KC Davis is a licensed professional counselor, author, speaker, and the person behind the mental health platform Struggle Care. She offers a profoundly refreshing perspective on home management that’s far from the all-or-nothing standard we’re so accustomed to. We dive deep into KC’s story, exploring the journey from shame-driven perfectionism rooted in her past struggles with addiction, to discovering a compassionate and gentle approach to maintaining her home.
KC shares how her diagnosis of ADHD at 35 played a significant role in understanding her relationship with cleaning and organization, eventually leading to innovative, shame-free strategies for home maintenance. We discuss the importance of functional living spaces, moving beyond societal pressures and the shame associated with not meeting unrealistic standards of home perfection.
Join us as we discuss how to break free from the shame cycle in home maintenance, fostering a relationship with our living spaces that supports us as individuals, rather than succumbing to overwhelming expectations.
Ep. 525 on being Cleanish, Ep. 586 on How to Make Time
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: KC Davis, welcome to About Progress.
KC Davis: Hey, thank you for having me.
Monica Packer: I feel like it’s really rare to find someone out there who has a not all or nothing approach to cleaning an organization. It’s so black and white online that it can become very demoralizing and also, , an impossible standard where you just, you know, Keep hitting yourself over the head with a shame stick that you can’t be this Pinterest kind of perfect in maintaining your home.
So today we’re going to be talking about how to have a gentle approach to anything, home maintenance, whether it’s cleaning or organizing, or anything in between. But I wanted to start a bit more with your story and how maybe. You also fell for what I just shared of thinking that you were somehow morally a failure because you weren’t able to have a Pinterest perfect home.
So what was that story like for you?
KC Davis: So it’s interesting, like I’ve looked back on sort of the journey of my life and I, and a lot of what it has to do with is I, I’m not someone who would, I used to say, Oh, I’m not a perfectionist because I’m not a perfectionist when I’m painting something or when I’m, it was doing homework or I didn’t need things to be perfectly organized.
But what I was, was a moral perfectionist, like anything that had to do with being a good person, being an ethical person, like being a good mother, like that to me, I felt like I had to be perfect. And I think it stemmed from I had a really severe drug addiction when I was a teenager and I was sent to a troubled teen rehab and I spent a year and a half impatient
and When I left there, I joined some support recovery groups, but there was this real emphasis on behavior modification and like being a good person and not being selfish and not, you know, being entitled and arrogant and all of these kind of like moral characteristics that sometimes get attached to addiction and which is fair.
I sure was , arrogant and selfish a lot of the time. Right. Um, but. There was just this, , almost oppressive culture of , always be growing, always be looking at your motives, always be , and don’t get me wrong it’s good to be self aware and I really needed that.
But it’s it went beyond self awareness and to almost obsessive navel gazing. Like every decision I made, I had to be like, was that right? Was that wrong? Was that selfish? Should I have done that better? Um, and I mean, that continued up until my like early twenties. Before I finally took a step back and was like, this is driving me insane.
Monica Packer: I mean, how could it not? I mean, I think about even the teenagers in my life and how they don’t have that skillset, but to be in such a vulnerable age, to have that perspective forced in you, that would be very transformative, but not in the. Best way, you know, to the cell level.
So how did that, how did that come out then in terms of home management as an adult?
KC Davis: Well, I think one of the things that happened when I was getting sober was, you know, they were looking at these characteristics about me, that I was messy, that I, didn’t want to shower, that I did all of these things. I didn’t brush my hair. And. There was a lot of focus on this needs to be fixed.
Right? We, we want you to shower every morning and we want you to do chores every morning. We want you to learn how to clean things and learn how to be responsible. And so it kind of gave this black and white these are the things you do that are irresponsible and they’re tied to your immaturity and your addiction.
And so we want to get you healthy. It’s like healthy member of society. And that part of that will be learning to Be very responsible when it comes to doing your laundry and keeping things picked up and cleaning and things like that. And , I think what happened was , I got sober, I got out of rehab and then I stayed sober and I did like embrace this journey of therapy and healing and, and I was very much like a different person in a different place.
