As I have posted recently, I am currently in a slump (don’t worry, I’m getting my meds adjusted and coping with it very well :)). As I was messaging a friend the other day, complaining about the horrendous state of my dishes (they were nigh on evolving into life-forms) something happened. She began messaging me all these tips on how to cope with the inability to do dishes, such as rinsing them and stacking them so that when you are having a minor up you can do one or two, then rest.
And I thought, in my dazed state, “Huzzah! Life tips for surviving a mental illness!”.
After some exhaustion-fuelled giggling, I came up with the idea for a series of (potentially humorous) blog posts that I will be trying to post in a streak for the next few days: Mental Illness Survival Skillz!
Ta-ta-ta-daaam! How does one survive their mental illness, all while living a glamorous and fabulous life? By growing a fabulous set of mental illness-coping skillz!
So today’s post is dish- centric. For me, I can gauge how terribly I am doing by the state of my dishes. When I am great, the counter is sparkling clean. When I am terrible, there are so many dishes that there isn’t room to place a cup on the counter. And if you move something, something else might fall (it’s badly stacked too!). So what do we, those whose disability manifests in such visible ways, do when there is visit coming over [eep! In laws!], we generally want to ‘pass’ as ‘normal’ or… we just want a friggin’ clean place?
Well, my friend swears by ‘rinse and stack’ to then do them later. I generally soak the dishes… then leave them to collect life-forms (petri dishes, anyone?) So rinse ‘n stack peoples, rinse ‘n stack. It’s less likely to grow bio-hazards and tip over, y’all.
Haha, so anyone else have trouble doing their dishes? (Personally I had to call in someone for help…) Anyone else have tips on how to cope with this?
Unhinged and unenlightened 
So glad to see you back! When I was in my early 20s, I lived in a college town shit hole in NJ with a friend who was almost as big a drunk as I was. We never cleaned. Our mess was the stuff of legend. The kitchen had one of those huge double barrel sinks, but there were so many dirty dishes filling both sides that we had to come up with a solution. It’s my contention that “alcoholism” is just the way that depression and other mental illnesses manifest in some people, so actually washing all those dishes was out of the question. So we took our never-used ironing board and placed it catty-corner to the sink and continued to stack dirty dishes on it. We named it the “Kitchen Sink Annex”. The annex remained in service right up to the day we moved out.
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Yay, it feels great to be back and chatting with everyone! My goodness, that must have been a ton of dishes XD thanks for the story, it really cheered me up! I totally agree with you, alcoholism seems to be rooted in so much more than just, well, alcohol… If that makes sense?
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I find doing them right away can feel like a tiny victory but other times it can feel like SUCH a huge source of stress. I like your method. Thanks for sharing!
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Haha, yes, doing them right away is the best. Because yeah, they’re a looming tower of doom. So so stressful
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