Having A Messy House Doesn’t Make Me A Bad Person ― Or A Bad Mom

"Being messy isn’t a character failing."

I have had several sink issues over the years. Mostly flies. Fruit flies, drain flies, gnats ― it’s unclear what specific infestation of little winged creatures have taken over my sink area, but the cause was evident: the dirty dishes I’d left stacked there for weeks at a time. I once looked inside a pasta sauce-encrusted pot to see it teeming with wriggling white maggots, a detail so disgusting I hesitate to share it in publication. There are a few reasons I’ve struggled to wash my dishes in a timely manner. I’m a recovering alcoholic, and in active addiction, I neglected a lot of the tasks of being human. After a nasty relapse that interrupted a nine-year period of sobriety, I had to call my mother to get on a plane and help me dig out of the mess I’d been living in. We did something like 15 loads of laundry; the clothes had been previously coating my bedroom floor in a pile several feet high.  But even in sobriety, I have always had a hard time with domestic duties. I’m the poster child for adult attention deficit disorder, which I was finally diagnosed with at age 30, and let me tell you now that executive function comes in mighty handy when it comes to household maintenance. When I look at a messy room, my focus is pulled in 50 different directions. Where a neurotypical person might just start picking up trash or putting items back in their places, I get truly paralyzed by all the possible approaches and instead, half the time, do nothing.