How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

I do not think laziness exists. 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. ADHD, autism, depression, traumatic brain injury, and bipolar and anxiety disorders are just some of the conditions that affect executive function, making planning, time management, working memory, and organization more difficult, and tasks with multiple steps intimidating or boring.

if a person was in an abusive situation either as a child or in a domestic partnership where cleaning or mess was used as punishment or was the subject of abuse then that person is going to have post-traumatic stress around housekeeping and they may avoid it because it triggers their nervous system.

I realized in my late twenties that I’d been playing out the same pattern over and over without realizing it: looking for a role to fill that would finally make me worthy of kindness and love and belonging.

When I viewed getting my life together as a way for trying to atone for the sin of falling apart, I stayed stuck in a shame-fueled cycle of performance, perfectionism, and failure.

There is a big difference between being on a journey of worthiness and being on a journey of care. If you want to adapt the systems you read about because you feel like if you can finally get on top of your housework or have that rainbow-colored bookcase and perfectly matched socks you’ll finally be a person worthy of kindness and love and belonging, you are always going to feel inadequate. Because you are never going to find those things that way. More than likely you are going to set up those systems, cosplay like an adult who has their life together, only to have all those new habits fall apart in a matter of days or weeks. What we need here is a paradigm shift on how we look at ourselves and our space.

Because you must know, dear heart, that you are worthy of care whether your house is immaculate or a mess.

consider nighttime prep as a kindness to morning me

“It would be such a kindness to future me if I were to get up right now and do _______. That task will allow me to experience comfort, convenience, and pleasure later.”

Someone who is affected by serious mental illness or systemic oppression has a lot more standing in the way of a happy life than a simple attitude adjustment.

Do you feel good when your home is clean and laundry is folded? Ask yourself why. It is one thing to feel the pleasure of having a functional space (it’s easier to find my things; I’m not tripping over toys; my toddler has better focus when the room isn’t cluttered; I have space to work on my hobbies) and quite another to feel the satisfaction of having met a moral standard (I’m good enough; I’m a good mom today; I am meeting expectations; I’m a “real” adult). What you say to yourself when your house is clean fuels what you say to yourself when it’s dirty. If you’re good when it’s clean, you must then be bad when it’s not.

Think of what you would say to a friend who was struggling and turn the message inward.

How would your approach to functional organization change if you threw pretty out the window?

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?”

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.”