Hi all -

I hope this post isn't too much of an advertisement, but I've been wanting to mention Flylady to those of you who are really struggling with keeping the house livable while dealing with depression. I know it can make a big difference to how you feel, and I had some success with this myself, so I thought it was worth sharing.

Flylady (www.flylady.net) is a free email reminder/encouragement service & website for people learning or relearning housework & self-care routines. I grew up with very few routines, and have had to learn them myself as an adult. I'm still not very good at it, but this site & the emails helped me a lot - simple, encouraging, sensitive to depressive thinking, and everything is based in manageable fifteen-minute (or smaller) increments.

I've had a couple of periods of receiving the emails and using this system - eventually the emails started to drive me crazy and I stopped, but I'd already learnt lots and lots by that stage, and I have much more routine in my life as a result than before.

I should say that my critical brain still thinks the whole thing is totally twee and naff, but I put that aside for a while and it helped me a lot. Maybe it will help someone else.

J