How to Keep House While Drowning

by K.C. Davis

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

Care tasks are morally neutral. Being good or bad at them has nothing to do with being a good person, parent, man, woman, spouse, friend.

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.

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.

upgrading your laundry system can only increase your functioning, not your worth.

Not everything has to be clean at the same time.

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.”

Keeping it morally neutral actually helped me get it done.

Undies, baby clothes, athletic shorts, and pajamas usually do just fine being bunched up in a drawer or a clean laundry basket. Perhaps it’s a more manageable task to pick out the few things you would like to be wrinkle-free and hang them up, leaving the rest to sit happily in a basket or drawer where you can access them.

we can fake a closet downsize and still get all of the benefits without having to deal with the intense decision-making process real downsizing requires.

If you must use paper plates for meals or throw away recycling in order to gain better functioning, you should do so.

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.

If you cannot do everything you want to do, it’s important to identify which care tasks are necessary for you to function and prioritize them until you are in a place where you can do more.

Shame is the enemy of functioning.

Remember that anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.

You do not have to wait to care about your body to care for your body. In fact, caring for your body can often cause you to start liking it more.

Unlearn the idea that care tasks must be totally complete before you can sit down. Care tasks are a never-ending list, and if you wait until everything is done to rest, you will never rest.

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

Recognize that being nonproductive is a necessary diversion. Rest is necessary for energy, and rest is necessary for work.