Um, and I was still messy.
Monica Packer: Yeah.
KC Davis: I still didn’t really do my laundry a lot. And I still put off, you know, washing my hair for days at a time. And I think I just sort of, slowly realized one day Oh, maybe being that messy scatterbrained person isn’t the moral failing I always thought it was.
Because I’m doing pretty good in life in terms of looking at my actions and growing and changing and healing. And maybe this is just a part of my personality.
Monica Packer: And I feel like that’s something you’ve had more answers to as an adult. Isn’t that right? Like actual real legit answers that go
KC Davis: Oh, yeah. Yeah, like I, I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 35 and all of a sudden it was like, Oh, there’s a reason why I will take the milk out to pour my kids a drink and then I’ll hand it to them and then I’ll walk out of the kitchen and not even think about the fact that I didn’t put anything away until I see it next.
There’s a reason why I, you know. You know, as much as everyone’s been like, well, just, you know, just, um, pick up after yourself, just never set anything down. Just always put it away when you take it out. I would try to do those things, but it would take so much concentration that I was , exhausted at the end of the day.
And I was like, this is not sustainable to be someone who , before you leave the room, make sure you put. Three things away, my brain just, it would never go to a place of Oh, now it’s a habit. Now it’s automatic. And I realized that that was because of ADHD. So
It wasn’t until I had my second baby that things really became kind of not functional in my home where it was like, there’s nothing wrong with being messy.
But I still deserve to have a functioning space and it’s not functioning anymore. You know, our laundry can’t get done and things are so messy. We’re tripping over ourselves and I’m not happy with the state of it. And so having to approach like, Hey, I want something different, but from a different place, then I need to be different and better because this is bad was really new to me.
Monica Packer: That’s a big shift to go from, I need to do these things in order to be this kind of person to, I need to do those same things, but because it supports me as a person.
KC Davis: Yeah, I deserve to have a functional space and I don’t have to go about it the way that other people do that have different kinds of brains. I had tried that right? Just pick this. And so I had to start thinking creatively about okay, what would work for me? And at first it was really simple things.
I realized I just need like a bigger trash can.
Monica Packer: hmm.
KC Davis: And I need to have a laundry basket in every room of the house because when people would say well, if you get clothes everywhere, just you know, tell yourself that as soon as you take off your clothes, you take them to the laundry room or whatever.
And I’m like, okay, I’m never going to do that. And instead of beating myself up about I’m never going to do that because I’m such a lazy person being like, I’m not going to do that. So let’s think of something else. And the something else was like, what if I just had a laundry basket in every room so that I can, Put it into the laundry basket as soon as it comes off me or my kids clothes.
Right? What if I just had a bigger trash can? Because I’m someone who’s not going to take the trash out every day, , but if I had a bigger trash can, I wouldn’t need to. You know what I mean? It was like simple things like that,, I’m never going to be someone that picks up as I go, but I’ve found ways to deal with okay, so, don’t think about it.
But then, , when it’s time to pick everything up come up with a way to be able to do it all at once. Does that make sense? I can’t multitask. I can’t think about making dinner and think about picking up dinner. I can think about what I’m doing. And then, you know, after a couple of days, I can be like, Oh, things aren’t functional.
Let’s take 45 minutes and get it functional again. And once I found out ways to like, get over that feeling of being overwhelmed and find approaches that work for me, all of a sudden, my home started being functional again in a way that was sustainable. That didn’t feel like I was like cosplaying as
Somebody else. Right.
Monica Packer: No, trad wife cosplaying,
um, necessary. And you
know, I, your approach is so gentle, but I would also describe it as creative because it wasn’t about the prescriptions that other people were putting on you and everyone like you and me, it was more about what works for me. And that was the one question.
I feel like we all just need to start with. What would work for me to have a more functional home or a more functional laundry system or a more functional cleanup system. So we’re going to get to some of those more practical tips, because even those right there, I’m like, Oh, tell us, tell us more on those. But first let’s talk about our relationship with our home and how it’s less about a relationship with the space.
