How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

The point of having a body is to carry yourself from joyful experience to joyful experience. We have functional reasons to clean that body because we want it to stay healthy and because it feels good.

Hygiene Kit:

It is not uncommon for brushing one’s teeth to be the near-impossible task. This does not make you dirty or gross. It just makes you a person having a hard time. And people having a hard time deserve compassion.

Disposable wisps, flossers, and pre-pasted toothbrushes are all available and can be put into your bag, on your bedside, and in your car. Sometimes it’s the getting to the bathroom that is the difficult part.

Children’s toothpaste has a sweeter flavor than adult toothpaste. Some find that moving away from the harsh mint flavors of adult toothpaste makes it easier to brush their teeth.

Swishing your mouth with some Listerine can kill some bacteria in your mouth when you cannot get any brushing done. Remember that anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.

You may even ask that they note in your chart that you do not respond well to lecturing.

sometimes it helps to consider your body as separate from you. You have a body—you are not your body.

“I am allowed to be human.”

Humans are born with the birthright of worthiness (thanks, Brené Brown), but you know what? They are also messy, fallible, imperfect creatures who cannot and will not ever get everything right all the time. And this messy, fallible imperfection never detracts from our inherent worthiness.

When I get it wrong or struggle, this simple sentence reminds me that my worthiness is not at stake.

One day I just start asking, “What if I am? What if I am deserving of kindness? What if I am worthy of love? What if I am someone who deserves a functioning space? What if I am allowed to make mistakes?”

It doesn’t matter what you think the answer is. Just start making room for the possibility you are wrong when you say you aren’t worthy.

for several months I have gone to bed with my kitchen clean. The secret? I don’t care what my front hallway looks like. It gets to look however it wants. It’s none of my business.

And my bedroom feels serene and tidy because I have given the bathroom permanent permission to look like a feral raccoon lives in it. The secret that is allowing me to have a functional home is that I’ve been half assing it all. And it’s better than it has ever been.

Perhaps you grew up hearing the saying “do everything with excellence”

Doing things with excellence doesn’t mean doing everything perfectly.

you will burn out and hate your life.

So throw away what you think care tasks “should” look like and work towards a way of doing them that works for you.

So while doing a pile of laundry may feel like an accomplishment, it is valid to launder three pairs of underwear as a form of self-care. You have full permission to do a little, do it with shortcuts, and do the bare minimum.

I want you to embrace adaptive imperfection.

Good enough is perfect.

an old parenting hack is to layer multiple sheets and mattress protectors

if you have been viewing care tasks as moral, it is likely you either a) never stop moving, feel anxious and overwhelmed, and are constantly exhausted or b) lack motivation, feel paralyzed and overwhelmed, and are constantly exhausted.

When we believe our worth is dependent on completing the never-ending list of care tasks, we are unlikely to let ourselves rest until everything is done.

You do not have to earn the right to rest, connect, or recreate. Unlearn the idea that care tasks must be totally complete before you can sit down.

Sleep is a recharging activity that happens when you are unconscious.

Rest is a recharging activity that happens when you are conscious. Everyone finds different activities restful, but in general we’re seeking the same qualities: connecting, slowing down, and just being, rather than being productive.

Rest is hard for a lot of people because they have conflated “doing nothing” or being unproductive with being lazy.

As children, many of us are taught we cannot rest or play until our chores are done.

This arrangement works quite well because as a child your chores are finite.

However, when we become adults, this list of care tasks is not finite.

“I really want to sit down, but doing closing duties would be such a kindness to morning me, so I’m going to put on some music and motivate.” Other times I come down those stairs and feel the subtle pang of a body and mind asking to be cared for right now—and on those nights I do the bare minimum or even nothing at all. Remember, laziness doesn’t exist.

For a long time, when I chose to cut corners with care tasks I would feel immense guilt at being irresponsible. Yet where did I get the message that choosing to prioritize rest over the dishes for one night is irresponsible? The problem isn’t that I chose to rest instead of clean the kitchen; it’s that I told myself I was being a bad person by doing so.

“It would be a great kindness to myself right now to just let this go and rest tonight. It wi...

self-kindness is extremely motivating.

Most importantly, when I see couples begin to argue from the stance of “who works harder” the discussion is already lost. If the framework is keeping things equal, then when a partner says, “I need you to do more,” what the other hears is, “You aren’t doing enough.”

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

Oftentimes when we sit down at 7:30 the living room is a mess, the laundry is unfolded, and at least one area of our house looks like a bomb went off. Yet we sit down anyways. Everyone clocks out at 7:30 pm. That’s because the key to ensuring fair rest in our home has much more to do with showing appreciation and giving each other the benefit of the doubt than it does with whose job it is to take out the trash.

What does help is to just let yourself move as slowly as you need to.

when you experience legitimate barriers to completing care tasks while living in a partnership with someone else, you may experience guilt. Even those who have understanding partners experience this from time to time. Let’s explore what is morally neutral about contributing to a family.

I believe the moral gut check here isn’t “Am I contributing enough?” but “Am I taking advantage of someone else?”

You are not required to contribute to be worthy of love and ...

I want them to know that it’s okay to not “pull their weight” when they are sick with the flu. I want my kids to grow up to care for others and treat them fairly without being crushed by the false guilt of thinking their worth is tied to how much they can produce or contribute.

However, having a limited capacity is not the same as being entitled and accepting help is not the same as exploiting others.

(1) you avoid care tasks because you see them as punishment and now that you are an adult you can finally get free of them, or (2) you are constantly and even obsessively cleaning because you have internalized the message that you are dirty or failing if anything is out of place.

Is it really your voice, or is it the voice of a past caregiver?

we often still have to contend with friends or family members who are at different parts of the journey of moral neutrality. How do we respond when someone criticizes the state of our home or tries to “help” us by giving advice that doesn’t really fit?

“I know you want to see me in a functioning environment and I want you to know that I want that for myself also. I am on my own journey to find what works for me and what I need most from you is nonjudgmental support. One thing that could really help me right now is ________.”

If after you give them ways to help they decline, it’s okay to say, “Then the most helpful thing you can do for me is not make comments about my space.”