How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

Care tasks are the “chores” of life: cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding, dishes, and hygiene. These may seem like noncomplex tasks. But when you actually break down the amount of time, energy, skill, planning, and maintenance that go into care tasks, they no longer seem simple.

In fact, 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.

Next time you are trying to talk yourself into doing a care task, what would it be like to replace the voice that says, “Ugh, I should really go clean my house right now because it’s a disaster,” with “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.”

In addiction recovery, as in most of life, success depends not on having strong willpower, but in developing mental and emotional tools to help you experience the world differently.

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.

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.

Chores → care tasks Chores are obligations. Care tasks are kindness to self. Cleaning → resetting the space Cleaning is endless. Resetting the space has a goal.

You can break down care tasks into three layers. At their foundation, care tasks have the basic function of keeping your body or space safe and healthy. This is represented by the bottom layer of the cupcake. The icing on the cake, so to say, is things that increase your comfort. The cherry on top is just things that make you happy. When we understand what really matters to us in terms of safety, comfort, and happiness, we can begin to let go of others’ judgments of how our spaces must look.

challenge yourself to find a functional reason to clean

when we focus on function, organization becomes easier.

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. A tidy person typically returns things to their home immediately whereas a messy person does not.

Being organized means tidying moves more quickly and makes my life more functional and cleaning less overwhelming.

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.

creating movement momentum with music

use the wait time to start a care task.

Not everything has to be clean at the same time.

I find this stems from that binary view of care tasks that they can be only either done or not done and that done is the superior state. 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.

Even if we understand that doing everything perfectly is impossible, most of us still have a hard time shaking the constant guilt about how things should look. It can be a struggle deciding exactly what to prioritize when time and energy are short.

Keeping it morally neutral actually helped me get it done.

One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance writing and kids, and she said that 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.

I’ve made small functional upgrades in my dish routine, one at a time. I decided that the first step would be to move from leaving dishes out all over the house to taking them to the sink.

When detangling Black hair, always start from the bottom, use a wide-tooth comb or Denman brush and detangle your hair while wet and with a leave-in conditioner. One of the best things that you can do to care for your hair when you don’t feel like caring for yourself is wear a silk bonnet when you go to sleep or sleep on a silk pillowcase.

caring for your body can often cause you to start liking it more.

You deserve clean sheets.

Care tasks are a never-ending list, and if you wait until everything is done to rest, you will never rest.

when I see couples begin to argue from the stance of “who works harder” the discussion is already lost.

when a partner says, “I need you to do more,” what the other hears is, “You aren’t doing enough.” Once feelings of not being appreciated have joined the discussion, we aren’t really talking about the dishes anymore. Partners are now operating from fear. Fear of being taken advantage of (since they clearly don’t see how much you work) or fear of taking advantage of someone (or being perceived as if you are).

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

Regardless of whose job is “harder” or “brings in the money,” the coal miner is going to need to take on some portion of the care tasks and childcare to create room for their partner to also have times in their week to rest and recreate. True partners will want to do this. They do not view themselves as more entitled to rest than their partner based on paycheck or hours worked.

we game plan what we need or would like to get done that weekend by way of both obligation and fun.

The power in closing duties is the power of permission. Permission to care for tomorrow you

Housekeepers are not moral and therefore are not something to be deserved. If you are in a season of life when there are simply more care tasks to be done than time or energy available to you and you have the means to afford help, it is the most functional thing to do.

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.

often the pursuit of aesthetic perfection holds back real functional improvements.