Review of How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis
As promised, here is my review of “How to Keep House While Drowning” by KC Davis.
Out of the gate, my takeaway from this book- it should be as popular (if not more so) than Marie Kondo’s “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up!”
Today, my goal is to explain to you why I think everyone who struggles with organizing and household maintenance should read this book.
KC Davis is a licensed professional therapist, and like all of us, struggled during the pandemic. She had the added layer of giving birth and dealing with the postpartum period right at the outset in March 2020. The way she describes this period of time in her life, which inspired the writing of this book, is a situation that almost everyone will find themself in at some point - survival mode. Her experience as a therapist lends itself to writing that integrates organizing and home maintenance strategies with a deep respect for mental health and well-being. Her main philosophy outlined in the book is:
“You don’t exist to serve your space, your space exists to serve you.”
First, let’s talk about how the book is written - at around 160 pages, it is a quick read. The author keeps each chapter super short and digestible, and even offers shortcuts for those who struggle with time or focus while reading. This makes the book incredibly approachable. In the print version, it is also printed with neurodivergent readers in mind - sans serif font and left angled o make reading text easier, with key points bolded, and literal interpretations of metaphors for clarity. The book is written with humor (a few curse words here and there, a poem about baskets) and perhaps most importantly, a tremendous dose of compassion. In fact, this book is the most compassionate guide regarding organization and household responsibilities I have ever read. The book overall flows well from one chapter to the next, although there is the occasional jump from topic to topic. I truly appreciated the personal anecdotes from KC’s life, which is helpful for readers (such as myself) who appreciate narrative storytelling. Perhaps even more importantly, the book offers specific, detailed strategies for different parts of your home that are designed to be extremely easy to both start and maintain. These additions are especially useful for those with executive function difficulties.
The parts of the book I was struck the most by were just the simple, clear acknowledgement of the work needed to maintain a home and care for yourself. There is so much shame associated for a lot of people regarding household responsibilities, especially for people who struggle with executive function. KC does an excellent job helping to reframe home maintenance tasks to be morally neutral. This book is truly the anti-perfectionism organization book, focusing instead on promoting strategies that are about progress and are truly based in real life, rather than an aspirational life. My favorite quote from the book that encapsulates this is
“You have full permission to do a little, do it with shortcuts, and do the bare minimum.”
Specifically regarding organization, there were two main things that resonated most with me, as a professional organizer.
You do not need to be tidy to be organized. Organization means having a home for everything, and a system to get items to their respective homes. Tidiness describes how quickly things go back to their homes - a tidy person might return things to their home right away, whereas a “messy” person might need to leave things out and put things away in larger “resets”. Sometimes people are messy because they are not organized (because things don’t have homes to return to, or the homes things have are not functioning properly) - and that’s where a professional like myself can come in to help get a space in shape. A messy but organized person will find their space less stressful and more functional - because they know exactly how to reset their space when it’s needed.
Organization does not need to be pretty. Basically, for 95% of people, organizational systems should be functional before anything else - and sometimes, the most functional system might not be the most aesthetically pleasing one. You will almost never find Pinterest-perfect photos of organization on my website or social media; that’s not real life. To me, having a system where things get put into their home where they can be found again is much much more important than having a system where all the containers match and everything is in rainbow order. Sometimes “pretty” organization actually complicates things and makes items harder to put away, which is the last thing anyone needs when in survival mode.
So as you know from the beginning of this post, I highly recommend this book to everyone. That being said, there is a subset of people that I think are particularly suited to this book.
People who are struggling with their mental health, whether that be anxiety, depression, or other issues.
People struggling with chronic illness, disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries, that affect their energy levels and/or mobility.
People who struggle with executive function, whether that be from a diagnosis like ADHD or autism, or any other reason.
People who are dealing with “survival mode” or challenging life circumstances - postpartum, grief and bereavement, job loss or financial stress, moving house, injury or illness, or any other crappy thing life throws our way.
I think most people could take away something from this book for their own lives, or if not for themselves, than for others in their life who might be struggling.
Stay tuned for my next review - Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki
