How to Keep House While Drowning

How to Keep House While Drowning.

Now, if this doesn't resonate with all.

Of us, I don't know what title would.

The biggest thing I've learned about cleaning when you feel stuck or paralyzed is just to find something you can do in that area that you don't feel paralyzed doing.

KC Davis is the author of this book and if you don't already follow her on TikTok, here's what you're missing.

My kitchen likes it. If I warm her up a little bit. She likes a little bit of foreplay. I can't just go in there and start putting things away willy nilly. That's not respectful to her.

I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good inside. We'll be right back. I'm Dr. Becky and this is good inside. I'm a clinical psychologist.

I'm a mom of three and I'm.

On a mission to rethink the way we raise our children.

Casey, I am so excited to be talking with you. And maybe we can just begin by telling everyone a little bit about who you are and the types of things you're interested in.

My name is Casey Davis. I'm a therapist. I am an author. I wrote a book called how to Keep House while Drowning, which I wrote after starting my TikTok channel. So I post as Domestic Blisters, which is a pun on domestic bliss. And it's kind of like the way I say it's like domestic but make it chafey. Like not so much ideal but like kind of a struggle. It hurts a little. And so I post about how to care for yourself and your space when you are struggling, when there's barriers in your life, whether it's mental health or physical health or maybe just like a hard season of feeling overwhelmed.

And I think I just, if it's okay, I wanna add to that because you do all that and you do something I think so much grander, which is I really think you help so many people re access their good enough worthy feelings inside themselves and to separate those feelings from how their space looks or what they are or are not doing.

I think one of the big differences between when I talk about systems for the home and what maybe other books or other creators or self help people talk about is I don't have a program. I don't have a, okay, 1, 2, 3, 4 steps and your home will be clean. I have really a philosophy and it's kind of based on two main ideas. And the first is that care tasks are morally neutral. So off the bat we're going to stop calling them chores, housework, and we're just calling them care tasks because that's what they are. They're just tasks that care for us. And when I say they're morally neutral, what I mean is that the way that you do them, whether you do them, how often you do them, whether you struggle with them, that is no reflection on whether you are a good or bad person, whether you are a success or a failure. And then from there we sort of start to build this self compassionate messaging about, you know, what does my house mean about me and really try to get away from this idea that I exist to serve my house and instead lean into the idea that my house exists to serve me. And we kind of just. I like to give people permission to break the rules and do things only kind of good enough and just get creative about the way that they can change their environment and their home and the way that they talk to themselves to have a more functional space and a better quality of life.

Making my space work for me rather than me working for my space. What's an example of the difference? Just to delineate for everyone.

Sure. So let's just take laundry. For the longest time, I am someone who has just always lived with sort of like clothes scattered all about my house or my room. Right. I will put laundry into the washer at a random time. When I realize that I've sort of run out of clothes. I typically forget that I've put it in the washer. So I'll come back like three days later when it smells like mildew and then be like ah, rewash it, get it in the dryer and then it like sits in the dryer for a few days. And then you know, I'll be living out of that pile of clothes kind of the whole time thinking like, oh, I really should go fold those clothes. And I'm also being very reactive to my home. So I don't have a plan for when I do laundry. I just wait till I've run out of clothes on a Monday morning when I'm freaking out cause I have nothing clean to wear. And I don't have a plan for when I do my dishes. I just sort of wait until I can't find a dish. I I don't have a plan for when I change my sheets except for the night that I crawl in and realize that there's like cat litter in the bed because my cats have walked all over it. So it's sort of this two part one is that I started thinking about me and my brain. So I have adhd, I have two little kids. And so I started creating little patterns for myself where I was like, okay, I'm just gonna like change my sheets every Thursday. And maybe like the general advice out there is like, well, you really only need to go every two weeks. But my brain doesn't compute like two weeks at a time. But my brain can compute like every Thursday. Every Thursday, Every Thursday. And the other part that I realized that was kind of stressing me out was that at the time my kids were 1 and 3, so like I was still dressing them. And it just sort of hit me, like, why am I going to three different areas in my house to dress people that I am the one dressing? Like that seems silly. And so I did what I call a family closet where I put all of our like family's clothes into one big closet. And then I stopped folding clothes. Like I just put in some baskets and I was like, you know what, I'm just going to sit on my butt and in eight minutes I could have like three loads sorted so that like everyone knows where their clothes are. They're clean, they're accessible, and they're not on the floor. And that's what works for me. It's not my job to like do laundry the way that laundry, quote unquote should be done. It's my laundry's job to live within a system that works for me. My lifestyle, my brain, maybe my barriers or my disabilities. So that's kind of what I mean by that.

