How Housework Helps my Mental Health

 

So how did I become a homemaker as a person living with a mental illness? It wasn't an overnight thing. In fact it was a bit of a journey. 

When I first was diagnosed with a mental illness (at first I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder) I wasn't living a healthy life at all. I was drinking a lot on top of my medication (never a great idea), so I wasn't getting the full benefit of it and was still having a lot of symptoms. I was a bit of a wreck. It took everything I had to just walk to my apartment's laundry room to make sure we had clean clothes to wear, let alone cooking dinner and cleaning every day. Life was a mess for me. On top of all this I was dealing with symptoms that I hadn't disclosed to my doctor (or anyone else) out of fear. I thought that people were trying to kill me with their cars when I was out walking, I was having auditory hallucinations that I didn't understand, and sleep was not my friend. I was struggling at work and eventually went on short term disability due to a major depressive episode. When I came out of my episode, my doctor suggested that I look at going on disability full time due to my illness. But I wasn't ready for that. I continued to work, but eventually ended up in the hospital due to a mixed episode with psychosis (per the hospital's paper work). When I was discharged into an intensive outpatient program, one of the women in it mentioned to me an agency that helped people with filing for disability. I talked to my husband and he agreed that we should try it. 

We then moved back to our hometown to be nearer family for support. I continued to struggle with daily tasks and such. Eventually I quit drinking and was honest with my doctor finally about everything that I was experiencing and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I knew that I needed to become more serious about my mental health. While it was not an overnight change, I started to make some lifestyle changes. 

The first thing that I knew that needed to change was my sleep. I began trying to go to sleep at the same time every night and wake up at the same time as well. This change gave me more energy as well as stability in my moods. Along with this, I decided that I would make my bed each morning when I got up. This did two things; it made my bedroom look nice and made it less likely for me to nap during the day. 

The next change I started was trying hobbies again. I had always enjoyed knitting but my love for it dwindled as my mental health got worse, so I decided to start small by making dish cloths. I joined an online group that made a different dish cloth every week. It was fun and boosted my confidence. As well, the handmade dishcloths I made gave me a reason to do the dishes more. I gave myself a rule to never go to sleep with a sink full of dishes or dirty kitchen. This was a big change for me as I usually didn't have much motivation to clean the kitchen after I cooked a meal. But saying that I wouldn't go to bed with a dirty kitchen gave me a window of time to gather myself to do the cleaning. By waking up to a clean kitchen I felt a lot better about that part of my home and wanted to spend more time in there. I began baking more by trying simple recipes like banana bread and muffins. I found I really enjoyed this and it also meant that I started eating more (which was a good thing as my nutrition had not been great). I started a recipe book for everything I tried and liked. This gave me another activity to do during the day; researching recipes to try and writing them in my book. I spent time online looking up recipes and cooking them that night. 

Another thing I decided to try my hand at was gardening. At the time I didn't have a lot of space to plant things in the ground, so I looked into container gardening and started growing things like tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries. It was very satisfying to tend to my plants each day and they gave me a reason to get outside and get some sunlight and fresh air which is so important for our health mental and otherwise.

All of these little things began to add up to a whole lifestyle change. I embraced my life as a homemaker and still venture into different areas of that. I know that all this sounds like a lot, but like I said, these weren't overnight changes. It definitely took time for me to settle into a new routine. Also, I absolutely had setbacks. I had times where my symptoms flared up and made things like cooking and cleaning seem impossible. But I did not give up. Even now, I am coming back from a hard time where I struggled with the things I talked about above. I know that there will be other times when I am not able to be as fully able to tend to my home as I would like to, but I also know that there will be. And remembering the satisfaction I get from doing these things helps me through the hard times.