Quick Hits

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Overall rating: 5 stars’Overall rating: 5 stars

Format reviewed: Kindle

Would read again: Yes!

Intended Audience: Those with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and I would say anyone going through a hard time in general. This book is very neurodiverse friendly. Davis offers literal explanations of metaphors used, summaries, and bolding to highlight important points.

Is this book a lead magnet? No. Davis does offer a depression/ADHD house cleaning course for $14.99 on their website. However, this is never mentioned in the book that I can remember and it’s the least offensive online course offering I’ve personally ran into. I had to seek it out and the “sales copy” is two sentences explaining what it is and who it’s for.

In-Depth Perspectives

Before my daughter was born, I was one of those people who read 60+ books on average per year. Then the last trimester set in and I barely had any energy for reading 5 minute articles on the web let alone pick up a book. Several friends told me I’d get back into reading during maternity leave because you can just read to your kid and that’s all you’d be doing.

I didn’t have energy for that. Postpartum depression hit hard and about all I could muster was non-stop Great British Bake Off episodes. But one book caught my eye: How to Keep House While Drowning.

I felt like I was drowning, but I wasn’t sure if the book would be for me or not. But when I opened it up and the author, KC Davis, spoke of going through the same postpartum experience, I knew I wasn’t alone.

This is one of those books that I feel like should be required reading for humans.

Here are my main takeaways:

1. Separate cleaning from morality. You are not bad if your kitchen, bedroom, or house are a mess. My daughter has gotten into Cocomelon recently and I heard a song I hadn’t heard since I was a little kid about the three little kittens who lost their mittens. When it gets to the bit where they have to fess up to having gotten them dirty, they’re naughty kittens. This idea of being bad for something getting dirty is so ingrained it’s sung to tiny children. But it’s not true.
   
2. Cleaning is about getting things back to functional. We have this weird idea that once we clean it’s done. But cleaning is cyclical in nature because our homes need to serve us. So things are either in a state of functioning or dysfunction. Again, it’s not tied to morality, which is such a breath of fresh air. It’s just a matter of whether our spaces are able to serve the functions we require of them.
   
3. Different levels of cleaning are more than acceptable for when you feel off or are sick. This one has been a game changer for us as we’ve gotten every cold under the sun since our daughter started daycare.
   
   I’m always saying, “We’re going by sick rules right now.” Which for us means, clothes get sorted into the right drawer, but they’re not folded. You need clean clothes. Wrinkle-free is optional.
   
4. Go easy on yourself when you’re sick. This may sound very similar to the last point, but for me, it’s more about self-compassion.
   
   For some reason putting lotion on when I was first postpartum was too much, so I bought the kind you throw on in the shower. It probably took the same amount of time as putting regular lotion on after the shower, but it mentally felt like I was giving myself a break, so I did it. Same went for buying flossers instead of using regular floss string. Anything that takes a little mental load off is perfectly acceptable when you’re sick.
   
5. It actually addresses trauma around cleaning from childhood! I’ve never heard anyone talk about this concept other than myself (and my siblings because I’ve asked them about it too). But trauma from how adults criticized cleaning and the tactics they used to get kids to live up to their cleaning standards is real. I really appreciated that it was brought up in the same compassionate way the Davis tackles all the other topics in the book.

Final Thoughts

There were so many tools that I picked up in this book that a year later I still think about them and use them every day. I can genuinely say that we have a cleaner home than we did before we had a kid. Not that you’ll ever see it spotless. It’s certainly not! As someone who likely has ADHD a lot of my cleaning and organization projects get left half done. However, it’s become more and more functional because of the mindset shifts I picked up from reading this book. 

How to Keep House While Drowning lands in my rare category of books that deserves a place on the kindle AND a place on my bookshelf.

Resources: 

Davis, K. (2022). How to keep house while drowning: A gentle approach to cleaning and organizing. Simon Element.

I was an avid bullet journaler for well over a year. Notebooks upon notebooks were filled with my to-dos, my calendar, my thoughts about life. Everything.

In the early days of bullet journaling it felt like my brain was being emptied of all of its stress. I’d literally wake up in the night worrying about something and then go, “Wait, that’s already in the journal. It’s okay to go back to sleep.”

And then I got back to my Z’s easier than it’d ever been for me. 