I mean it's so person centered. Like that's what I, I keep thinking that like you're centered in that moment and that task. Right. Coming from the questions, what works for me, what serves me? And even that every Thursday, changing your sheet schedule, like I know you well enough by now to know you're like, I'm doing that. Not because that's better than someone who changes every other week. Right. But every Thursday is the best fit for me. It really centers what works for you. Your desires, your needs. And is that right?

Totally. And I was recently actually on my channel talking about patterns versus routines. And a lot of people like to say, oh, like adhd, people like routines. Or like that new mom should get on a routine. And like that's not actually true. I don't actually like routines. I like patterns and rhythms. And when I explained the difference, the difference would be that like routines are usually like connected to a time. So like, here's my morning routine. A routine has multi step phases. So like Wash your face, then brush your teeth. Might be a routine, but, like, there's a lot of steps in that. Right. But the biggest thing comes down to this. A routine is an expectation, and a pattern is a tool. So I might develop that. When I clean my kitchen, I have a pattern and a rhythm that I do every time I clean all of the trash and throw it away. I put all of the dishes in the sink. I put up all the things that go in the cabinet, and then I take all of the dishes from the sink and I organize them, still dirty, with likes. With likes. Then I open my dishwasher and load them in category at a time. Then I sweep my floor, and then I go from left to right around wiping everything down. And I don't have to do that at any time. I don't need to make sure I do it every night or every Sunday or every whatever. But when I find, oh, I'm noticing that my kitchen isn't functional anymore, I want to reset my kitchen so that it's more functional for me because I am a person that deserves a functioning kitchen, not because kitchens should look a certain way or because that means anything about me to have a messy kitchen. I go in with this pattern, and what it does is that it kind of puts me on autopilot. I don't have this decision paralysis. I'm not having to think about what I'm doing. It moves pretty quickly. So that is something that serves me. That's a tool that I use to help me.

As you're talking about this, it feels like a dance. Like, there's. There's like a dance to it. Like, you know, like, if we.

Well, that's why you say rhythms.

Yeah, right. Like, you're on the dance floor, and I don't know. For me, I'm not, like a dancer professionally, but if I'm dancing, I'm not like, oh, I didn't do that exact move I wanted to do. I'm such a horrible person. It's like, lighten up. Like, I kind of know what I want to do. And a couple moves I got down, you know? But it doesn't have to be so prescriptive. And I think that prescriptive nature, you're saying, is what is so equated with morality for so many of us. And then the irony is, then we activate the shame spiral. Shame is a freeze defense state. We can't do anything in that way. Then we see that as more evidence that we're a horrible person. And then we're just, you Know, in an abyss.

Totally. And this idea that, you know, I don't need to self improve to reach the mountaintop of worthiness, like I'm worthy now. The only reason I'm trying to quote unquote, improve anything is, is because I'm a person that deserves to function. Like, I deserve to wake up in the morning and roll into getting my kids ready without like feeling the stress of like searching for the cup they were drinking for yesterday that is probably curdled milk under the fridge. And now I'm like trying to hand clean it while they're like crying because they're hungry. Like that's stressful. I'm not a bad mom if that happens. It's just stressful and it's more enjoyable and functional for me. And the cool thing about rhythms over routines, and this was some. I learned that language from a friend of mine who's a psychologist, Dr. Leslie Cook. But when you think about rhythms, like you can have an every Thursday rhythm, right? Like you can have that pop song that is a predictable beat and it's, you know, the same thing, the same pattern. But then you can also have like a jazz rhythm that isn't predictable, isn't every Thursday. And so I can have a rhythm that is every night I like to do these three things, but I can also have a rhythm that is. I don't necessarily have a plan for my bedroom, but when I start to notice my bedroom isn't serving me anymore, I have a pattern where I get four baskets. One's for trash, one for laundry, one's for dishes, and one's for things that belong into another room. And then I start at the top, right? All the trash, all the laundry, all the. And I'm fine that I'm getting things done quicker. I'm not struggling with motivation, I'm not struggling with the task initiation of, ugh, I need to do that. But it's going to be so awful. It just really circumvents a lot of barriers that we feel about sort of getting the momentum going in addressing our space.

