How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

Executive dysfunction, procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, trauma, amotivation, chronic pain, energy fatigue, depression, lack of skills, lack of support, and differing priorities.

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.

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

Internalizing this belief will help you a) shift your perspective of care tasks from a moral obligation to a functional errand, b) see what changes you actually want to make, and c) weave them into your life with minimal effort, relying not on self-loathing but on self-compassion.

Even when this motivated me to make “positive” or “productive” changes, they didn’t solve my dislike of myself—and the “life improvements” didn’t stick for long.

looking for a role to fill that would finally make me worthy of kindness and love and belonging.

There is a big difference between being on a journey of worthiness and being on a journey of care.

I’m going to help you find your way of keeping a functional home—whatever “functional” means for you. Together, we are going to build a foundation of self-compassion and learn how to stop negative self-talk and shame.

I have so many tips for how to clean a room when you are overwhelmed, how to hack motivation for times when you feel like doing nothing, how to organize without feeling overwhelmed, ideas for getting the dishes and the laundry done on hard days, and lots of creative hacks for working with a body that doesn’t always cooperate. And we are going to do it without endless checklists and overwhelming routines.

“slow,” “quiet,” “gentle.”

Executive functioning skills include focusing, planning, organizing, following directions, and more.

Lots of decisions are moral decisions, but cleaning your car regularly is not one of them. You can be a fully functioning, fully successful, happy, kind, generous adult and never be very good at cleaning your dishes in a timely manner or have an organized home.

When you view care tasks as moral, the motivation for completing them is often shame.

So if you ever actually let yourself sit down and rest, you’re thinking, “I don’t deserve to do this. There is more to do.”

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.”

Sometimes you may not get up even with the change in self-talk. But you know what? You weren’t getting up when you were being mean to yourself either, so at least you can be nice to yourself. No one ever shamed themselves into better mental health.

Any task or habit requiring extreme force of will depletes your ability to exert that type of energy over time. The truth is that human beings can only exert high effort for short periods.

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.

Different people struggle differently—and privilege isn’t the only difference.

Because of this, my advice for getting things done at work won’t help her at all,

I suspect that many people doling out productivity advice focus on areas where they’re naturally gifted—areas

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.

remember that because care tasks are morally neutral, mess has no inherent meaning. When you look at the pile of dishes in the sink and think, “I’m such a failure,” that message did not originate from the dishes. Dishes don’t think. Dishes don’t judge. Dishes cannot make meaning—only people can.

In fact, the meaning assigned to a care task was probably given to you by someone else.

So much of our distress comes not from the unfolded laundry but from the messages we give ourselves.

You might also be interested in playing back what you tell yourself when you are “succeeding” in care tasks. Do you feel good when your home is clean and laundry is folded? Ask yourself why.

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.

Instead of thinking, “I can never keep up,” instead say to yourself, “I am so grateful to have so many clothes.” Upon your seeing a dirty kitchen, your inner voice may say something like, “I am such a hot mess,” but challenge yourself to think of something else it could mean. “I cooked my family dinner three nights in a row”

does not mean “I am disgusting” but instead simply means “I am having a hard time right now.”

Let me tell you what the mess in my home means. It means I’m alive. Dirty dishes mean I’ve fed myself. Scattered hobby supplies mean I am creative. Scattered toys and mess mean I am a fun mom. The stacked boxes in the hall mean I was thoughtful enough to order what we need. The clothes strewn on the floor mean I had a full day.

And occasionally mess means I’m struggling with depr...

i want you to stop caring for your home. You might think it’s important to care for your home, but your home is an inanimate object—it’s

You deserve to be cared for. I want your home to care for you. How do we do that? By focusing on function.

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’ ju...

Try writing down your various care tasks and isolating the functional reason for doing each of them.

Suddenly all that is really required fits on a short, finite list. I can do a few things to feel like I have cared for my needs. Then move on. If I have the time and energy to continue on and clean the whole kitchen, great! But if not, I can move on without guilt.

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

The solution is to develop achievable and even rewarding strategies for tackling a larger end of day reset. That’s what works for me and it’s just as valid as the choice of those who prefer to clean as they go.

It’s not uncommon to suddenly find yourself in an overwhelming mess. The more you stare at it, the more defeated you feel, the less motivation you have, the more you avoid it, and the more it piles up.

This is your compassionate self. This self feels empathy for others because they are worthy of love, and this self wants to give it to them.

That is your observant self. They see things from the outside with an eye for what is worthy. This person is your compassionate observer. And they are about to step in.

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.

However, you can be messy and organized.

we confuse an organized space with an aesthetically pleasing space.

In the past, when I predictably fall off after the first wave of motivation the guilt sets in.

I never manage to recapture that initial motivation and in turn give up completely and feel guilty whenever I look at the thing.

“I didn’t get on the bike yesterday for five minutes even though I do want to get on the bike. This tells me that five minutes was too big of a goal. I wonder if I could get on for three minutes?”