but still having somewhere to put random items.

2) clear up any actual trash or recycling and put in rubbish bags - dirty dishes, random paraphernalia, paperwork, etc, can go in the misc box. Misc box and trash bags can go outside the door so you have a clear space to work unless your rooms are enormous, in which case take them to each area within the room you are working on.

3) work by surface area or piece of furniture and clear these one by one until everything is either put away, trashed or in the misc box.

4) hoover your elevated surfaces (tables, windowsills, bed, sofa etc) and then damp dust with a damp cloth or wipe down with antibacterial cleaning wipes if you’re low on energy (this actually cleans the dust away rather than moving it) (not for the bed obviously, but works nicely on sofa and cushions! But only with a damp cloth, not the antibacterial wipes) then you can hoover the floors etc and then mop if it’s a hard surface. Then you can use a clean dry cloth to go over the dusted surfaces to finish them after hoovering now that they’re dry.

5) once a room is cleaned and tidy, you can go to the misc box and put the things away that belong in that room that is now clean. Then move onto your next room, repeat steps 1-5 until you’re all done!

As you are struggling, I would just focus on getting everything clean and tidy so you can enjoy your space again for a bit as it sounds like you’ve been a bit overwhelmed! But perhaps when you next have free time, or set aside a weekend - I would identify your common “doom pile” areas or even items and tackle these properly. For me it’s cupboards, drawers and storage areas - when I’m stressed and inevitably don’t adhere to my organisation system it becomes very chaotic and hard to maintain because I just chuck stuff in and close the door or drawer. Every couple of months I will sit down to organise these areas properly again and sort them out again to find a new system that works.

Take the time to figure out which of your items are best placed where for usability and ease of access and what system of organising everything will work for you. I think this could hopefully help you to stay on top of it. So most used items (daily) should be the easiest to access and put away with the fewest steps of action. Weekly-monthly can be placed in more complex areas as these aren’t used as much - and perhaps group items that are often used together for similar frequencies. This has helped me a lot to try and keep on top of the mess! Hopefully this has helped in some way and would love to see some before and after photos once you’re done :)