How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

Trying to clean up every mess as it’s made fractures my attention span and makes me feel frazzled. The concentration it takes to keep track of every item I use and return it to its home immediately makes it difficult to enjoy the moment.

The solution is to develop achievable and even rewarding strategies for tackling a larger end of day reset.

For a lot of people, finding a method that bypasses the most executive functioning barriers or that makes a task a little less intolerable is better than what’s “quickest.” In the end, the approach that you are motivated to do and enjoy doing is the most “efficient,” because you are actually doing it and not avoiding it.

we can usually identify two voices: the inner bully

the little self

In turn, our little self (the one being bullied) grieves. “Why is this so easy for other people?” “What’s wrong with me?” “I’m failing.”

This right here is an abusive relationship and someone...

the compassionate observer

The next time the bully starts talking and the little self starts shrinking, you can call on your compassionate observer self. They say to the bully, “You are not being helpful and I need you to stop.” And they turn to the little self and say, “I know you are in pain, and I know you feel like you are failing. But you aren’t. It’s not a moral failing to be untidy. Being unwell and struggling do not make you unworthy of kindness. You are going to be okay.

“Once I realized I did not have to be tidy to be organized, the second half of my life began!” Organization means having a place for everything in your home and having a system for getting it there. “Tidiness” and “messiness” describe how quickly things go back to their place.

One reason why we have a hard time setting up systems that work for us is that we confuse an organized space with an aesthetically pleasing space. You

In conclusion: being messy is not a moral failing, tidy is simply a preference, organization is functional, and you deserve to function. How would your approach to functional organization change if you threw pretty out the window?

It’s rarely about who is trying harder or who is a better person but instead about individual capacity. Individual capacity is shaped by biology, psychology, and environment.

One thing I know is that if I keep the shame removed I can keep the on-ramp open.

the problem of task initiation

you have a diagnosis like ADHD, autism, PTSD, or depression (and many others), you are probably familiar with task initiation problems, because those diagnoses famously create problems with executive functioning, of which task initiation is one. If you’ve been living with situational factors that affect executive functioning like trauma, grief, chronic stress, or sleep deprivation, you may also be experiencing issues with task initiation.

Task initiation barriers usually present themselves as difficulties in transitions.

One way to widen the entry point is to use music.

Let yourself use 5 percent energy to do 5 percent of the task. Maybe you keep going. Maybe you don’t. That’s okay. Anything worth doing is worth doing partially.

Instead of “I need to finish this” or even “I need to start this,” begin to say to yourself, “How can I move towards this task?”

Next time you want to do a care task, start an enjoyable task and use the wait time to start a care task.

Ask a friend to spend time with you while you do care tasks. You can even call them on the phone.

One of my favorite tools is the visual timer.

Not everything has to be clean at the same time.

But keeping everything done isn’t the point. Keeping things functional is the point because here’s the thing: it will look like that again tomorrow only if I clean it today. If I don’t clean it, it will be even more messy because we live here and we create mess. And if tomorrow’s mess on top of today’s mess is going to make my space not function for me, then it’s time to reset the space.

tidy things up not because it’s bad that it’s messy but because it has reached the end of that cycle of functionality and I need to reset it so it can have another twenty-four hours of it serving me.

It may seem odd that laying out an outfit for tomorrow is prioritized over exercise. But this way of thinking of priorities allows you to do the most good with the least amount of energy.

It’s helpful when seeing your dirty floor to replace “I just can’t keep up” with “I’ve de-prioritized floors for a more important task right now.”

Christine Miserandino is a disability advocate who articulates this in her concept of Spoon Theory, which is a helpful resource in understanding chronic illness.

However, we can fake a closet downsize and still get all of the benefits without having to deal with the intense decision-making process real downsizing requires.

you are not responsible for saving the world if you are struggling to save yourself.

you must use paper plates for meals or throw away recycling in order to gain better functioning, you should do so.

Feeling shame for not being sustainable, for eating meat, or for purchasing fast fashion when you are fighting to get through the day is not going to cause you to magically gain the ability to do something different. Shame is a horrible long-term motivator.

This is also the tier I welcome anyone to hold me accountable for. For me, this tier includes ensuring my behavior is not racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, or ableist, that I always refrain from abusing or exploiting others, and that I always act with honesty and integrity.

The impact that you could have on the world when you are fully functioning far outweighs the negligible negative impact that one household’s disposable plastic or extra water usage will have.

Climate change is real. Environmentalism is important. But we are not going to fix the earth by shaming people with mental health and neurodiverse needs out of adaptive routines they need to function.

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.

As with any care task, self-compassion is key. Shame is the enemy of functioning.

Remember that anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.

You have a body—you are not your body. So even if you think your body is a little bit ratty, you can get to know it, slowly, curiously, nonjudgmentally, by caring for it. And it might end up your friend.

have found one—just one—affirmation that actually does work for me. And it’s this: “I am allowed to be human.”

And this messy, fallible imperfection never detracts from our inherent worthiness. I am no exception and neither are you.

But if prioritizing a few good things that really matter to you and aiming for good enough with the rest of it lets you come out at the end of the day healthy and able to experience joy—now that’s an excellent life.

embrace adaptive imperfection.

When we believe our worth is dependent on completing the never-ending list of care tasks, we are unlikely to let ourselves rest until everything is done. Even when we manage to shame ourselves into action, we find that those who work in shame also rest in shame.

You do not have to earn the right to rest, connect, or recreate. Unlearn the idea that care tasks must be totally complete before you can sit down.

How will we raise our children (or re-parent ourselves) to learn both responsibility and rest?

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.

it’s okay to mourn how difficult life is right now.