And it’s more reflective of a relationship to ourselves. You talk about how we have a relationship with our home. I just want to hear more about that. Why do you think we have this relationship and what what’s going on there?
KC Davis: Well, I, what I noticed is that a lot of resources out there about cleaning or minimalism or organization, like they tend to talk about like your relationship to your house and your stuff and almost like anthropomorphizing your stuff. And it was like, it was really shamey to me. I remember one time listening to someone say you know, when I, when I stare at this unmade laundry, it’s like my laundry is telling me.
That I haven’t been responsible today or something, right. Or it’s you know, your, your, your, your home is a reflection of your mind. And if your home is messy, it’s because your mind is messy or, , like things like that, one time I had a really messy house in my video and someone was like, have some self respect.
Monica Packer: Huh.
KC Davis: like that it’s about how much you respect yourself and all these things. And so to me, that was very shaming. And what I know about shame is that it is the opposite of what you need when you’re trying to get unstuck. No one has ever shamed themselves into better functioning or better mental health or better skills.
And so I had to flip that and be like, okay, what kind of relationship really works? And I finally came up with this paradigm shift. It’s I don’t exist to serve my
Monica Packer: Hmm.
KC Davis: My house exists to serve me. And so I get to stage my home and, and set up my systems in a way that best works for me.
, I was a stay at home mom and, and you know, my job was like laundry and dishes and things. And it’s okay, well I signed up to make sure that my kids always have clean laundry. I did not sign up to make sure they never had dirty laundry.
And I had to go to that gray place. Like things aren’t black and white. Things aren’t done or not done. Things aren’t, good or bad. They’re just, they’re functional or they’re not functional and there’s all sorts of space, even in between those. So, like, when I realized, okay, I can’t seem to get laundry done.
What’s the step that’s stopping me? Well, it’s the folding. I hate folding laundry. And so I would procrastinate that, procrastinate that. And yes, it might be valid to say well, let’s figure out why we procrastinate it and find out these tools for, you know, doing that step. And it’s or what if I just stopped folding laundry?
What if I just went right from take it out of the dryer to put it in the drawers? And then all of a sudden, I didn’t have any issue getting laundry done and my clothes were organized and I knew where they were and it was a lot of stress taken off of my shoulders because I changed the system to work for me instead of changing myself to work for the system.
Monica Packer: So the, what I love so much about what you share is it’s not prescriptive. And what’s hard about what you share is that it’s not prescriptive because
we can’t spend the rest of our time saying, well, here’s the ways that you are going to keep house, but we can’t give them more principles and principles that you came to after the, after the birth of your second child and realizing your home wasn’t functional.
So I want to talk about those principles that are going to help them figure this out for themselves. What are my own prescriptions? How can I create a functional home that is matched with me? Um, but can you first start with, how would people know that you’re functional? If their home is not functional, because they might be over moralizing, even that word functional and might be thinking, well, I have a messy room somewhere in
the house, or someone else might think non functional is the whole house is chaotic.
So how can they define that for themselves? That something is functional or not?
KC Davis: So I would think of it as a spectrum. Mm hmm. And it’s going to be unique to every person. So I would say that the baseline functioning that really kind of applies to everybody is safe and sanitary.
Monica Packer: Okay. Mm
KC Davis: Right? Like spaces need to be safe and sanitary.
And then beyond that, it’s your comfort level. Are you able to use the space and the way that you would like to use the space?
And so my example to that is if I have so many things on my countertop that I go to make lunch and I’m looking at it and I’m stressed out. Okay. And I’m not talking about I’m stressed out because so much stuff out makes me anxious. I’m talking about I’m stressed out because there is physically not room on the counter for me to make this, right?
Then I would call that not a functional counter space because a counter space is for doing things on top of it. And if there’s so much stuff on it that I can’t do things on top of it, now it’s not functional. When I think about laundry, the point of the laundry cycle is to create clean clothes.
