Hoffman - Unfuck your habitat: youre better than your mess

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For Andy,
because you believe I can do anything, I can.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: Youre flipping through home-organization magazines or browsing on home-improvement and decorating websites, thinking, This is it. Im finally doing it. Im going to get my house under control. You look at picture after glossy picture of perfectly organized spaces, with no visible clutter, clearly labeled storage solutions, and gleaming fresh paint, rooms with sunlight streaming in through the windows, and you think to yourself, Are you fucking kidding me?

Those pictures seem impossible. Hell, they are impossible if you own enough possessions to function in modern life. You dont live in the world thats being shown in those pictures. You live in the real world. A messy world thats full of dirty dishes, clothes languishing in laundry baskets, and a dining room table you havent seen the surface of in months. Youre not a slob. You just dont have the time, the money, the energy, or even the inclination to achieve what those pictures are showing you. You just want to get your home to the point where a drop-in guest doesnt send you into a tailspin of panic, and where you can live your everyday life without being disgusted or depressed by your surroundings. You know, somewhere deep down, that your home will never look anything like those pictures, and its depressing, discouraging, and ultimately pretty damn frustrating.

You may be looking at those magazines or websites and thinking that theres no hope for you, and no hope for your home. Your house is never going to look like that. You may be thinking that a clean, organized home is completely out of reach, and theres just no way for it to get better than whatever state of mess its in right now. You feel trapped by the state of your home, and powerless to do anything about it. Well, good news! Youre wrong.

Theres a universe of difference between a picture-perfect home that can be featured in magazines and a perfectly functional and livable home that you arent ashamed of or stressed out by. And Unfuck Your Habitat can teach you how to have a home you love and feel comfortable in, while helping you realize that your home doesnt need to look like the ones in those pictures in order for you to love living in it.

You deserve better than to live in filth, and with just a little bit of effort and practice, you can easily master the skills and habits you need in order to get and keep your home livable. Its going to take some time, and nothing gets better overnight, but it will get better.

Other housekeeping and organizing systems have a specific kind of person in mind. They assume that everyone is married with kids, with one spouse at home with a lot of time to devote to housekeeping. They tend to ignore single people, or people without kids, or students, or people with pets, or people with roommates, or people with full-time jobs or classes or other shit going on. They ignore people with physical or mental illnesses or other limitations that dont allow for complicated, involved housekeeping on an inflexible schedule. They forget about people who live in apartments, or rented rooms, or a small space in someone elses home. They forget that people live at home with their parents, or in dorm rooms with total strangers. They forget that not everyone fits into a narrow mold of circumstance and ability, and they forget that sometimes you just dont feel like it. Basically, they ignore a whole lot of people who live in the real world.

Since so few of us fit the mold of these traditional housekeeping systems, it doesnt make sense to try to follow those methods and expect them to lead us to success. A picture-perfect showroom home is admirable, but, lets be honest, thats not going to be a reality for most of us. And thats okay! So the first step in turning our messes into something we can happily live with is realizing that its time to rethink the way we approach housekeeping and organizing and how they fit into the lives we actually live.

In this book, youll learn how to incorporate cleaning and organizing into a busy life, and how to work with all of the various fun things life throws at you that have kept you from doing this up to now. Youll learn that rather than be intimidated by what you think other peoples homes look like, you can get to a point where youre happy and comfortable with what your own home can be. Youll realize that the real world rarely, if ever, lines up with what aspirational magazines and websites are showing you. Its not as intimidating as it seems, but Im willing to bet no ones ever broken it down into a system that works in your world, and so its easier just to write it off as completely impossible and then never even get started. And thats why you are where you are right now: overwhelmed, discouraged, feeling like a failure, and hating your home.

We should probably start by accepting the fact that, for the most part, cleaning your house kind of sucks. Sorry, but it does. Getting and keeping your house clean and organized isnt necessarily difficult, but its rarely fun, and we all have other things wed rather be doing. If given a choice, very few people would choose to spend their time cleaning or organizing their home. It seems like a giant time investment, during which your life is totally devoid of fun and sunshine and anything else you like. But theres no reason tidying up your home has to take up all of your precious spare time. It can be accomplished just a little bit at a time, in between the far more enjoyable and important things that happen in your life. Its critical to realize that you arent beyond hope. You can always improve your living situation, but you need to do some work to get there.

Were often busy, and sometimes were lazy. No need to sugarcoat that. But wouldnt it be nice to walk into your house at the end of a busy day and not feel depressed or disgusted or dejected? There are very few people who enjoy cleaning on a regular basis (and frankly, Im a little suspicious of those people anyway). So lets just accept that its not necessarily going to be the most interesting or fulfilling part of your day and move on to actually getting it done so that you can finally do the things you want to do in a home that you dont hate spending time in.

Once youve acquired the tools you need to keep your house from devolving into a total shithole while still managing to do the things you enjoy, youll develop a habit of keeping your living space nice without it taking over your life. Youll find that you can maintain a home that doesnt stress you out or embarrass you, and you can accomplish that in only a few minutes a day. Youll be able to have people over if you want to. You wont panic over unannounced guests.

The important thing to remember is that there is nothing that cant be unfucked with a little bit of effort and motivation. You just have to do it. You have to overcome the compulsion to sit on the couch and mess around on the computer or watch TV, and get up and do something. Anything. If you have the motivation but lack the ability, you have to figure out how to work with or around any limitations that have prevented you from doing this in the past. Unfuck Your Habitat (or UfYH) is all about helping you do just that. Its about lighting a gentle fire under our asses and reminding ourselves that we deserve a home we can be comfortable in and proud of. Its about acquiring the skills we lack and applying those skills in our everyday lives in a way that results in improvement without burnout. Its about celebrating every success, no matter how small it might seem at the time. Because when we accomplish something, especially something that seemed impossible, it feels pretty awesome.