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

How to Keep House While Drowning (2022) is a self-help guide by KC Davis. In the book, Davis offers a compassionate and practical guide to managing household tasks and self-care, especially for those living with mental health conditions. She emphasizes the moral neutrality of care tasks and advocates for integrating mental wellness into daily routines.

This guide uses the 2024 Penguin Books edition.

Content Warning: The source text discusses mental health conditions (including depression and ADHD), trauma and abuse, substance abuse, chronic illness and pain, and body image and weight-related pressures.

Summary

How to Keep House While Drowning presents gentle, effective methods for managing household chores and self-care, while emphasizing the importance of incorporating mental health into daily routines.

In Part 1, Davis emphasizes the book’s design and reading approach tailored for neurodivergent readers. She highlights features like the use of sans serif font, left-angled text, and short paragraphs with main points in bold to enhance readability. Additionally, she offers literal explanations of metaphors for clarity and provides a “shortcut journey” through the book for those unable to read it entirely. In the Introduction, Davis shares her personal experience of giving birth during the COVID-19 pandemic and the overwhelming challenges that followed, leading to feelings of failure and depression. She dismantles the myth of laziness and explains the complexities and barriers to completing care tasks, such as executive dysfunction, trauma, and lack of support. Davis stresses the importance of viewing care tasks as functional rather than moral obligations, as she advocates for self-compassion and practical strategies to manage household tasks without overwhelming routines.

In Part 2, Davis delves into the concept of care tasks, emphasizing their moral neutrality and encouraging a shift in perspective to see them as functional activities. She introduces the idea of treating oneself with kindness, especially when planning for future tasks, and challenges conventional self-help methods that often overlook individual differences. Davis offers practical approaches like the Five Things Tidying Method to simplify overwhelming chores. She promotes a compassionate internal dialogue to counter negative self-talk. She also differentiates between organization and tidiness, advocating for functional, personalized systems over aesthetic perfection.

In Part 3, Davis refers to the practical and emotional aspects of managing household and self-care tasks. She discusses the cyclical nature of care tasks, urging readers to focus on functionality rather than perfection. Through tools like the “9 square” grid and the metaphor of juggling glass and plastic balls, she provides strategies for prioritizing essential tasks and managing time and energy effectively. Davis addresses the unique challenges faced by women and the societal pressures they encounter, emphasizing the importance of self-compassion in tackling everyday chores. She offers gentle skill-building techniques for tasks like laundry and dishwashing, and practical solutions that fit individual needs. Davis also highlights the significance of maintaining personal hygiene, even under challenging circumstances, and encourages readers to care for their bodies with kindness, regardless of their feelings toward them.

In Part 4, Davis explores a range of ideas centered around self-compassion and practical approaches to managing care tasks. She emphasizes the point that one’s worth is not tied to the state of their home. Davis introduces strategies for simplifying tasks, like layering bedsheets or using specific cleaning tools, and stresses the significance of allowing oneself to rest without guilt. She addresses the division of labor in households, advocating for fairness and mutual respect. Additionally, Davis delves into the challenges faced by individuals with physical limitations or trauma related to care tasks, offering practical advice and emphasizing the need for self-compassion and adaptability.

In the last section, Davis presents various strategies and philosophies for managing care tasks and self-compassion in the face of societal and personal challenges. She discusses dealing with critical family members, advocating for finding personal rhythms over rigid routines and maintaining functional spaces rather than striving for perfection. Davis introduces concepts like “closing duties” to prepare for future ease and the distinction between skill and support deficits. She emphasizes the moral neutrality of outsourcing tasks if one can afford it and challenges societal norms around exercise and body weight. Davis also highlights the importance of self-compassion during low-energy periods, reframing rest as necessity rather than failure, and prioritizing joy and functionality in daily routines. Through these discussions, Davis encourages readers to adopt practical, compassionate approaches to managing their homes and lives.