So if you’re creating clean clothes, then it’s functioning. Now there might be parts of it that still bring you stress. Like for eight months after my second was born, it’s okay, we have clean clothes, but I could get them like washed and dried. And then I would pull them and they would sit on the floor of the laundry room in a big, clean, wrinkly pile.
And every day I would be like searching through it for clean clothes. Now, was that functional or not functional? Well, I mean, it’s a spectrum, it is safe. It is sanitary. It is producing clean clothes. Now they’re wrinkled and it is stressful for me to find them. Right. So, but baseline, it is kind of baseline functional.
And so I don’t have to stress about it’s bad. I need to fix it unless I’m at a place where I go, you know what, man, I would love for the experience of getting clothes in the morning to be less stressful. And then I can begin to think about, I could make it. Um, more functional. What if I put all of these clothes into baskets instead of drawers so it was easier for me to see?
I don’t worry about folding them. And then what if I even brought them all into a family closet? So instead of going to three different closets to, you know, change myself and then change my two year old, and then change my four year old. What if I just had one closet where all of our clothes were so we went to one place changed and wow, that’s really functional for me.
Right? So it’s, it’s various different steps. I would say it’s like your health and safety and then it’s your comfort and then it’s your pleasure. And then it’s like removing layers of stress from your life. It might be functional for you to have dishes in the sink, unless it gets to the point where it’s not sanitary, like there’s, you know, new stuff growing or sometimes I’ll get to where I can’t use the sink very well because there’s such a mound of dishes and I go, okay, this isn’t functional anymore.
It’s not as if we want to replace good and bad with functional, unfunctional, right? As if you’re only worthy of your space is functional. It’s more about thinking like, what is my experience? With this space and with this task. And the last thing I want to say is that it is about parts of the house.
My home is functional. That does not change the fact that we have a study that is not a functional study. Like we moved in. We shoved those books in there. There is one clear little corner where my husband’s desk is that he sits, but it functions as far as a place for him to sit and work.
It doesn’t function as a study, we need to get in there. And it was kind of like a storage space, but, but that’s not like making my home in general on functional to where like my family can’t function in our home. So it’s not black and white, but I think. When we think about how to think about it, it’s not about getting it right.
It’s about giving yourself a framework for looking at your space.
Monica Packer: Hmm. And that framework is what I think can be so transformational for the women who are listening because like we shared, it’s not a binary framework, it’s, it’s your personal framework. I feel like you already shared some principles there, you know, thinking about what is my experience with this space or this task? We can start there. What else can they do from here if they’re ready to, to really make their homework better for them instead of them working for their home?
KC Davis: So one of my big things is like, good enough is perfect. Like we don’t have to strive for this like Pinterest level aesthetic home. , we don’t have to strive for everything being done at the same time. , thinking about care tasks like dishes or laundry, or even picking things up as a cycle. Right. And so there are like various points in that cycle where maybe a dish is in the sink and then a dish is in the dishwasher and then a dish is being wait waiting to be put up and then the dishes in the counter and then the dishes on being used like it’s okay for a dish to be anywhere in that cycle.
We just want to find a way to kind of, tend to the turning of that cycle that works for us and everyone’s different there. There are people out there that do not want a dirty dish in their sink at any point in time, and that cycle moves very quickly. Uh, there are other people where it’s man, it’ll be days before we go through a full cycle of all the dishes getting washed.
Right? , and the key is. You don’t want to be turning those cycles so quickly that you’re exhausted and stressed out and you can never sit down and you can never live and you can never recreate, but you don’t want them so turning them so slowly that they don’t function. You don’t, you know, you’re going to eat and you don’t have any forks,
Monica Packer: Mm hmm.
KC Davis: And then I also think this idea of, you know, there’s going to be a great deal of people listening that are like, Oh, this is really helpful. And, and I want to get things more functional, but there’s also sometimes reasons why we are struggling with, care tasks that kind of go beyond just, Oh, let go of some perfectionism where we’re, we’re struggling with depression or burnout or grief or we’re postpartum or any of these things.