I journaled through my miscarriage, journaled through nearly losing my mother to COVID, journaled through my career transitioning from support to marketing. I wrote everything out whether it was a dream, insight, or something I needed later. 

But when my cat and best friend of 17 years passed I couldn’t bring myself to face the paper.

My systems fell apart in my grief

If you’ve never had a constant furry companion for years on end, this may seem a little silly. But Logan was with me from the time I was 17 until just days before my 35th birthday. He was there through me finishing high school, finishing college, dating, my first apartments, getting married, owning a house, etc.

He was there for me more than anyone else in my life because he could be right there.

So when he started getting old, losing his hair, being diagnosed with heart disease and skin cancer, you better believe I was there for him as long as possible. Probably too long for him, but never long enough for me.

I broke when he died. And if I’m honest with myself, I’m still broken.

My years-long routines flew out the window. Getting up at 5am, not happening. Reading personal development books, nope. Meditation, I couldn’t do it.

Everything made me cry. The last thing I wanted was birthday wishes the week after he passed, I could barely bring myself to shower let alone think happy thoughts for the next year.

Coming out of the fog

Then a colleague shared an image at work.

I couldn’t respond because I was too broken by it, but it helped me realize that my perfect systems were built on me and my willpower. I didn’t leave room for the 30 seconds of teeth brushing. It was all or nothing. 

I insisted on meditating with no sound or guidance.

I filled out my bullet journal and migrated my calendars and to-dos faithfully on my own brain power… until I couldn’t because the grief hurt too damn much.

All of my goals, all of my productivity, everything I worked so hard to build up on my own crumbled with a goodbye I’ll feel in my soul forever.

And I realized I needed help to be the most basic form of Jules I could be.

So, I did two things in the spirit of doing things poorly:

1. I logged back into Headspace and let the meditation coaches hold my hand through meditation. The course on grieving is one of the best I’ve ever gone through.
2. I started using Todoist again

(For those not familiar, Todoist is an app that lets you make to-do lists and set up recurring tasks. You easily check items off as you go through the day and it gives you a little hurrah when you hit Todoist zero after checking everything off.)

How I leaned on Todoist as a form of self-care

Todoist became a form of self-care for me because I needed someone to tell me what to do and when to do it. I couldn’t keep anything in my head because that was swimming in pain. 

So I started simple. I added the tasks that I needed to do to keep the lights on. 

• Give Lola probiotics in the morning
• Take your pills at night
• Wash your hair
• Meditate for 10 minutes

And then I made them recurring tasks so they’d pop up automatically when they needed doing.

Past me was telling present me what needed doing that day. I’d be reminded of what was important and feel like I did something for myself. And at the very least, I kind of had an idea when I washed my hair last.

As I was able to process my feelings more and start to get back into my body, I was able to build on this simple system. I also know that if I ever need to get back to just surviving, I can cut it back down to those tasks that must be done. 

Today, my Todoist system is slowly working its way into the Second Brain system that Tiago Forte teaches. It covers my areas of responsibility (those basic things I have to maintain standards in like health, relationships, etc), projects I’m working on whether work or personal, and it gives me a place to put stuff into the backlog so that I’m continually making progress. 

Since I’ve started down this route of letting other systems help me, I’ve caught up on all my past due medical, dental, eye appointments, started this website and am currently working on another one with my brother… all while navigating my professional life and a life that now includes in-laws in the home.

What can I say? Capricorns might be a little ambitious…

Some final thoughts

Now none of this is to bash on the bullet journal system. I was similarly ambitious in that system too! And I look over at my journal with guilt because I genuinely enjoyed it. But it was something that I shared with my cat Logan. He was always in my lap while I scribbled away at my plans and it’s been hard to go back knowing he’s not there. 

I’m sure I will get back to it eventually, when I’m ready. But Todoist can back me up this time. 

What this is about more than anything is allowing help when you need it. Self-care isn’t all massages and pedicures. It’s taking personal responsibility for all the areas of your life, so that you can live it as best you can. Sometimes that’s living at ¼ speed because you’re broken and sometimes that’s going all in at 100 mph because you have the wind at your back. 

I needed help and to let myself do things imperfectly, so I leaned into support apps like Headspace and Todoist. Slowly over time, my perfectionist self is starting to like having other systems in place to help pick up the slack.