Housework…..your worst nightmare as a vestibular sufferer or a bit of therapy? There is one thing I have not stopped during my vestibular condition battles and that is housework. Despite finding the simplest of tasks an issue, a weird part of me finds housework rather therapeutic. Somehow feeling that I am dusting away my issues, clearing out the cobwebs and having a clean and tidy house is good for the soul.
However doing housework with a vestibular condition/s is rather challenging. Below is a little list of what I have found challenging! I would love to hear what your challenges are if you suffer from vestibular condition/s….
- Hoovering – well the main issue here is the noise, my ears never used to be able to tolerate hoovers, especially my noisy Dyson, when are they going to bring out a silent version!? There is quite a sharp pitch to the noise, which in the bad days used to put in a spin and I did actually have to limit usage and put up with the tumbleweed of cat hair across the dirty floor for a while!
- Household cleaners – I used to find some household cleaners terrible to use, they used to give me bad migraines, mostly the ones which were very fragrant.
- Bending down to pick up items off the floor – If you have children you will know you do this often! My children have the lovely habit of leaving a trail of destruction across, not just their bedroom but pretty much the entire house! So inevitably I havr to pick up all their belongings, this results in head spins as I went up and down, I am a tall lady so my head has to travel quite far up and down!! Once I even use a children’s pincer toy (like a road litter persons claw thingy) it made things easier for a while!
- Unloading and loading the dishwasher – a task which some people take for granted, but throw in some dizziness and vertigo attacks and taking a plates out of a box puts me in a spin. My brain has got used to this motion now that I have done it about 1,100 times in the last 5 years! Practice makes perfect….
- Walking around the house cleaning or hoovering! When I used to have the aid of a walking stick just in case I was wobbly or needed to get across my lounge, walking around the house cleaning or hoovering was a big job. Before having my conditions I used to run up and down the stairs, hoover and mop very quickly with short sharp actions etc But all that stopped, I had to do things extra slowly, if you can picture a sloth with a hoover then that is what I was like. Pre conditions it used to take me hardly any time to whip around the house like Mary Poppins but then bang…..3 hours to do one room!
- This is not to do with HOUSEWORK but more external cleaning, every year I used to clean our patio with a high pressure hose. Something I cannot do now! It leaves me with severe dizziness and headaches for 2 weeks after! I also cannot use a electric toothbrush…..so hence why my patio is green and my teeth are yellow! (I really do clean my teeth but just manually!)
I would be so interested to hear what your housework issues are if you have a vestibular condition, I have listed the main ones above. Lucky for me as soon as my children were old enough to use a hoover, dustpan and brush and dust for me I put them to work!
Lara x
I know the frustration all to well with housework and vertigo. Throw in a stuffed back with nerve pain and it takes me as week or 2 to do what I used to do in an hour..my head going up and down is bad picking things up off the floor.. dishes ..shower bathroom and toilet. Hanging out washing I do by feel as I can’t look up a lot as it gives me the spins. I end up pacing my h0usewwork and days.. very frustrating.