I’m tired.
I’m feeling hopeless for our society.
I’m fearing for the health and wellness of so many people.
People are selfish.
There’s limited successful options offered in our society that truly help people live a quality life.
I don’t know what the answers are to help people.
There’s probably versions of my idea that exists in the world.
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I typed the above sentences months ago as a draft with the same title. It was meant as a placeholder for when I had the time to finalize my thoughts. It’s been a while, but here I am trying.
I have this idea in my head that I’ve had for a while. I’ve been telling people about it often. I would love to be associated with this idea should it come to fruition. However, I don’t necessarily have the time to put into making my idea a reality. I don’t necessarily have the knowledge for how to make my idea a reality either. So, I’d be perfectly content if someone stole my idea and used it to help others. (If you want to include me, that’d be cool too)
I currently work for a community mental health clinic. I appreciate the concept of what a community mental health clinic is meant to offer the community. They have mental health and substance use resources available for clients. They have case management services, which is what I offer, that link people to resources in the community to help meet their needs. They have peer support services that utilize people with lived experience as support for those currently going through a difficult time. They have child development education. They have support group options. I don’t know all that CMHCs are able to offer, but it’s quite a bit.
I think the idea I have would work in the realm of a concept like community mental health. I am able to offer services to clients with Substance Use Disorders (SMI) (adults/children), Serious Mental Illnesses (SMI) (adults), and Severe Emotional Disabilities (SED) (children). I believe my idea could help those categorized in any of those areas.
Basically, I believe that home cleaning services need to be offered and covered by insurances when someone is seeking mental health services.
I wrote a blog almost four years ago titled, “To Clean or Not to Clean.” (Here’s a link if you want to go check it out – https://authorarielpierce.com/2022/09/19/to-clean-or-not-to-clean/)
I am no expert, and I am not referencing any specific evidence-based information, but based on my education, work experience, and continuing education training, I believe it’s fairly safe to say that mental health and home cleanliness are tied closely together. I comment on this in the blog I mentioned. I wrote about my personal experience with my mental health and how my home tends to suffer when my brain is causing me difficulties. When I’m depressed, you can generally tell by the state of my home. When I’m doing well, mental health wise, you can generally tell by the state of my home.
This is consistent with just about every client I have encountered over the years. When they are experiencing mental health difficulties, their home tends to reflect it. When they are stressed, their home tends to reflect it. When they are overwhelmed, their home tends to reflect it. I think you get it.
I know there are likely people out there who struggle with mental health whose home is not in a poor state. There are people who can go to the opposite extreme and have to clean excessively or they feel panicked. I don’t believe I have personally worked with any clients who have this lived experience. Of course, everyone has different lived experiences and mental health experiences.
Unfortunately, for many, when mental health suffers, home hygiene is not on the top of the list of things worried about. Many people are trying to do the bare minimum to get by. It’s easy to avoid having guests and only worry about personal presentation if you’re required to leave the house.
When you receive case management services at a community mental health clinic, at least the one I work at in Kentucky, the services are voluntary, needs based, and typically referred to by the client’s therapist. If a client simply wants someone to talk to, is functioning mostly well outside of a few areas, or isn’t interested in the service, they don’t receive it.
I’ve helped quite a few clients who had issues related to the cleanliness of their home. I’ve started referring to this as addressing their home hygiene. We learn about personal hygiene as we grow up, the same should occur with our homes.
I would say generally people learn about how to take care of their home’s hygiene when they’re children. If they don’t there’s generally a few reasons.
1. Parents don’t have their children do chores because they feel bad and just do them themselves or don’t want to deal with the fight.
2. Parents are too overwhelmed and don’t fully know how to handle it themselves, so things don’t get done at all.
3. Parents use cleaning as punishment so children associate cleaning with negative feelings and don’t buy into the importance of cleaning.
There could be other reasons, but we’ll move forward operating with those three for now.
Home hygiene is overwhelming. Home hygiene is excessive. Home hygiene is repetitive. It never ends!!!!
If you’re operating off of reason one, I get it. Children have enough to worry about. It’s also annoying waiting for them to wash the dishes when you could have done it 10 minutes faster. It’s ridiculously frustrating having to listen to them whine about chores for the millionth time in their short lives.
However, children truly need to know how exhausting managing a home can be. They need to know how many random ass things there are to clean in a home. They need to know what all comes along with caring for the animal they begged to get. They need to know that they may be the only one managing all the things if they live alone or what it’s like having to co-manage a home with someone who operates differently than they do (roommates/romantic relationships/children).
If you’re operating off of reason two, I get it. Again, sometimes it’s easier to just never invite anyone over. It’s much more fun to do literally anything else but clean. I imagine you’re trying your best. You show up to work clean, who cares if the dishes are piling up, the laundry hasn’t been folded in weeks, and you step on crumbs here and there. Trust me, I’ve been there. Go read that blog I mentioned earlier.
Regardless, do you enjoy when your home is a mess? I would guess not. I know I didn’t. I hated when I couldn’t have friends over or felt ashamed cause my son pointed out that things were rough. I’ve talked with kids living in rougher situations than what my home looked like when my son pointed things out, and none of them were having a great time. As much as I know it is hard to do things at times, we don’t want our kids to fall into the same patterns we have, so they need to learn how to manage their home, even when things are tough.