And. My other sort of like principle is that you can’t save the rainforest if you’re depressed and, and it doesn’t have to be depression. You can put in anything there if you’re chronically ill or these things where we sometimes get into this like eco perfectionism where like we are drowning in dishes.
It’s not functional. It’s a source of stress. Every day. We’re crying over how, you know, Overwhelmed we are, but we’re resisting just getting some paper plates. Maybe you need to have paper plates for a season,
, because we feel so guilty about the environment.
Monica Packer: Mm hmm.
In our community, we, we speak to anti perfectionist and one of the, the subset of our population is always surprised to learn their perfectionist because they would say they absolutely are not because they’re stuck in a holding pattern, because they’re waiting for the time, energy, or even money to do all that.
They stay stuck in the nothing, and the reason I’m bringing this up is because something that helps. The whole spectrum of perfectionists in our community is the idea to do something, not do all and not stay in the nothing.
It’s to do something. And with that, I would love any do something tips that you have that are your go tos, I’ve helped you around the home. I mean, you talked about getting a big, a big garbage can, like something like that. What are some do something steps that they could adopt right now that are kind of out of the box?
You know?
KC Davis: Yeah. So another one that’s, um, my favorite is I got a grabber.
Monica Packer: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yes, I’ve
KC Davis: And then I also, yeah. And I also have a stool that’s on wheels. Like it’s the kind that you would use like as a mechanic. And I find that so great because there were so many times where I know I needed to pick things up, but like I was so exhausted from kids all day and my back kind of hurt.
And it was like the idea of bending over a thousand times and then you feel you’d be like, Oh, I’m so lazy. And it’s okay, laziness does not exist. It’s normal to be tired after running around with kids. But if I could walk around and I, then I put my trash. Can on wheels. Also, if I could just walk around and pull my trash can and pick it up with my grabber, all of a sudden it went from being this really kind of awful experience of cleaning that I had to kind of like psych myself up into to this actually kind of fine.
Like I’d pop in my air pods. I’d put on a podcast and kind of pull my little trash can behind and my little grabber right? Um, in my, in our family closet. Once I got a stool that I could sit on and roll back and forth as I was putting clothes away. I was like, Oh, this is kind of nice.
Monica Packer: Kind of
fun.
KC Davis: yeah, it’s just like small things like that.
There were so many different things with dishes that I’ve talked about with people. I have a dishwasher, but I got a drying rack. And that was like my dirty dish rack.
Monica Packer: Oh yeah. I never thought
KC Davis: I realized is I get overwhelmed by the chaos of all the dishes in the sink.
, but if I like organize the, the dirty dishes before I load them up, then I don’t feel as overwhelmed. It’s almost like one step instead of multi steps. I’m never going to be someone that goes and puts it directly into the dishwasher.
However. If I put it in the dirty dish rack, and yes, they’re dirty, but it’s like you’re looking at it and just from a visual standpoint, it’s less overwhelming because it’s like plate, plate, plate, plate, plate, bowl, bowl, bowl, bowl, bowl, stacked on top of it. It’s like it all of a sudden you go and it’s oh, this isn’t that many dishes.
I can just do this real quick. It’s simple things like that. It’s small steps like that. And if you want it to get even smaller, if you’re really, really struggling, it’s okay, what if like before you put a dish in the sink, you just decided you were always going to rinse it off because there’s a big difference in how overwhelmed you feel both from a cognitive perspective, but from a sensory perspective, if it’s a dish full of clear, like kind of wet.
Dishes versus a sink full of, you know, at the bottom, there’s like wet bread and there’s like gross tactile and gross smells. And so, that 1 small shift of you do not need to go from, we just chuck it into the sink to now we’re the family that puts it immediately into the dishwasher, because what’s going to happen is you’re going to open it.
It’s going to be clean. You’re going to get overwhelmed. You’re right.
Just small, tiny, little. Steps small, tiny little steps. I think people, uh, I’ve worked with people before that, you know, they’re having trouble even getting out of bed some days, whether it’s from, pain or sickness or mental health issues and, you know, they’re having trouble getting in the shower and we talk about how, the point of a shower is to be clean.
