How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

My professional experience as a therapist had shown me time and time again that being overwhelmed is not a personal failure, but as most of you may know, the gulf between what we know in our minds and what we feel in our hearts is often an insurmountable distance.

You need energy and skill to plan, execute, and follow through on these steps every day, multiple times a day, and to deal with any barriers related to your relationship with food and weight, or a lack of appetite due to medical or emotional factors. You must have the emotional energy to deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed when you don’t know what to cook and the anxiety it can produce to create a kitchen mess.

“How can I be failing at something so simple?” they think to themselves. The critical internal dialogue quickly forms a vicious cycle, paralyzing the person even further. They are unlikely to reach out for help with these tasks due to intense fear of judgment and rejection.

You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you. Internalizing this belief will help you a) shift your perspective of care tasks from a moral obligation to a functional errand, b) see what changes you actually want to make, and c) weave them into your life with minimal effort, relying not on self-loathing but on self-compassion.

As you embark on this journey I invite you to remember these words: “slow,” “quiet,” “gentle.” You are already worthy of love and belonging. This is not a journey of worthiness but a journey of care. A journey of learning how we can care for ourselves when we feel like we are drowning. Because you must know, dear heart, that you are worthy of care whether your house is immaculate or a mess.

How you relate to care tasks—whether you are clean or dirty, messy or tidy, organized or unorganized—has absolutely no bearing on whether you are a good enough person.

When you view care tasks as moral, the motivation for completing them is often shame.

Care tasks are morally neutral. Being good or bad at them has nothing to do with being a good person, parent, man, woman, spouse, friend. Literally nothing. You are not a failure because you can’t keep up with laundry. Laundry is morally neutral.

what to do with donations Listen to me. Picture my hands cupping your face and my eyes looking directly into yours. Take a deep breath. Heed these words: It’s okay, friend. Throw it away.

Begin to notice how you speak to yourself on days when you feel you have fallen behind. You can set up the best systems in the world and they won’t change your life if you still hate yourself on days when you can’t keep up.

You deserve kindness and love regardless of how good you are at care tasks.

Let me tell you what the mess in my home means. It means I’m alive. Dirty dishes mean I’ve fed myself. Scattered hobby supplies mean I am creative.

Do you remember the last time you observed beauty? Maybe it was the way your daughter’s hair curled at the nape of her neck. Or the way your partner laughed. A sunset, a flower, a rainy day that made you feel peaceful. That person is in there too. That is your observant self. They see things from the outside with an eye for what is worthy. This person is your compassionate observer. And they are about to step in.

In the past, when I predictably fall off after the first wave of motivation the guilt sets in. “You’ve done it again, KC. Just like the last thing. Stop kidding yourself.” Followed by a few attempts to get back on track, which also fail. I never manage to recapture that initial motivation and in turn give up completely and feel guilty whenever I look at the thing.

Take a deep breath here. You are not lazy. You just need help circumventing some barriers.

During especially difficult times (like, say, being quarantined with two small children for months on end) I de-prioritize limiting screen time, getting daily outside play, and keeping toys nonelectronic. I’m not saying they aren’t important, just acknowledging that if I only have limited capacity, not yelling, helping my kids understand their feelings, physical affection, reading, and telling my kids I’m proud of them are going to have a greater impact on them than the other items (and, more importantly, a greater impact than attempting to do it all and, as a result, not being able to do any of it).

“You need what you need,” she said to me in a gentle but firm voice.

The truth is that it’s not waste if you are using something to function.

You cannot jump right to community harm reduction before first addressing individual harm reduction. Therefore, if a newly widowed woman struggles to eat, she is released from the obligation of having an eco-perfect diet not because eating ethically is unimportant, but because when the real-world choices for someone are eating dairy or eating nothing, it is always the ethical choice to eat. It is always the ethical choice to encourage that person to eat whatever they can manage. Harm reduction is always ethical.

If you have cried over dishes in the past seven days—go buy paper plates. If your dishes have been in the sink for months—throw them away. If you are wanting to tackle the pile of dishes—read on. step one: preparation Eat something sweet. Get that blood sugar up and find a great song to put on. Get yourself a cute apron and a pair of dishwashing gloves.

You do not need to have children for your struggles with care tasks to be valid.

If you have not washed your hair in a long time, it can be very painful emotionally to deal with matted hair. This is particularly true if you are already feeling depressed and have trouble getting out of bed. Remember to be kind to yourself. Touch your hair and body gently and remember that people who are having a hard time deserve compassion. You are people too.

Most people fear that if they embrace this type of self-kindness, it will simply enable them to stay unfunctional forever. I think this fear is unfounded. I don’t believe in laziness, but even if I did the good news is that self-kindness is extremely motivating. It might be that when you first start giving yourself full permission to rest without guilt you find yourself resting a lot. Maybe that’s what your body and mind need.

“This is a safe home and I am safe in it.”

If a system never becomes easy or automatic for you, then it just means either the system isn’t the right one for you or you need more tips and tools to get the system to work. The issue is never that you are failing or not good enough.

Sometimes we think, “When I’m done and it’s all in order, then I’ll be able to breathe and I won’t feel this way,” but the reality is there is no finish line. And that’s a good thing. You don’t have to do better to start feeling better. You can start a journey of creating functional systems for you while being kind to yourself. You deserve kindness regardless of how many working systems you’ve found.

feeding your body is a care task. Resting your body is a care task. Taking medication to control health symptoms is a care task. Moving your body is a care task. Physical therapy and other healing activities are care tasks. It’s a wonderful thing to investigate what foods and nutrients help your body function and feel best. But making or keeping yourself thin is not a care task.

I realized that I only ever wanted to be skinny because I wanted to be loved and happy. But I already have that. Skinny hasn’t seemed very important to me since then.