If you’re operating off of reason three, I get it. You wanted to argue, you can go do this or go do that. I understand that sometimes with parenting you are floundering and finding something that works to get your kids to do the right things is difficult. Parenting ain’t for the weak. All I know is, if my husband told me I could clean the room by myself because I had an attitude one day, I’d probably lose it.
In my opinion, home hygiene needs to be the pattern that families operate on from the jump. It shouldn’t be something we turn to when kids ain’t acting right. Now if they messed something up, they need to clean it up. I’m not talking about them going around making messes and not cleaning them. I’m talking every day general home hygiene stuff. Dishes, trash, laundry, bathroom, cleaning their room, etc.
That leads me to some more details that I’m happy for anyone to steal.
I’ll preface that I feel insurance is a scam, but since that’s the system that we function under at this point, in the United States, it seems like it’s reasonable to associate this idea with insurance. If there was a way to make this idea free, that’d be ideal, but I don’t see that happening.
So, assuming this idea functions under the concept of insurance associated with services offered at a community mental health clinic, it would be a program that could be referred to by a provider. You’re receiving services and have a qualifying diagnosis that receives eligibility for additional services, then my idea is one of those additional services.
I’d like to call it, Home Hygiene Care. Literally don’t care what it’s called, so long as the concept is there to help others!
So here’s what Home Hygiene Care services would offer:
- Case planning to determine a plan for how to offer the services in the most effective manor.
- Family involvement to help establish a family routine for managing the home.
- An allowance for cleaning products.
- An allowance for organization/storage related items.
- Home hygiene education.
- Home cleaning services offered by professional cleaners.
Let me break each of these down a little more.
1. Case planning to determine how to offer the services in the most effective manor.
With most mental health services, there’s some sort of plan in place with a goal the client is working towards. Is the goal to help the client establish a home health aid because they’re disabled/elderly and can’t manage on their own or within their natural support system (family/friends/etc.)? Is the goal to help the family find a routine to function under to maintain the home hygiene needs? Is the goal to help the individual reset and maintain their home hygiene on their own? Whatever the goal is, it’s good to have one in mind.
2. Family involvement to help establish a family routine for managing the home.
In my personal opinion, every single person residing in a home should be responsible for every single thing in the home. I mean, you gotta figure out what works for you and your family, but everyone being responsible for everything limits arguing and decreases resentment. If there are children in the home, they’re going to need to learn how to do all the chores at some point, so it may sound reasonable for one child to do the dishes and one to do the dusting, but eventually the children need to learn both. I know I eventually started to get annoyed that my brother always seemed to get done faster with his chores than I did when I always did the dishes. Again, so what works for you and your family, but shared responsibility seems to be a reasonable place to operate from.
3. An allowance for cleaning products.
I think each month the client should receive an allowance for obtaining cleaning products. It would be cool if the person providing the service and the client decided on the items and ordered them together. The client can let the service provider know what worked well or what didn’t and adjust as needed.
4. An allowance for organization/storage related items.
Similar to the cleaning products, it would be cool if people had an allowance for organization/storage related items. Half the time, people’s issues are based more on misuse of space and lack of organization skills than simply being poor at home hygiene. Having a service provider that can help make the most use of a space would be ideal to truly help people function the best they can. I can’t tell you how helpful storage containers are for a space!
5. Home hygiene education.
This would play into number one and two a bit. Some people may very well know how to clean and clean well. It could just be a matter of mental ability to move forward with that task. Some people may not know how to do their own laundry, dishes, or to clean up a home in general. The education would start where the person is with their home hygiene needs. This would also tie in organization. You might think it’s silly, but some of those cleaning shoes on Netflix make so much sense! The better your systems are, the more likely you’re able to stay on top of your home hygiene. The education would also tie in a mental health component to help people when they are in the moments in their life where they truly struggle to do anything. It’s easy to say cleaning isn’t that hard. It’s not easy when you’re the person battling with your brain telling you it will be fine to put stuff off until it’s so far gone you don’t even know where to begin.
6. Home cleaning services offered by professional cleaners.
The biggest component of my idea would be professional home cleaning services. Honestly, many people just need a reset. Starting fresh is huge for people to feel they can move forward. Any client who is elegible for the service should start off with a free cleaning of their home. After this, the services would be determined based on need. Depending on the severity of the problem, the services could be every month, every quarter, or every six months.
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The premise of this service would be that it isn’t forever. Ideally with the case planning, education, allowance for needed items, and home cleaning services a client will be set up to succeed on their own. I think a year of services would ideally be a decent amount of time for a positive step in the right direction.
If this idea already exists in the world, ignore me. But also, tell me where and how it functions! If it doesn’t, please steal my idea and/or help me make it happen!
I know it’s not practical to think that everything can be offered for free, but there is so much waste in this country, my hope would be that some money could be allocated to more ideas like this one.
Being a human is hard. I hope all you beautiful humans are doing as well as you can considering all the challenges in this crazy world!
Ariel Pierce 