Book: How to Keep House While Drowning by K C Davis

Style: Informal, personal, short chapters, advice

Content: Advice on routines and methods for keeping your house tidy and functional when you are struggling either due to neurodivergence, disability or mental illness. Some practical tips but a lot of advice on how to reframe self-talk and how you think about your house work tasks.

Why I recommend: It’s a very quick read and not packed full of how-tos and practical advice but what it does do is extremely effective in my opinion. The emphasis on reframing your thoughts has been very effective for me. The takeaways from the book were things I could easily implement without feeling like I now had a long overwhelming to do list.

Some key things off the top of my head:

• Tidiness or untidiness is morally neutral. Don’t assign morality to how good you are at keeping a tidy house.

• Think of tidying a room as resetting it. When a room is no longer serving its purpose then it just needs a little reset.

• Accept that some days you can’t do very much at all. That’s okay. You can plan for it, however. Davis, as I recall recommends having closing tasks (end of day, before going to bed). She has two versions: the ideal and the survivables. I’m not sure how she actually words this but that’s what I’m calling it. Basically, what is the bare minimum you can get away with doing before going to bed?

• Frame things as being kind to myself. How can I be kind to myself today? Washing the dishes would be kind to future me as I won’t have to wakw up to dirty dishes, for example.

• Use unconventional methods if they help. Make your house make sense to you and make it work for your purposes. Your house should serve you not the other way round. If you want a dustpan and brush/ hoover/ laundry basket/ general dumping basket/ whatever in every room then go for it.