As someone who always have felt behind on house chores, who doesn’t enjoy cleaning, and typically has to let it get so messy that I get furious in order to find the energy to clean – this title caught my attention on Bookstagram.
Synopsis
After KC Davis gave birth to her second child, she didn’t fold a single piece of laundry for seven months. Between postpartum depression and ADHD, she felt numb and overwhelmed. She regained her sanity—and the functionality of her home—after one life-changing realization:
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. The secret is to stop following perfectionist rules that don’t make sense for you—like folding clothes that don’t wrinkle anyway, or thinking that every room has to be clean at the same time—and to find creative solutions that accommodate your needs, pet peeves, daily rhythms, and attention span.
Read this book to make home feel like a sanctuary again: where you can move with ease, where guilt, self-criticism, and endless checklists have no place, and where you always have permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished.
Thoughts
What this book has given me is a reframing of chores and the belief that my ability to keep up with them says something about my value as a person and parent. Starting to more and more see it as care tasks has also helped me understand why I struggle with it, as showing care and kindness to myself is something that doesn’t come easy for me. So the angry cleaning is gone which is a kindness to myself and to my family who doesn’t have to be around that energy anymore.
The thought process that this book initiated has also led me to investing in things that make our life a little easier. Making our home work for us, as the book says.
I bought a fairly cheap solution which allows me to clean and refill water and dry food for the cats once a week instead of something that I have to screen for and perform on a daily basis, while I’m late for work and trying to convince my kid to get out the door.
We have also finally decided to try out a cleaning service. It is a privilege to be able to consider that within our budget, for which I’m grateful. I’m already feeling a huge mental load lifting, because the mandatory things like work, childcare, and taking care of basic needs is already taking up most of the energy I currently have available on a weekly basis. I need more time for rest and fun things if I’m going to start feeling better, it has been a tough couple of years.
For some reason I thought that the only way to clean our cars was the way my dad used to – by hand at a manual cleaning station. It is something we used to enjoy together whenever I came over with my car, a little adventure away from everyone else where we worked as a team – him cleaning and me turning the wheel for the different steps, or running away from the water he would “accidentally” shoot my way. But I can’t and it is probably tied to feeling the loss of him in my world, so I’ve just started using automated cleaning stations and it feels good to see the cars, somewhat, clean. I also got a memory when taking my kid into the automated cleaner, when I was younger, that is how I used to clean the car with dad and it was so much fun to see my kid scream and laugh at the machine.
After reading this book I have become kinder to myself when it comes to our house. I clean in a new way, I feel more relaxed about the mess, and I question the way we organise things which means slowly things become easier. I appreciate that for me this book was a reframing more than hard mental work, like in therapy. It might not be that easy for everyone but I hope you give this book a try for even a little bit of relief.
Emilie's Bookish Thoughts 