My tub had soap scum stains for ages. I knew I needed to clean them off. And I wanted a nice clean tub. But I found myself unable to even start. With ADHD, projects like caked on tub grime can feel impossible. Cleaning the tub required more than a scrub brush, it required unpacking my feelings around cleaning. Here’s how I did it.
Many of us have emotional baggage around deep cleaning. We may have had parents who berated us for not doing it or not doing it “well enough.” Deep cleaning is one of those neurotypical mysteries. How do NTs learn their cleaning skills? No one ever taught me, yet I was expected to know. I associated tub cleaning with the many years I cleaned my tub with a bottle of bathroom cleaner and a basic sponge. It felt Sisyphean. I’d scrub to no avail. I learned to just live with a dirty tub, even though it nagged at me. I pulled the shower curtain to hide the tub if anyone came over.
What helped me was realizing that deep cleaning is a learned skill. Turns out I wasn’t even close to using an effective technique for tackling tub grime. Cleaning is a skill and there is no shame to learning proper tub cleaning at 34 like I did. I researched cleaning the tub. And armed with Barkeepers Friend and a tough scrub brush, I scrubbed away the grime. That first cleaning wasn’t easy, but it was also extremely rewarding to see a bunch of gunk disappearing. Once ADHDers start a rewarding task like this, we often get really into it. But that wasn’t the end of my journey.
What about maintaining my new grime-free lifestyle? For me that meant letting go of perfect and embracing a grime-free-ish lifestyle. It’s common with ADHD to dislike unrewarding tasks. The maintenance work that helps prevent gunk like soap scum is frankly not very rewarding to me. Unlike the deep scrub I described, you don’t get to see dirt disappear. Once I realized this, I knew I had to craft my own rewards or turn it into a habit. I used the “Tiny Habits” method to remember to spray some cleaner after I shower. And use my Habitica gamified task list for a weekly wipedown.
Is my tub spotless right now? Nope. But when I look at it, it’s not a backlog of scum that feels impossible to deal with.
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