How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

You know what does exist? Executive dysfunction, procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, trauma, amotivation, chronic pain, energy fatigue, depression, lack of skills, lack of support, and differing priorities.

You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.

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.

Although it looks like a lot, there are actually only five things in any room: (1) trash, (2) dishes, (3) laundry, (4) things that have a place and are not in their place, and (5) things that do not have a place.

The Five Things Tidying Method helps the brain know exactly what it is looking for, so instead of seeing a sea of clutter and being paralyzed, it can start to see individual items.

Heed these words: It’s okay, friend. Throw it away.

The good news is that you can simply choose to assign your chronic laundry pile a completely different meaning. Instead of thinking, “I can never keep up,” instead say to yourself, “I am so grateful to have so many clothes.”

But the quickest way to do something may not be the most functional way for every person.

It’s not a moral failing to be untidy. Being unwell and struggling do not make you unworthy of kindness.

If 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.

One way to widen the entry point is to use music. Moving from sitting down to up and dancing is a big transition.

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.

the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass.

When you are struggling to function, it’s important to identify what are your glass balls. Feeding yourself, caring for your children and/or animals, taking your medication, and addressing your mental health are all examples of glass balls. Dropping them would have devastating consequences and likely cause you to drop all the balls. Recycling, veganism, and shopping local are plastic balls. They may be important, but they will not shatter your life if you drop them in the way the glass balls will. Plastic balls will fall to the floor and stay intact so you can pick them up again later.