How to Keep House While Drowning

A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing

An NPR Best Book of the Year | USA TODAY Bestseller

This revolutionary approach to cleaning and organizing helps free you from feeling ashamed or overwhelmed by a messy home.

If you’re struggling to stay on top of your to-do list, you probably have a good reason: anxiety, fatigue, depression, ADHD, or lack of support. For therapist KC Davis, the birth of her second child triggered a stress-mess cycle. The more behind she felt, the less motivated she was to start. She didn’t fold a single piece of laundry for seven months. One life-changing realization restored her sanity—and the functionality of her home: You don’t work for your home; your home works for you.

In other words, messiness is not a moral failing. A new sense of calm washed over her as she let go of the shame-based messaging that interpreted a pile of dirty laundry as “I can never keep up” and a chaotic kitchen as “I’m a bad mother.” Instead, she looked at unwashed clothes and thought, “I am alive,” and at stacks of dishes and thought, “I cooked my family dinner three nights in a row.”

Building on this foundation of self-compassion, KC devised the powerful practical approach that has exploded in popularity through her TikTok account, @domesticblisters. The secret is to simplify your to-do list and to find creative workarounds that accommodate your limited time and energy. In this book, you’ll learn exactly how to customize your cleaning strategy and rebuild your relationship with your home, including:

-How to see chores as kindnesses to your future self, not as a reflection of your worth.
-How to start by setting priorities.
-How to stagger tasks so you won’t procrastinate.
-How to clean in quick bursts within your existing daily routine.
-How to use creative shortcuts to transform a room from messy to functional.

With KC’s help, your home will feel like a sanctuary again. It will become a place to rest, even when things aren’t finished. You will move with ease, and peace and calm will edge out guilt, self-criticism, and endless checklists. They have no place here.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"With compassion, hard-earned insights, and touches of humor, therapist KC Davis offers relief to the overwhelmed. Her voice is warm and understanding; whether listeners are struggling with the pandemic’s aftermath or depression, Davis offers supportive ways to care for the home — and the self. With exhausted listeners in mind, Davis keeps chapters short and maintains a pace that can be readily absorbed. As she provides shortcuts and helpful recaps of main points, Davis throws a lifeline to listeners who are drowning in piles of dishes or laundry. Having been there herself while experiencing postpartum depression with a toddler, she offers advice that rings with the conviction of lived experience and is packed with creative work-arounds that will help listeners to challenge negative self-talk."

[ADD, anxiety, depression] So glad I found this.

As someone fighting to crawl out of a 4-year wallow of anxiety and depression related to my ADD, I am struggling with feeling overwhelming guilt and self-disgust at not being the income-earner I had been up until I couldn't handle the thought of going to my professional job in the mornings and quit with no back-up plan.
I was struggling with immense guilt over the past 2 years I've spent trying to piece myself back together while only being able to fulfill my "emotionally available" mom duties, and having very little extra energy to help my partner to keep up with the house.
I needed to hear what KC had to say in this book.
If you're feeling like a real piece of crap because you feel like you're not doing enough in your life roles, and you actually want to mathematically improve the realistic chances that you'll stumble into the occasional illusive wave of productivity, you probably will get a ton from this book.

I follow domestic blisters on tt

So, I follow KC on tt and really fell in love with her gentle way of caring. I saw that she wrote a book and struggled with buying it cuz it’s not very long and I try to use my credits for long expansive books so my $ goes further (e.g. read time vs. cost/credit). I bought it and Buddy, was it worth it! I struggle with everything she’s talking about. And have over the past few years tried to learn to be gentle with myself in the way KC it talking about. So….. it’s been a long road and I haven’t gotten very far (kinda) I have become more gentle with my self talk but have struggled with my executive function and task initiation. She really gives very good lil pointers to help. Today I decided to listen to her book and work on my front hall which was full of boxes and basically unlivable and unusable. I treated myself gently and took breaks and listened as I worked through the area making it functional. It’s still not perfect but it is perfectly functional and I’m proud of it and myself. Next the front room. I will be just as gentle and careful and give myself permission to stop at anytime. It’s morally neutral. Thank you KC (aka domestic blisters) you are helping me be the kind supportive unconditionally loving parent to myself that I needed. It’s never too late. It’s been weirdly emotional and that ok.

EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED!

Having ADHD I struggled to keep my house in order after having kids. This book really helped me to create a method for keeping my house in order by putting things in a sequence, and it worked! Absolutely has helped me keep order at home and worth the listen!

I needed this!

I think so many of us need to make this paradigm shift. I cannot say enough good about all the points the author makes. I felt seen, understood, and looked after as a neuro divergent mom with a neuro divergent husband and daughter. Anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed and not good enough because their home doesn't resemble the gold standard, you need to read / listen to this book! Thank you KC Davis! I will come back to these concepts again and again!

life changing

it's like she pulled back the curtains on my brain and told me everything is going to be OK.