yes - no - maybe - maybe yes - maybe no - maybe maybe - wait - can't decide - what to do first? - was that wrong? - was that right?

A wise friend of mine maintains the mantra, "Don't try to eat the whole elephant." Maybe just start with a tail, or an ear. Or, if that's too overwhelming still, just start with a couple elephant cells. Since you can distinguish your tasks from each other, you're already in a good position to get started. If you want to clean your house, don't just dive right in. Go out to Staples or Office Max or something and get yourself a bunch of different filing/organizing products. Do this before hand so you've got a system handy when you start to clean up. If you're not ready, you'll start cleaning and stall out once you realize you can't do anything with the piles you've made. Get some garbage bags, too. And don't be afraid to use them. If you've got clutter, take it one surface at a time. Just one table, one counter, one shelf. Have folders ready for home office paperwork, business bills, family bills, whatever categories you might have, and a trashbag for any garbage (that's envelopes, cards that people have sent, business cards you'll never use, scraps of paper with irrelevant notes, you know...) Your first surface is where you get to test your system. Maybe you need more folders. Maybe you can consolidate some of them. But at any rate, you'll find that you've reclaimed a working surface in your house and that you've developed a system of cleaning/purging/organizing that you can apply to the rest of your home. Once you've found that your home is the way you want it, you'll likely feel as though you can take on part time or full time work without the feeling that you're abandoning another important task in the meanwhile. I'd recommend taking care of your home first, just for the blissful sanity that will result from walking into your house after a long day at work to find it clean and organized, just the way you left it. It'll remind you (if you get overwhelmed at work) that you're capable and organized. Don't eat the whole elephant. At this point, doing too many things at once might start to conflict and result in more overwhelmment and less productivity. I've found that when it comes to making big decisions and taking on large life tasks, the first step is the hardest. You've got to desperately want to change and, if you want it badly enough, you can change absolutely anything about yourself. You can motivate, educate, and inspire yourself. You can even change aspects of your personality that you might have though were hardwired. People do intense personal things every day, like quitting drugs and alcohol (I'm one of them). You too can take that difficult first step and put your life back in order.

Another vote here for Flylady's motivation. Anything can be done 15 minutes at a time. Set your kitchen timer and clean out the junk drawer, or whatever. Try not to view the ENTIRE PICTURE of the disatrous tornado; view a little corner of it. :) Get your kids to help out (if they are old enough). The responsibility for keeping the house clean is not just yours, especially if you have kids. Assign them chores, if you haven't done so already. Don't worry about finding a job right away. Concentrate on the household chaos first. Once you feel that is mostly under control (and you find those materials you need), then start looking for a job. You mention you can't pay a helper and that your family is unsupportive. Try to ask a family member to help you anyway, or one of your children to help you pitch and toss stuff. Play a game with the kids. My daughter, who's 5, loves to play "Clean Sweep." That's when she and I pick up all of her scattered toys and put them away. There are tons of people who suffer from clutter and chaos. You are not alone. Good luck!

Flylady is on the Internet, and you don't have to buy the book at all. Don't need it. Her first step is to shine the sink. Not necessarily wash the dishes in it, simply get everything out and shine the sink. Do this every night before bed. Once the dishes are caught up, a small dishpan under the sink catches the occasional dirty plate and keeps the sink clear (this one hint was worth its weight in gold to me.) She recommends doing jobs in 15 minute increments, using a timer. She also has fun ways to declutter, one step at a time. Please please at least go check out her website. As many of you know I am bipolar and get overwhelmed easily, and this site I was able to apply to my whole life, not just housekeeping. Whether or not you want to do her routines, there are helpful hints in there that work.

PS: my personal strategy for the impossibly large task. If there is no obvious starting point or logical order to the problem, if what you are doing is dealing with a huge random pile of shit, then it doesn't matter where you start. So pick somewhere that will give you most pleasure to have sorted, and start there. BUT: keep at that area, so you can see results. If you have house covered in shit, and you spend 10 minutes here, and 5 minutes there, neither you nor anyone else will see any difference. If you devote your effort to the one place, it will be visible. I think this principle is the basis of Fly Lady's insistence that you keep your sink clean. Myself, I couldn't give a shit about dishes in the sink, but it is true that you need your own personal clean sink, whatever that is.

