How to Keep House While Drowning

In fact, I do not think laziness exists. You know what does exist? Executive dysfunction, procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, trauma, amotivation, chronic pain, energy fatigue, depression, lack of skills, lack of support, and differing priorities.

You do not have to earn the right to rest, connect, or recreate. Unlearn the idea that care tasks must be totally complete before you can sit down. Care tasks are a never-ending list, and if you wait until everything is done to rest, you will never rest.

No one ever shamed themselves into better mental health.

Forget about creating a routine. You have to focus on finding your rhythm.” With routines you are either on track or not. With rhythm you can skip a beat and still get back in the groove.

You are not required to contribute to be worthy of love and care and belonging. We know this is true because you could be connected to a ventilator unable to contribute anything (and in fact be using lots of resources) and still be a worthy human being. We all have seasons of life when we are capable of contributing more or less than the people around us.

Remember that anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.

It’s stressful to try to summon up 100% motivation sitting on the couch. Let yourself use 5% motivation to do 5% of the task. Maybe you keep going. Maybe you don’t. That’s ok. Anything worth doing is worth doing partially.

You are not a failure because you can’t keep up with laundry. Laundry is morally neutral.

That is the life-changing result of internalizing that you do not exist to serve your space, your space exists to serve you.

Care tasks exist for one reason only… to make your body and space functional enough for you to easily experience the joy this world has to offer.

You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.

there are actually only 5 things in any room: (1) trash; (2) dishes; (3) laundry; (4) things that have a place and are not in their place; and (5) things that do not have a place.

Perfectionism is debilitating. I want you to embrace adaptive imperfection. We aren’t settling for less; we are engaging in adaptive routines

If you go through your whole life thinking that every time you clean the fridge it has to be perfect, every time you take a shower it has to be perfect, every time you do a work project it has to be perfect, you will burn out and hate your life.

I so often look back on these seasons of limping through and say to myself with tenderness, “Wow, I was really doing the best I could with what I had.” And that’s the funny thing about doing your best; it never feels like your best at the time. In fact, it almost always feels like failing when you’re in it.

the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass. When you are struggling to function, it’s important to identify what are your glass balls.

There are seasons of life when we just can’t get all of our needs met, but the mental shift of seeing rest not as luxury but as a valid need helps you get creative, or at least validates it’s okay to mourn how difficult life is right now.

thank you for your concern, but I am not taking any feedback on this issue right now.” Or my personal favorite: “The key for me being able to begin to run a functioning home was when I stopped talking to myself the way you are talking to me right now.

When someone demands the benefits of being a part of a family but refuses responsibilities to that family of which they are capable, it’s a form of entitlement that exploits the other members of that family.

For a lot of people, finding a method that bypasses the most executive functioning barriers or that makes a task a little less intolerable is better than what’s “quickest.” In the end, the approach that you are motivated to do and enjoy doing is the most “efficient,” because you are actually doing it and not avoiding it.

more often than that the message says, “You were so kind and so gentle, it made me feel like I could really do it.” It was the kindness that finally motivated them.

Forget about what pop psychology did to the term self-care. All it means is to care for self. Your body, your mind, your space. And here is the great news: You do not have to care about yourself to care for yourself.

You deserve kindness and love regardless of how good you are at care tasks.

I realized that I only ever wanted to be skinny because I wanted to be loved and happy. But I already have that. Skinny hasn’t seemed very important to me since then.

quit beating yourself up for having a skill deficit when what you really have is a support deficit. Self-care was never meant to be a replacement for community care.9 Striving to “be better” will exhaust the little energy you have, and it’s probably time better spent letting yourself cry and sleep and finding small pockets of joy to keep you going.

success depends not on having strong willpower, but in developing mental and emotional tools to help you experience the world differently.

Shame is a horrible long-term motivator. It is more likely to contribute to dysfunction and continued cycles of unsustainable practices.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes, a YA author tweeted: One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance writing and kids, and she said that the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass. When you are struggling to function, it’s important to identify what are your glass balls. Feeding yourself, caring for your children or animals, taking your medication, and addressing your mental health are all examples of glass balls. Dropping them would have devastating consequences and likely cause you to drop all the balls. Recycling, veganism, shopping local, and avoiding fast fashion are plastic balls. They may be important, but they will not shatter your life if you drop them in the way the glass balls will. Plastic balls will fall to the floor and stay intact so you can pick them up again. Glass balls will not.

Take a look at the history behind the term self-care sometime. Start with googling Audre Lorde. It wasn’t always about yoga and hobbies.

It is not uncommon for abusive caregivers to use chores as a manner of punishment and humiliation, as a way to withhold love and inflict pain. This has a profound impact on the little self, and the messaging carries into adulthood. This usually has one of two effects: (1) you avoid care tasks because you see them as punishment and now that you are an adult you can finally get free of them, or (2) you are constantly and even obsessively cleaning because you have internalized the message that you are dirty or failing if anything is out of place.