So I'm one for cheats a little bit and hacks just because we all need some time savers around here. So I keep thinking about this as you speak. So tell me if this is in line with your approach. I find the word should to be a great clue word. It's just a great word to pause and get a little skeptical about. So should is a very outward gazing indication. I should means like I am literally looking at an expectation that someone, an individual Society, I don't know, has put on me that's a should clue. And that also really links with morality. Right. Because when I should do something, there's some connection with like, I'm a better person if I do this thing and I'm a horrible person if I don't. Like, I wonder if we all start to catch our shoulds. So for me, it might be like, I really should clean up all the toys that are still out after my kids, you know, went to bed. I don't know. And if we note that and say, okay, there's the should, I feel like there's something you do where, like, you help us replace it with like an I deserve statement instead of I should clean up the toys. Like, I deserve to walk in this room and not trip on things and fall down. Right. And maybe if it's not even that messy, I'm like, oh, well, I already have that. Oh, like, maybe I am just going to go to bed because maybe I already have the system that works for me.

Yeah. Because I deserve a functional kitchen, but I also deserve rest. And so some nights I get to choose to not touch the kitchen at all because I also deserve rest. Or I get to choose to do some part of the kitchen so that I can rest. Like, I get to choose to have good enough or the bare minimum. And so I do. I want to replace this should, which is about performing to expectations, this sort of performative housekeeping that I think a lot of us do, and really replace it with the I deserve. And I think in general, even when we're talking to other people or talking as experts, I think that we should replace should with benefit. So don't tell me what I should do, tell me what the benefit of X is. Right. So even if you're talking about parenting things like don't say that I should back, you know, forward face or rear face my kid. Say, tell me that the benefit of rear facing my kid for four years is that their spines aren't fully grown and they're more likely to be injured in a car like that has this incredible respect for the person hearing that information that like, I can hear that and then make a choice that's right for me and my family. And obviously I want to take that benefit and that one's an easy clear cut one. But if we think about other types of things that, you know, oh, hey, tell me about the benefit of, you know, waking up early and doing a morning meditation. Okay, great. So you can tell me all about the benefits of that and I get to listen to that and then go, that's great. However, the benefit of an extra hour of sleep for me right now during this season when I've got A, B and C going on, is actually a more important value to me now. And I'm gonna choose to utilize that benefit over this benefit. And just has so much more respect for the listener as the captain of their own ship, as the expert in their own life to prioritize and deprioritize things in a way that best serves them well.

It's also not controlling, right? And as humans, we don't like to feel controlled. Our kids don't like feeling controlled. We don't like feeling controlled because then we have to battle for our own existence and our individuality. So we have to take the other side of something. I often think about this with potty stuff. Like the way we say to kids, like, you have to go to the bathroom before we get in this long car ride. I'm like, if my husband ever said that to me, I don't even care how much I would pee in my pants. I would definitely not go to the bathroom. Cause I would have to show him, hey, I'm my own person and I'm defending my existence by resisting. So no, I'm not going to the bathroom. Right? And a should is really, you should even that face your kid backwards or you really should get up in the morning and exercise. You know, you would feel better, right? Someone else has to hold onto the other side again, just to feel like an independent person. But you're right, showing someone or naming a benefit, right? First of all, you're owning it from your own perspective, like, well, here's what we know, or here's what I know about getting up and exercising. And it leaves someone else still able to make any decision and feel like an independent person. Because you're not doing it from a place of trust. You're doing it from a place of almost just like, here's, here's some education on the matter. I trust you to then make your own decision. I think that that's so powerful and.

I think it decreases the shame that we feel too.

Right?

And I think that's one of the problems with sort of the commercialized self help industry is that they'll take something that is a good thing, like waking up early and exercising. Like, there are a lot of benefits to that, but they moralize it by making it the sort of superior choice over any other benefit. And then the implication is, if you're not choosing that Benefit if it's because you're not healthy enough, you're not enlightened enough, you're not smart enough, you don't have enough willpower, you don't care enough, when none of those things are probably true, you're probably just recognizing that in your own life there's a different benefit. Like none of us can have the benefit of all the things all the time, right? Like we have to pick and choose. And if you're not, like, if I'm in a place where I'm not actually just like picking a benefit, I actually just, I want to do this thing, I need this thing, but I can't seem to do it. Well, that's still not an issue of morals, that's an issue of ability. That's an issue of someone that needs support and skills and compassion and non judgment. They don't need the extra weight of I am failing because I can't make myself do this. Self help advice.

And I think for everyone listening, it's really powerful to think about both sides of that because as soon as we say to ourselves, okay, I got up this morning and I did work out and like I said, finally feel in some ways like a worthy, good person. That's as dangerous as staying in bed and you know, kind of shit talking yourself, right? Because motivating yourself or rewarding yourself in some ways from a place of morality only sets you up for the flip side. And I know you talk about that a lot too in terms of rest, right? Like resting from a place of shame, right? Can you, can you speak to that? You'll, it's, it's your idea, so I'll.

