How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

The goal should not be to make the work equal but to ensure that the rest is fair.

Those who think they will escape this conflict by having one partner stay at home are often the most embroiled in it.

Rest isn’t being on call.

Rest includes responsibilities. It is your partner’s responsibility to protect your rest time but your responsibility to actually rest.

What I am not saying is that watching television while your kids are in the living room isn’t fun or that it’s not important to get the space to take a shower alone. What I am saying is that those activities do not meet the vital human need for rest.

Fair rest covers a multitude of division of labor sins.

Summary: Contribution and productivity are not moral values—but nonexploitation and humility are. When someone demands the benefits of being a part of a family but refuses responsibilities to that family of which they are capable, it’s a form of entitlement that exploits the other members of that family. However, having a limited capacity is not the same as being entitled and accepting help is not the same as exploiting others.

“Forget about creating a routine. You have to focus on finding your rhythm.”

With routines you are either on track or not. With rhythm you can skip a beat and still get back in the groove.

The best way to do something is the way it gets done.

Sometimes I narrate in my head like I’m a world-renowned cleaning expert and everyone is watching me on television.

Closers will put the plates away, clean the booths, and disinfect the soda machine. Side duties are not the servers’ “main job,” but they must get done in order for servers to do their main job of waiting tables.

The power in closing duties is the power of permission. Permission to care for tomorrow you without having to make things perfect or up to other people’s standards. But closing duties are only powerful if you also have permission to not do them. The key is that while doing them is a way of taking care of tomorrow you, sometimes not doing them is a way of taking care of right now you.

quit beating yourself up for having a skill deficit when what you really have is a support deficit.

Striving to “be better” will exhaust the little energy you have, and it’s probably time better spent letting yourself cry and sleep and finding small pockets of joy to keep you going.

A support deficit is not always someone’s fault. There are just some seasons of life we have to limp through.

Take a look at the history behind the term self-care sometime. Start with googling Audre Lorde. It wasn’t always about yoga and hobbies.

Remember, feeling ashamed to pay for help is often directly related to the idea that care tasks are moral obligations central to your worthiness as a human.

You don’t have to meet a diagnostic criterion to deserve to hire someone to help you with domestic tasks any more than you have to meet a criterion to not have to churn your own butter or knit your own sweaters.

Being kind to yourself while eating ice cream is healthier than hating yourself while eating a salad. Anxiety and perfectionism are not good for your health. At the end of the day, your relationship to food is as much a factor in your health as fueling your body in a way that makes you feel good is.

Care tasks exist for one reason only… to make your body and space functional enough for you to easily experience the joy this world has to offer.