Too busy for books? Then let me summarise a couple of important parts of Organizing from the Inside Out. === The author provides a basic algorithm for all tidying, applicable everwhere. The acronym is SPACE. Sort. It does not matter how you sort, as long as it's meaningful and memorable to you. Purge. Now things are sorted, you should be able to identify duplicates, spares, and rubbish. Throw them away, sell them, move them to long-term storage, but get rid of them. Assign. With your reduced set of sorted things, decide where they will live, and put them there. Containerise. Where you can, put things in boxes, files, cupboards, drawers, whatever, according to the sorting system you chose in the first step. By following your sorting system you'll be able to find them later. Equalise. The few minutes you spend every day afterwards repeating the above steps in miniature. === The "kindergarten" approach to laying out space. Notice that a kindergarten classroom is divided into functional areas - the painting zone, the toy zone, the reading zone, etc - according to activity. Each zone has what's needed for that activity in it, and nothing else. That means that whatever you're doing, the right stuff is already there, and most importantly, when you're finished, it's easy to put away. So in our case, when we tackle a room, or even a smaller space, we should think about the activities that take place in that space. Then we should identify zones for those activities that make sense. If necessary, we can rearrange furniture, bring in appropriate storage units, whatever. Once we have made that plan, THEN we start the SPACE process. This implies that before we even start organising, we sit down with pencil and paper and draw a plan. (Personally I also like this because then you have a more concrete vision of how you want things to be. Good goal setting technique). === Some other random points from the book. - don't get trapped into maintaining a standard of neatness for other people. The sole criterion for a successful organisational scheme is that it is efficient for you and your way of thinking. - it is possible, even probable, that you cannot organise because you have too much stuff. In other words, it is impossible to get organised, cause you're trying to store too much in too little space. In that case, you can either move or get rid of some stuff. That is all. === And this not from the book, but from me: baby steps. Pick something small and manageable, that you can spend a couple of hours on. Once you have your little oasis of order, it will take only a few minutes a day to keep clean. Then just work on extending the borders of the orderly zone. Whenever things look overwhelming, look at the orderly zone, admire your effort, take a few more slices of elephant. Also, you may find that merely the increased activity level of organisation has a surprising effect on your weight. Good luck.

(Sigh). That's the http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/10021 with paraphrasing. It's hard to tell if the tone is the original poster's, or that of the paraphraser ... No threadjack, just my observation that the demeanor conveyed is so different from the post and that no one offered advice after the paraphrase, also that scazza's earlier post seemed a lot like layman medical diagnosis to me, so I've no idea what anonymous might have replied privately, or how. So, I'm going to err on the side of positivity and give my cheery two cents. Been there, got the t-shirt. I second the thought that there is time for reading and planning later; this sounds like a crisis situation to me and that needs crisis actions. Flylady - yes, but pick and choose. Do the fling boogie thing and make sure you get dressed and pretty. (Not objectifying here, we just all do better when we feel better cause we feel we look better. Plus, it makes it easier to say yes to a decision when you feel you can march out the door without taking more time. Finally, people are more inclined to help you out if you look nice. Looking nice means you, too, care about your outcome. Books - nah, not for now. Work with what you've got, first. House - yes on haven thing. Quick, what would be the first thing each family member would notice if they walked in the door right now? Go fix each of those things up immediately. Don't go perfectionist, just a) make a clean surface of it; b) toss it if it's garbage; c) stow it if it's out of place; and then d) dust, mop, vac or wipe it with something that smells good. Next - What are their biggest complaints? Dinner? Throw something simple in right now. Laundry? Start a load or toss bagged into car. Piles? Just stow it for now. You get the idea ... make their first impressions pleasant. Now those people's short term demands are out of the way and you can do more during the next cycle, time to focus on job hunt and then on the demands you'd pick if no one was there but you -- in that order. Depending on ease for you at this point, pick a cycle unit ... maybe a 24 hour day, maybe a 12 hour or 4 hour unit. One cycle should include giving at least a bit of attention to EACH area that is screaming for attention. Listen to and then divide those areas ... family, short term job, long term work, house, friends, whatever. As long as all areas are feeling non-neglected, the screaming should stop and you should be able to maintain without feeling overwhelmed if you keep the cycles and include yourself (bubble bath?) in them. And that to me, is what is really happening here. A man with assassins around him is not paranoid, though he shares the same reactive traits. So you, with all that's gone on, sound sane to me and just experiencing the anxiety that would come with waking up and finding your world "tornadoed". Add and subtract what time, priorities you need to your cycles, starting with 15 minutes each and extending as the smaller ones get maintained. Btw, speaking of smaller ones, i don't really have advice yet about your kids. I think you're right when you say it will get better as they see you doing more and keeping commitments, house and job. I imagine it was rough on them if this has gone on for years as you say. Rough on hubby, too; but looks like they all hung in there, so you must be worth it, hmm? Feel free to email or post again. I'm pulling for you. I second the temp work idea for short term job.

Like someone else said, make lists. Make one list with the big, longer-term stuff, like "get the house in order." Then break those down into smaller items--small enough that you can accomplish them in the course of a day. When you get started in the morning, make a list of things you are going to tackle that day. And enjoy the feeling you get from crossing them off your list. You've got kids? Put them to work. What do they expect, a free ride? If they are physically capable of washing dishes or pushing a vacuum cleaner, they should be doing it.

I've been asked to emphasize to everyone that anonymous has addressed the anxiety issue, and also, is aware of Flylady and doesn't have time for books.

I relate to your description of how hard it is to lug those big bags to the trash. I'm not overweight but I can be a clumsy weakling, and I can have a hard time doing big jobs like that all on my own. But they still need doing, so here's my approach: Clean one room at a time, using the hallway outside the room's door as a temporary holding area. Put trash and heavy stuff just outside the door, but to whichever side where you won't be stepping over it all the time. Stuff that belongs in other rooms, put to the other side of the door. This way, you get the room clean without getting tired schlepping back and forth to the garage. And, when your kids or your husband comes home, they can pitch in with simple, quick assistance like, "Just help me carry this desk/these boxes down to the garage/curb." I find helpers are much more willing to help when you're asking for some easily defined specific tasks like carrying X from A to B, than if you ask them to help you clean a room (sounds nebulous, could take all day).