Let you explain it. So yeah, I think that what happens to a lot of people is that they don't feel like they're allowed to rest until everything's done. And the problem with that is when it comes to care, tasks which are cyclical and ongoing, they're never done, right? Like we're not children, we don't have a finite list of four chores that we can then go play. It's never done. And when you have this moralized hierarchy of it's always the more responsible, better matured person thing to go do that task than to sit down on the couch. You will do and do and do and do and do. And then you'll kind of like start to not be able to do that anymore. And you'll start sitting on the couch and you'll start laying down and you'll start procrastinating and putting things off. But what will happen is that as you are resting there, you will be feeling so much shame about the fact that you are resting and not quote, unquote, working that you won't actually get any rest. And then you'll feel like you want more rest and you'll go, well, I just laid on the couch all day. How can I not sort of rally myself to do one load of laundry? And what we do is we. The conclusion we make is, I must not be working hard enough. I need to push myself more. But in my experience, for most people, it's counterintuitive, actually. You need to rest more, but you need to rest fully and with permission because if you were fully rested. People are afraid that if they allow themselves to rest with no strings attached, they'll just rest forever and just, like, atrophy into their couch. That will not happen unless you have other sort of disorders or disabilities happening that need more support. If I lay around, at some point, I go, now it doesn't feel comfortable to lay. Now I want to do something now I want to get this done. And so I think that resting in shame, I find that people that work in shame rest in shame.

And I'd love to layer a couple things on top of that for everyone listening. Number one, just. I think it's powerful to reflect on our own upbringing. And if you came from a house of, we don't sleep in and come on, there's more than you can do. Or it's even almost more indirect, like commenting on other families laziness or, you know, in our family, the early bird gets the worm, right? Things like that. We pick up on these values in our own family of origin and who we need to be. Then the part of you that wanted to rest and pause and, you know, exist without productivity, you had to really shut down that part to adapt to your system. That was actually very adaptive to do. And I actually think as adults, we need to start from a place of gratitude, like, oh, thank you, you know, kind of system inside me for figuring out that it was dangerous in my family to say, I wanna sleep in, or, no, I don't wanna clean the house right now. I really need to sit on the couch. And so as an adult, our bodies don't know that it's no longer 1980 or 2000. Right. They don't understand that timeframe. And so now, when you're an adult, if it's really hard for you to get that rest that Casey is describing, there's something from your past playing out in your present. And it's actually pretty easy to be shameful about that. What's wrong with me? I can't even rest right. We're doubling shame on shame on shame.

Yep.

And I. I think the opposite messaging is really important, which is, okay, something powerful is happening right now. It is deeply uncomfortable for me to sit on the couch. And I'm learning something. I'm right now noticing this part of me that was really helpful for my first, I don't know, 18 years. It was really helpful to actually say those words, thank you. Like, thank you for your years of service. You will probably continue to feel uncomfortable as I sit here for 60 more seconds and still in that discomfort. I am showing you that it's safer now, that I can trust the part of me that needs rest, that it won't subsume the part of me that wants to get things done. And I think that that's a really different intervention than what most of us usually do when we're struggling to rest. And coming at it from a place of gratitude and understanding of our history, I think is often the unlock to practice this new skill. And it really is a skill, the skill of pausing and getting rest.

And it reminds me whenever I talk about self compassion and sort of, you know, okay, I'm looking at the dishes in the sink and I'm saying, ugh, I'm such a failure. Okay, but what else could that mean? What's a more compassionate message? Because it could also mean that you have fed your family for the last three days. You have fed yourself. But what's funny to me is that whenever someone comes to me and says, I'm really trying to work on self compassion, but I'm really struggling, I'm not very good at it. Like, how do I start? And the funny thing is, it's like you start there. You start with being compassionate with yourself about the fact that you're pretty shitty at being compassionate with yourself.

Mm. What is something someone listening could, like, do or think or consider differently right after this that really would have a big impact on their lives the way that I think your framework does for so many people?

