“Those of you that know me well know I love to keep a clean house. I actually love having the house all to myself and turning up some music and cleaning. For me it’s always been therapeutic and I feel mentally so much better when the house is clean. When my severe arm pain started 5 years ago and I started having other health issues it became hard for me to clean.

I would just think about vacuuming or scrubbing the sink and I knew I would hurt for days after. I slowly learned to let some stuff go but it still bothered me. I would then start feeling overwhelmed by how much cleaning needed to be done. Then I’d get depressed because I couldn’t do the things I enjoyed. And not just cleaning, other things like crafting, photography, working out. Then I’d feel apathetic for awhile. And this would all just turn into a vicious cycle.

There were short times when my arms would magically just feel almost normal again and I could do some stuff without much pain, but it would always come back. Fibromyalgia is cyclical. You can have bad periods, then good ones for awhile, till eventually you stop having good periods of time.

So for years Josh tried to convince me to get a Roomba. I thought it was such a dumb, frivolous purchase and vacuuming was actually my favorite household chore even though it now hurt terribly to do it. But those prime day deals are pretty tempting! 😂 So we bought one and honestly what a relief it is to know that at least one chore can be done without me having pain! We named her Rosie after the Jetson’s maid (unfortunately all she does is vacuum, ha!) but she was worth every penny helping to take at least one stress off my plate!

We are 2 1/2 months into the #guaifenesinprotocol and I am so looking forward to the day when I can vacuum and scrub a sink without a second thought of how much pain I will be in afterwards! #fibromyalgia#hismerciesareneweverymorning#onedaycloser”

~Erin Woods