Why a book about cleaning is also a book about creativity.
Everyone must read "How to Keep House While Drowning."
Look at the time right now. 3 hours from this moment you could be done listening to the audiobook of KC Davis’ brief masterpiece “How to Keep House While Drowning.”
I can think of no greater ROI on your time than this. Here’s why:
A book for anyone who is struggling to stay on top of their to-do list? That’s a book for all of us. Whether we experience anxiety, depression, fatigue, ADHD, a lack of support — or not — the world on its own makes it hard to feel a sense of “doneness” with household tasks. And that’s even before factoring in the pressure to have an Insta-worthy home.
A therapist with ADHD and small children, author KC Davis, offers an astonishing new take — “being messy is not a moral failing.” Such a simple statement, but at odds with much of what we’ve internalized about orderliness being a reflection of our goodness.
She offers creative workarounds, every one of which I reimagined as related to creative projects in addition to household chores.
Here’s a sampling:
Laundry: We tend to think of laundry as something that is done or not done. Yet Davis points out that we are constantly making clothes dirty and refilling the hamper. We are never done and that’s okay. You don’t need everything clean at once. You just need to ensure that you (and possibly other family members) don’t run out of clean clothes on any given day.
Creative projects are also in a constant state of doneness. How could we honor this more than trying to see everything as either started (kick-off) or done (launched)? How could we stagger things so that we always have “clean clothes” — breathing room to start on new things while being in the last mile of other projects?Clean in quick bursts: Davis encourages setting a timer for 15 minutes and knowing you can stop once the alarm sounds. You know who else advocates for this? Julia Cameron. Her recent book “Write for Life” positions timers as the dynamite to blast through writer’s block. And both authors recognize that often we enter a groove — whether cleaning or writing — and choose to keep going when the timer sounds.
Chores as self-kindness: Rather than see chores as a reflection of your worth, Davis reframes them as kindnesses to your future self. “I should wash the dinner dishes or I’m lazy” morphs to “how good will my morning self feel stepping into a clean kitchen?” I remember hearing the author Liz Gilbert apply this same thinking to her book research. When she has a spark of inspiration for a plot detail or character development, she captures it all on a file card stored by chapter of her outline. When she reaches chapter 7, she’s got a head start and speaks aloud “Thank you, past self!”
On TikTok (under the awesome name “domesticblisters”) Davis has 1.6 million followers. That’s a whole lotta people drowning and in search of a life raft. How many of your teammates would find solace in this book’s message? How many managers would find newfound understanding of ways to support neuro-diverse team members, especially those now having to broadcast their homes on company zooms? How healing would it be to host a company Book Club for this title? Invite people to fold laundry during the discussion or unapologetically sit next to piles of unsorted laundry.
Until next time, remember that culture is the new creativity.
I love this and your teasing into creative practice. Without reading the book (yet) I have a different spin. Sometimes the administrative "to do" list (pay bills, make appointments...) is so long that doing cleaning house is a relief -- stop and dip your hands in warm soapy water to wash dishes, while drifting your gaze out the window; relish in the accomplishment of getting the crumbs out of just one drawer. It's not about doing anything; it's about giving your busy brain a break.
Unrelated, my library doesn't have this aa an audio book :-(