Well, I think kind of the way the book approaches this whole subject is talking about some of the, like, internal influences that we can start to shift how we're talking to ourself, recognizing the messages we're giving ourselves when we see that something needs to be cleaned or we don't want to go do that laundry, that care tasks are morally neutral. That, you know, and that first step is just observation. It's just Awareness. It's not trying to change anything. That first step is just recognizing how hard we really are being in our inner dialogue and our inner monologue with ourselves. And then from there, you can move to, you know, how can I take steps to be more compassionate, to put in a sort of a purposeful, different message? And then the other part of the book is really focused on the practical help. How do I tackle a mess? What kinds of things could I do with my dishes that would be easier? And I think that when people are looking for, okay, practically, where do I start? There's a kind of a couple of things. One of my favorite little breakdowns is the five things tidying method, which is, you know, when we look at a room and we're feeling really overwhelmed and anxious about how much is in that room and how messy it is, reminding ourselves that in any room, there are only five things. Trash, dishes, laundry, things that have a place and things that don't have a place. And I find that if we start and go category by category. So instead of just picking up any item and then trying to put that one item away, which tends to lead us to feeling overwhelmed, feeling decision fatigue, wandering about the house, getting distracted, not making enough progress, we stay in that room and just go category by category. And that is a really great starting point for people who are kind of overwhelmed and don't know where to start. And then the other one is when I talk about closing duties. That's my favorite sort of maintenance rhythm, which is it came from because I was a server, and there's always, like, a joke in the world of being a waiter that there's a morning shift and a closing shift, and the closing duties that the night shift does are to set up the morning shift for success, right? So they'll cut the lemons and roll the silverware and vacuum under the tables. So everyone who's worked at a restaurant knows that feeling of walking into the restaurant in the morning for your shift and looking around, and there are no lemons cut, and somebody didn't roll the silverware, and you start screaming across, who closed last night? Right? You just want to wring their necks. And it started off as a joke on my TikTok channel where I would walk down the stairs in the morning and I would look at the kitchen and I would go, ugh, who closed last night? The joke, of course, being it was me. And so when I started to think about closing duties for my house, this finite set of things to do that would put my kitchen back to functional and I would do them by thinking about what do I need for the first few hours in the morning. So I'm not trying to make the kitchen perfect or even clean or you know, I'm really just saying what do I need first thing in the morning. And I determined that actually I need only a few things. I need enough dishes to eat breakfast, I need enough counter space to safely prepare food. I need an empty trash can with a bag in it. And then, you know, maybe I need to pack a lunch or I always add a kindness to self. I want to pre make my coffee. And if I do those things every evening and I do them as a kindness to my future self because morning Casey deserves a functional kitchen in the morning. That started this snowball effect of not only gaining a more functional space, but gaining a better relationship to self, a better relationship to motivation, a better relationship to care tasks. And it has really changed my life. And the key thing for me because I was a stay at home mom when I started this is that I would put my children to bed at 7 or actually my husband would put the children to bed and I would use from 7 to 7:30 to do closing duties. And then I clocked out. It doesn't matter if the playroom is still a mess, if the laundry is undone, if I have to move a bunch of toys off of the couch to sit down after that. Once I made the kitchen functional for the next day, I clock out because I deserve to clock out. I deserve to be off the clock and fully rest and have some time autonomy, not jumping up and having to do things.

I love your ideas, both of those ideas. And the closing duty is huge. And you know, I think anyone who's listening might be familiar to things we've talked about on Instagram or in the good inside community. Cause one of the things I say there a lot is this, making coffee for myself, you know, for the next morning. But not from a place if I notice I really should get up and make that coffee, I'm like no, no, no, no, I'm not doing it from that place. Like what can I do for my tomorrow self, right? Like there's things I do to help my kids mornings become easier and I deserve to treat myself with the same compassion. And if it doesn't feel from that place, then I deserve to not make coffee that night and do something else. And again, that person centered approach of not I should, but what do I deserve? That mindset shift sets you up for compassion and motivation rather than doing the same task from a place of blame and shame sets you up for blame and shame. And I think we all know where that leads to and it's not pretty for any of us, right? So I always think that if everyone here takes just one thing from the conversation, noticing those shoulds and noticing what's the process in which I'm thinking through this task is going to give you more success, like true success than any amount of things you check off. Right? And I think your book lays out that framework and then does even more translate that framework into so many practical, actionable strategies. Right? I mean we could have a whole nother podcast. But your understanding of division of labor and division of kind of rest, you know, in terms of you and a partner and so many other things in your book, I think just make so many people take a deep breath and think like where has this information been all of my life? And thank goodness I have this now. And so thank you for spending so much time. Thank you so much for writing this really important book.

Thank you. This was wonderful.

Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me@podcastoodinside.com parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, confident and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Natt and Kristin Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Jill Cromwell Wang, Ashley Valenzuela, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle, struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.