It's so hard to change the priority in my To Do List

[Kay100]

For some health reasons, I have not done proper housekeeping for years. About 2 years ago I basically recovered and suddenly notice that the house was not organized. It's a very big task to organize everything after many years of neglect. I had to do lots of cleaning and organizing. This year it's almost taken me 80% of my time. I guess another reason might be I haven't done much house work for years so I do everything slow as well...

The problem is, I have other things that should be of much higher priority. I have lots of books and online courses that I want to learn, but didn't have much time after all the housekeeping tasks. Everyday when I wake up, first thing I'm thinking is actually all the things I can do today to get the house more organized and tidy. Lots of days I would spend almost all day on all kinds of tasks around the house. My son spend a lot of time in his room and I don't even have much time for him.

I'm not sure why by default my priority would first go to getting a clean and tidy house. This goes over learning and time with my son. I value those very much, but my priority would always go to housekeeping first. I have to consciously plan to get myself to do more important things first before do the housekeeping stuff.

I know about Maslow's hierarchy of Needs. But I think a clean and tidy environment shouldn't belong in the basic needs right? It's not something that you can't survive without. I don't think I'm a clearning freak. I'm not sure what the reason for this is...