"How to Keep House While Drowning", KC Davis

[igenlode]

I flicked through this little book in ten or fifteen minutes (I'm a speed-reader and was skimming what is already a short volume), attracted by the title, but was sufficiently struck by it to continue all the way to the end. All the stuff about "Be kind to yourself", dancing to joyful music, and "Tell yourself you are a worthwhile person even if you don't believe it" doesn't work (I don't believe that sort of thing if I hear it from someone else, so definitely don't believe it when I am myself mouthing the words and know that I am lying with cynical intent), and the advice "Don't worry about the environment, just throw everything away, use disposables if necessary and start with a clean slate" is completely impossible for me (though I can see the liberating mental effect -- and there are probably uncompleted projects that I should simply get rid of rather than vainly hoping to return to some day) But the practical advice is, much of it, practical.

• Have a to-do list by all means, but don't put items on it that you never actually get round to doing, however much you might aspire to the perceived necessity. The outcome is exactly the same either way -- the tasks don't get done -- so having them on the list simply adds the additional ill-effect of failing to get any sense of achievement from actually completing the other tasks.
  
  
• The five-step prioritization method: select a limited area (e.g. a table-top, a corner of the room) and sort the items in it into five categories.
  
  
  
  1. Rubbish
     
  2. Dirty dishes
     
  3. Dirty clothes
     
  4. Things that have a place
     
  5. Things that don't have a place
     
  
  
  Dump categories 1,2 and 3 in the appropriate place to be dealt with later. You can then put category 4 items back where they belong, and either decide on a long-term location for category 5 items or else just dump them all into a box or basket for now. Either way, you now have an area that is no longer full of things that shouldn't be there. Repeat according to the amount of time/energy available.
  
  
• Put storage where it is needed rather than where it is conveniently out of the way, i.e. if you drop your clothes on the floor when getting undressed, have the laundry basket next to your bed (or an *extra* laundry bag next to your bed) so that you can drop them in there instead. If books pile up on your bedside table, have a "Just Returned" bookcase next to your bed. If your table is piled with dirty dishes, have a spare washing-up bowl so that you can stack them up in that (and then carry the whole lot down to the sink some other time).
  
  
• It is generally the *starting* that is the main problem with 'getting round to it', not the actual task. So make the first steps smaller. Instead of summoning up the amount of decision necessary to go and do the washing up, just bestir yourself to go and stand in the kitchen. Once you get there you may or may not have the resolution to actually address the contents of the sink, and if you don't then you can go back. Or tell yourself that you will just wash one or two items, and can make another trip to wash some more later. But the odds are that the real difficulty is in breaking off whatever you are currently doing as an avoidance tactic, and that once you have done so the actual task is relatively simple, so the important thing is the token effort required to do the 'going' in the first place.
  
  
• Some success (e.g. tidying one table instead of the whole room) is better than no success.
  (NB as with the previous point, these are things that I already *know* and apply when it comes to writing fiction -- but not to housework! Somewhere in "Gaudy Night" Dorothy L. Sayers -- via her mouthpiece academic characters -- talks about the thing (or person) that you instinctively take pains over being your proper 'job'...)
  
  
• It is much easier to do tasks for other people than for yourself (I am excellent at repairing other people's clothing!) so try regarding 'Future You' as another person and do the work that will make that person's life easier. (I'm not sure I can manage the necessary double-think to achieve that one, although I can visualise the shift of perspective involved -- I think it's another 'how to motivate yourself to do anything at all' tip rather than a 'how to get a functional space with as little effort as possible' one.)
  
  
• When you rest, rest *properly*. Make an active decision not to do any of the things that you could theoretically be doing instead, instead of frittering away your time unproductively in failing to do them, and don't feel guilty about it. Even if it's not paid work, you still deserve an official clocking-off time, or you will end up morally and mentally exhausted.
  (On a different scale, this is the basic idea of 'holidaying at home': go out and do tourist-type things instead of simply not turning up for work for a week. I'm very conscious (as all the people around me jet off for multiple trips abroad) that the fact that I don't have paid leave and don't leave home means that I effectively never get a 'holiday' *at all*, because basically if I'm not going away then I don't have an excuse to get time off from the constant endless tail of uncompleted tasks...)
  

I think I have already long since internalised the advice about your space being there to serve you rather than you serving it -- at least so far as cleaning the bathroom is concerned! (I almost *never* 'clean the bathroom', as the author agonises about doing, because the only thing I do in it is wash, which doesn't create a lot of visible dirt -- dust in the corners gets cleaned out once in a blue moon, and the horizontal tiles at the end of the bath are really getting to the stage when they will need to be wiped down due to the grime that gradually drifts in through the open window, but the areas that get regularly sluiced with running water don't generally need a lot of attention. Bath rings -- thanks to hard water -- are pretty obvious and get wiped round before I get out of the bath. The sink and toilet bowl get cleaned as and when they actually look dirty, and the floor gets swept after I cut my hair :-p)

The trouble is that my areas regularly end up in a state where they *don't* serve me, i.e. if I can't put anything down in the kitchen (or elsewhere) because all the horizontal surfaces are occupied and don't have any teaspoons because they are all sitting at the bottom of the sink! I'm afraid I used to worry more about hygiene than I do now, having discovered that apparently I don't get ill from neglecting to boil my cloths or sterilise my counter-tops; experience taught me long ago that eating food that has been on the floor does me no harm, however dirty -- within limits, presumably! -- the floor in question. But I do still try to wash plates after I have licked them clean, and not to dip dirty utensils into preserves that I expect to last long-term.

Other practical suggestions, although less so in my case:

• It is easier to do a job alongside someone else, or just with someone else to talk to, so get a friend to come over when you need to tidy up.
  
• Don't be ashamed to pay a professional to do housework if it gains you peace of mind. It is no more morally reprehensible than paying someone to clean your gutters for you.