Tag: chores

On the book, “How to Keep House While Drowning” by KC Davis

As someone who struggles with keeping a clean house, I was drawn to the book, “How to Keep House While Drowning – A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing” by KC Davis.

Some points in it that struck me:

  • laziness is likely not the reason you are not cleaning your house…indeed laziness may not even exist. Laziness may mask fatigue, anxiety, depression, and a sense of being overwhelmed, conflicting priorities, and much more
  • you don’t exist to serve your space: your space exists to serve you
  • care tasks are morally neutral. Being good or bad at caring for your space has zero bearing on whether or not you are a good or bad person
  • The five things tidying method: there are five things in any room 1) trash 2) dishes 3) laundry 4) things that have a place and are not in their place 5) things that do not have a place
  • You don’t have chores, you have care tasks. Care tasks are functional.
  • Don’t thinking of cleaning, which is endless, but think of resetting the space, which is not.
  • Care tasks have three layers: health and safety, comfort, happiness.
  • You can’t save the rainforest if you are depressed.

The last point is an important one. This book examines our mental states that make it difficult to deal with the care of our space and provides guidance for dealing with such states. I know for some people, caring for your home is easy, a joy even. (I’m looking at the CleanTok people when I say this.) But for others like me, their current mental states make cleaning it difficult. This books helps us with those mental states and helps us deal with them such that you can have a cleaner home.

I got a tremendous amount of value from this book. So much so I am going to order it and put it on my shelf of self help books that made a big impact on me. I’ve reread it a few times now and I expect to do more of it over the following months. If you have a chance to read it, I highly recommend it.

P.S. I do not recommend CleanTok or “cleanfluencers”: they are the opposite of the ideas expressed in this book. They take care tasks well beyond the three layers into a four layer of mania.

Cleaning is part of a cycle. Complete the cycle (though cycles are never done)

I have come across the idea of completing the cycle when it comes to cleaning and it has made a difference in how I perceive cleaning.

I hate cleaning, but a contributor to that was I didn’t complete the cycle. If I was making a meal, I’d start the cycle by getting out the ingredients, then cook them, then eat them. The end of that cycle is putting the ingredients away and doing the dishes. But I didn’t commit to that, which meant the dishes would pile up. The same was true of other activities: I would stop at the satisfying part of activity (e.g. eating).

Once I committed to completing the cycle, things improved. I recognized that doing any activity meant I had to clean up at the end. Cleaning wasn’t a separate activity: it was part of the overall cycle of the activity.

I thought of this again when I read this piece in VOX on the vicious cycle of never-ending laundry. In it they are so close to getting it. It’s true, laundry is a cycle. They seem to think of it as something you can complete. You can never complete doing laundry, any more than you can complete cleaning your bathroom or complete eating. They are all cycles. The best you can do is complete a cycle of whatever you are doing.

Think of laundry as part of a bigger cycle of caring for your clothes, which is an extension of caring for yourself. There are any number of things you do to care of yourself during the week, from getting good sleep to exercising to…well, washing drying and putting away your clothes. Laundry is all part of that cycle you do every day and week to take care of yourself. It’s part of completing that cycle. Don’t think of it as a separate activity. (Unless you actually love doing laundry. :))

Completing the cycle: a smarter way to clean up and stay clean.

P.S. For more on the “Complete the Cycle” Cleaning Method, read this.

I also thought that this piece in the New York Times has some good advice on  how to clean was good.

Finally, if it is all too much, the Washington Post has an article on how to fake clean your house. Hey, whatever works.

Yep, it’s the weekend. Time to clean. Here’s how to do it better.

If you are like me and somewhat dread cleaning on the weekend, perhaps you need an alternative approach. One approach to consider is to spread it throughout the week so when the weekend comes it’s not so bad. The problem with that approach I have found is that the week speeds by and you are left with all the cleaning piling up into Saturday and Sunday.

One way to deal with that is having a cleaning schedule. If that sounds good tto you, read this: How to Create a Cleaning Schedule You Can Stick to | Apartment Therapy. Lots of good tips there, such as “throw things out as you go”. After all, why keep moving things around you don’t want or dust things you no longer like. Trash them, or better still, give them to someone who could use them.

May your (laundry) loads feel lighter after you put that article into practice!