How to Keep House While Drowning
A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing
Ratings46
Average rating4.3
15
A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing
Ratings46
Average rating4.3
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Wow, this book is incredible. Short and to the point, very accessible and useful for everyday life. I don't even know what else to say about it except I can't believe how loving and helpful it is. There are really good ideas in here.
Loved it. It really is a gentle approach to cleaning and organising. This is the best self help book i've read. It's short and it has a lot of actionable steps. it really focuses on you doing what is best for you to make your space functional. There are no hard set rules to cleaning and organising there is no shame or morality tied to doing chores. You do not live to serve your home, your home is there to serve you.
This book was just O.K.
I think that there are some good tidbits within here that can help people to clean and organize in a new way. However, with that said, this book goes out of its way to be “accessible”. I understand that this is in line with the premise of a “gentle approach”, it makes it hard to stay interested in the book, especially as an audiobook.
I also think this book is laid out somewhat weirdly. I feel like the 1st part could have been the entire book, because there's a point in which she just goes back more in depth into the specific rooms she has. While this can be useful, a lot of those later chapters include fluff that was already covered in the first part of the book, where she talks over cleaning as a whole. This was why it took me a while to read this book, it was hard for me to turn on just to listen to the same thing again and again as I got closer to the end.
If you're struggling with cleaning because you get overwhelmed, I think this book is great. But I am unsure if you need to read the entire book to get what you need to out of it.
