How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

Maybe I’ll get back into a rhythm of doing it more often and maybe it will keep being inconsistent. One thing I know is that if I keep the shame removed I can keep the on-ramp open.

Motivation means a desire or drive to do something and a recognition that you see that thing as worth doing.

If, however, you want clean clothes, you feel your life would be better with clean clothes, and you would like to be able to do the laundry you’ve been staring at for hours but just can’t seem to make yourself do, that’s not a lack of motivation. That is a problem with task initiation.

Task initiation barriers usually present themselves as difficulties in transitions.

One way to widen the entry point is to use music.

If you dance every day to the same happy song with your baby, or your pet, or a friend on FaceTime and after a week play that song while folding laundry or doing dishes, your brain will associate happiness with that song and will provide a little pleasure reward.

Say, “I am going to do one dish.” Often you’ll find that motivation kicks in after you have already started.

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.

“How can I move towards this task?” When you want to get your kitchen reset before you sit down for the evening, moving towards can just mean going and standing in the kitchen.

What activities in your life do you enjoy that have built-in wait times? Maybe it’s waiting for the kettle to boil or for cookies to bake. Next time you want to do a care task, start an enjoyable task and use the wait time to start a care task.

If you tend to avoid care tasks because they are boring, choose something you can enjoy during the task:

Sometimes when we think of a task that seems unpleasant, like unloading the dishwasher, our brain tells us that the task is going to take much longer than it actually does.

It doesn’t matter if you’re “never caught up on laundry.” It only matters if everyone has clean clothes to wear when they need them.

You are not morally obligated to make every single care cycle line up at the “just done” state and hold it there always.

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.

I tidy things up not because it’s bad that it’s messy but because it has reached the end of that cycle of functionality and I need to reset it so it can have another twenty-four hours of it serving me.

regardless of how tightly we embrace the functional view of care tasks, the reality is there are seasons of life when there are more care tasks to do than there is time in the day (or energy in the body).

One tool that can be very helpful when deciding how to prioritize and de-prioritize items is the 9 square. Pick an area of your life.

Write a list of things you think are important for your self-care. First, think of the self-care items that have the highest impact on your mental health.

Next list those items that have a medium impact

and those that have a lower impact

Next, divide them into those things that take low effort, medium effort, or a high amount of effort. Place your items in the corresponding squares in the chart.

Once the chart is filled out, you can use it to determine what to focus on.

But this way of thinking of priorities allows you to do the most good with the least amount of energy.

If you find it helpful, a good friend or a therapist can help you fill it out and act as validation when deciding what priority level you are on.

Regardless of your gender, reflect on what messages you received about women and care tasks.

my brain, which is trying desperately to avoid pain and seek pleasure (or at least relief from pain), is never going to give me the green light to lean in to yet another painful experience

Wash only on Mondays and wash everything on Monday. Eventually this day will become synonymous with laundry and it will be easier to remember.

What preconceived ideas do you have about laundry?

Does laundry have to be done in huge loads, or am I better served by washing a small load every day of the essentials?

Pick out a week’s worth of clothing to launder and pack everything else away in bags or Rubbermaid bins until a time when you can deal with it.

they’re a little dirty and you might wear them again. In my experience, clothes like this often end up on a chair somewhere. I like to start by saying that if the clothes chair is working for you there is no reason to change that.

you are not responsible for saving the world if you are struggling to save yourself. If you must use paper plates for meals or throw away recycling in order to gain better functioning, you should do so.

Realistically, when you are struggling to function you are not choosing between recycling and not recycling; you are choosing between letting the cardboard pile up and staying paralyzed and throwing the cardboard out and being able to get unstuck enough to move forward. Either way the recycling isn’t getting done that day.

Shame is a horrible long-term motivator. It is more likely to contribute to dysfunction and continued cycles of unsustainable practices.

The first tier lists the standards I expect myself to be accountable to at all times and in all areas of my life. This is also the tier I welcome anyone to hold me accountable for.

The second tier includes morally good things that aren’t absolutes but that I participate in when possible:

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.

Dropping them would have devastating consequences and likely cause you to drop all the balls.

Plastic balls will fall to the floor and stay intact so you can pick them up again later. Glass balls will not.

“You know, those single-use masks everyone is wearing in the pandemic are made of plastic too,”

She pointed out that the acceptable use of plastic is always set according to what a healthy person needs to be healthy

but when it comes to someone with a disability using plastic, everyone wants to shame them for killing the planet. “You need what you need,”

The truth is that it’s not waste if you are using something to function.

we are not going to fix the earth by shaming people with mental health and neurodiverse needs out of adaptive routines they need to function.

Those who feel anger at someone with clinical depression or ADHD for not engaging in eco-optimal behaviors are seriously deluded.

No one is made functional overnight, and some people may always have barriers. The goal then is to take steps that reduce harm, first to self, then to those i...

If you have a dishwasher, remember there is no rule saying you must unload it all at once. It’s perfectly fine to unload a category at a time when you feel you can manage it.

it is more common than you would think for people to have barriers to hygiene.

it is the care area where people feel the most shame in not being able to keep up. Remember that showering is functional and not moral.