Obsessive Cleaning Disorder LLC began with a late ADHD diagnosis.  At age 31, I wrapped up my 10-year corporate career as a software developer, finally realizing the toll my desk jobs had on my mental and physical health.  As it turns out, I longed for my days working simply as a cleaning technician in a nursing home - I wanted that again for myself.  As it turns further out, running a business is a career well suited to my intense attention to detail and tendency toward high-risk-high-reward behavior. It makes too much sense.

 

Another thing that makes sense is people with ADHD focus extremely well, which you wouldn't know based on its name. The reason this makes sense is because ADHD brains have trouble pulling ourselves away from the tasks that we're stuck on (focusing so hard on one task, that it's not possible to switch over and start a new one).  The word describing this phenomenon is hyperfocus. 

Yes, our business name acronym is OCD (we wanted to call it HCD for "hyperfocused cleaning disorder," but that feels awkward).  And, attempting to define the difference between "obsessing" and "hyperfocusing" is a wasteful expense of brain space. The reason Obsessive Cleaning Disorder has more than 150 reviews that are 5-stars on the hiring platform TaskRabbit, with nothing less than a 4-star at the time of writing, is thanks to this business owner's ability to focus at an unmatchable level (...ability to focus when cleaning, and at no other time)

We choose to lean into the fun side our neurodivergent traits, which tend to waver between incredibly powerful and out-of-nowhere debilitating at a given moment, but the educational side must follow. In our blog, we explain some of the misconceptions are neurodivergent abilities and disabilities (for example, medically diagnosing OCD has nothing inherently to do with cleaning). The lines that we draw between educating each other about cognitive disorders, navigating them, and celebrating them, is real spaghetti code.  In our blog and advertising channels, we hope to clean up the messy expectations around them. But, as we say during our cleaning and organizing jobs - "it has to get messier before it gets cleaner!"