How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organising

by K.C. Davis

I was tired. I was depressed. I was overwhelmed. I was in need of help. But I was not lazy. And neither are you.

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

I realized in my late twenties that I’d been playing out the same pattern over and over without realizing it: looking for a role to fill that would finally make me worthy of kindness and love and belonging. When I viewed getting my life together as a way for trying to atone for the sin of falling apart, I stayed stuck in a shame-fueled cycle of performance, perfectionism, and failure.

If you are completing care tasks from a motivation of shame, you are probably also relaxing in shame too—because care tasks never end and you view rest as a reward for good boys and girls.

It is impossible for the kindness or affirmation of others to penetrate your heart when you are thinking, “If you only knew …”

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”

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.

The idea that “I’ll just have to do this again tomorrow” can be exhausting and de-motivating. Yet most of us never think, “Why bother eating? I’m just going to be hungry again in a few hours.” We understand that eating is functional. We need to give our bodies calories and nutrients so we can go about making a joyful life.

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.”

When you are struggling to function, it’s important to identify what are your glass balls. Feeding yourself, caring for your children and/or animals, taking your medication, and addressing your mental health are all examples of glass balls. Dropping them would have devastating consequences and likely cause you to drop all the balls. Recycling, veganism, and shopping local are plastic balls. They may be important, but they will not shatter your life if you drop them in the way the glass balls will. Plastic balls will fall to the floor and stay intact so you can pick them up again later. Glass balls will not. Literal explanation: 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.

So join me next time you feel the panic of making a mistake and say, “I am allowed to be human.”

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

Striving to “be better” will exhaust the little energy you have, and it’s probably time better spent letting yourself cry and sleep and finding small pockets of joy to keep you going.

I so often look back on these seasons of limping through and say to myself with tenderness, “Wow, I was really doing the best I could with what I had.” And that’s the funny thing about doing your best; it never feels like your best at the time. In fact, it almost always feels like failing when you’re in it.