I started Obsessive Cleaning Disorder LLC in 2022 after a decade-long career in software and IT, as an escape from what I would later realize, or confirm, was neurodevelopmental disabilities.

 

For me, those disabilities (...if they decidedly are disabilties), are primarily ADHD and Autism.  Incidentally, the business is not named exactly after obsessive compulsive disorder, but rather as a way to describe my own skills and talents. Obsession - even compulsion - are part of ADHD. I choose to reclaim the word "disorder", and make a living doing what I enjoy.  Futhermore, because I enjoy it, I am good at it. My first 132 reviews on TaskRabbit were 5 stars, and it took another several-dozen to receive one less than 4 stars. 

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I often spend 2-5 hours cleaning a bathroom (at least the first time), which at a professional level is not rare, but I'm not someone who knows what a "quick clean" means.  My teams have spent 14 hours in a kitchen. 

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Of course, education regarding disabilities is important. While those of us with ADHD are traditionally known for being unfocused, its because ADHD was named poorly; attention deficit is a myth! In my case, my level of focus is unmatched, at least when I'm cleaning - some clients even think I'm fast.  We call our obsessions "hyperfixations" in the ADHD world, and on those we focus heavily.

 

My original business name idea was "Hyperfocused Cleaning Disorder" as a result, but I don't expect most people to know what that means (especially when the phrase "attention deficit" contradicts it). I changed the idea to "Obsessive" for clarity, and because cleaning starts with a "c", the name became what it is.

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While our acronym is "OCD" when shortening our name, you'll notice that we don't abbreviate it. Furthemore, we know (and respect!) that people out there also disagree with our name choice, due to still-more stereotypes that those with obsessive compulsive disorder face around cleaning, which is also somewhat of a misnomer. I am grateful that people care, who reach out to us to provide education on the topic, and who are driven to stick up for what is right. That's amazing. 

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We neurodivergent folk tend to have a strong sense of justice, and that's a great thing.

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My clientele who had diagnosed OCD (hence my cleaning for them, as we were a great match for each other) expressed that they liked the idea, before I formalized the name, to ensure that my name was out of due diligence. To be clear, an individual's choice to be offended is not wrong, and that is ok too.​

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There you have it. Despite all those words, our history was ulimately simple. After a 10-year career in software, I woke up on an otherwise normal day - on my best friend's birthday, who had long talked about business dreams in the industry together - and I decided to quit my tech job to clean strangers' homes. That was it! That's the story. Those of us with ADHD tend to be comfortable with risk. ​

While I choose to lean into the positive and fun side my neurodivergent traits, the symptoms can of course waver between incredibly powerful and out-of-nowhere debilitating at a given moment.  The lines that we draw between educating each other about cognitive disorders, navigating them, and celebrating them, is akin to what we programmers call "spaghetti code," and sometimes it's best to simply start over and get help cleaning up the messy expectations around it. Our goal is to be intentional, be articulate, and to lean into our strengths to improve quality of life for anyone that we come across.  As we say during our cleaning and organizing jobs, "it has to get messier before it gets cleaner!"