Kelly Bartley likes to clean.
That hasn’t always been the case; in the past, he said, his mental health was so bad that he couldn’t do basic tasks.
“I remember when my anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t physically bring myself to do the laundry or take the dishes out of my room,” Bartley said in an interview this week.
“I would be crying because my room is gross… I felt like garbage.”
Bartley is no longer in that headspace, he said. But while she was home from work for a few weeks before starting a new job, the Edmonton woman decided that instead of killing time, she wanted to help other people who felt like she used to.
She took to Reddit, Instagram and her personal social pages to offer her services as a free, non-judgmental cleaner for those in need. He offered to clean entire houses or just one room, or do other chores.
“I enjoy being clean and I know how helpful a clean and healthy environment can be,” Bartley wrote on Reddit.
“I also know from my own experience how easy it is to fall behind or not be able to keep your space clean when you suffer from mental health disorders and how overwhelming it can be.”
When Kelly Bartley found herself with free time, she decided to put those hands to work, offering free cleaning services to those in need. 1:58
She said she couldn’t promise “a sparkling clean house,” but she could “do all your dishes, dust, floors, baseboards, tidy up, and make your living space as nice as possible.”
Since posting on March 10, Bartley has received requests to clean around 45 homes from people struggling with their mental health or facing physical challenges.
“I thought I would be helping two or three people,” he laughed as he displayed message after message from CBC that he had received.
She cleaned her first house on March 11. She said she was told the owner suffered from depression and hadn’t cleaned in three months.
“Most of the people I talked to said that one of their biggest anxieties right now is that their house is gross,” Bartley said.
“They judge themselves for it and feel ashamed of it, and they just don’t feel safe and comfortable in a space where they’re supposed to feel safe and comfortable.”
A friendly hand
One of those people is Stacie Brayton. The 44-year-old man was diagnosed in 2018 with Goodpasture syndrome, an autoimmune disease that attacks the kidneys and lungs.
He has been on dialysis for four years, which can be exhausting both physically and mentally.
Brayton said she usually only has about an hour and a half of power a day, which isn’t enough to clean her five-level house.
“Before I got sick, I could do the house by myself in two or three hours,” she said.
It feels like a huge weight off my shoulders.-Stacie Brayton
“Now I can only do one flight of stairs a day. It’s so daunting… you wake up every day and you’re so overwhelmed.”
Brayton reached out and on Monday, Bartley cleaned his house.
“It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Brayton said as he looked at what Bartley accomplished.
“It’s four years of stress.”
Cleaning is not very common, says the psychiatrist
Dr. Pierre Chue, a psychiatrist in Edmonton, said it’s “very common” for people struggling with mental health to delay small tasks like cleaning until they become an overwhelming mess.
He said that may be a signal to seek help, which could include therapy, medication or other treatments.
“With mental health, subtle things change, often in a pervasive way over a period of time,” Chue said.
“It can be difficult to recognize that things have gone wrong, and then it becomes almost impossible to reverse that through one’s own attempts.”
Bartley will be back to work soon, but with so many houses to fix, she said she plans to continue volunteering to clean houses a few times a week.
“I just want to help them get to a base point in their lives where it’s not stressful anymore,” she said.
Friends and a cleaning company have also volunteered. One person even made a donation of money for gas and cleaning supplies.