So stop thinking so hard about how to get yourself in the shower and start thinking about how you can get clean, right? Whether it’s a sensory issue or it’s an ADHD issue or it’s a pain or mobility or standing. So, you know, if it’s standing and you get lightheaded, well, you can get a shower chair. If it’s a sensory issue, because you don’t like feeling cold, you can get a heater.
And these seem so simple, but we’ve never given ourselves permission to just ask ourselves what we need to make something easier to do. Because we feel like, I think especially as women, that We have to do this kind of boring task that is unpleasant and we just have to get over it. And the idea of making something slightly more pleasurable seems silly.
I should just get over it. But if you make everything slightly more pleasurable, slightly less boring, slightly less irritating, it’s going to have this overall effect of you not feeling it. And I always tell people that there are men being paid six figure salaries to go into Amazon warehouses and do this process to shave seconds off of, of systems.
And yet when a woman talks about doing it in their home, she’s lazy and she should just do it. She should just hush.
Monica Packer: Hmm.
KC Davis: It’s no, like we’re all overwhelmed. There’s not a time of the day. I have recaptured hours of my time by shaving small seconds off of these home task systems. I have reclaimed so much time that I would spend procrastinating and avoiding by just making it easier for me to engage in those
Monica Packer: Mm hmm. I love the whole spirit of make hard things easier.
And that’s just, and that kind of leads me to where they can start, because if they’re in that place of overwhelm, if they really don’t have much of any systems, I mean, I I’m thinking similar to. Where you felt like you were after the birth of your second child.
I really relate. I felt like I had that kind of year last year, after the birth of a child too. But it doesn’t have to be about that. Like you talked about mental health, addiction, pain. I mean, there’s things within our relationships or finances that can make it a really hard for us to function and show up to our spaces. So where would you advise that they start? Yeah.
KC Davis: step is to stop judging yourself for it being hard. What if that’s just okay? What if, even though you don’t understand why or how, or you think it makes you kind of pathetic, like you just admit it like, man, it’s hard to brush my teeth. Consistently, or man, I really dislike getting in the shower or man.
I walk by that laundry every day and it’s just like nails on a chalkboard to make myself fold those clothes, right? It doesn’t matter what it is. Just give yourself nonjudgmental permission to go. Yeah, that, that task sucks and it shouldn’t suck, but it does suck and it sucks so bad. I avoid it and I procrastinate and I don’t do it.
Um, and, uh, And then the second thing I think is asking yourself again, what’s the function and then what’s the smallest step that I can take to move in that direction. One sort of tip that I use when you’re someone who gets overwhelmed with a lot of mess is instead of thinking about, Oh my gosh, there are thousands of things here.
I think if you will tell yourself there are only five things in any room and then go down that list of five. And so the first is trash. dishes, laundry, things that have a place that are not in that place, and then things that don’t have a place yet. And this is how I tackle any room. It’s important to understand that there is a huge difference between tidying, cleaning, and organizing.
And most of us don’t realize that, which is why when we go to quote unquote clean something, we’re doing like a mix of the three, and then we’re not getting anywhere. And we feel like we’ve been cleaning for hours and we look up and there’s not enough progress and we’re, you know, frustrated and we’re discouraged.
But cleaning is the process of removing like dirt and grime. You have to wipe surfaces down to do that, right? Um, or, you know, vacuuming or sweeping or dusting, that’s cleaning. Tidying is putting items away in the spot where they are supposed to be living, like where they permanently live out of the way, right?
Organizing is making the spaces where things are put away the most sort of like effective, efficient way. And so what people do a lot is that they’re trying to organize and tidy at the same time. And it doesn’t work because tidying is the act of putting things away. Organizing will always include taking things out, right?
So you pick something up and you go, Oh, this goes in my bedroom. And you go to your bedroom and you open your drawer and you go, Oh, well, I guess there’s not really a lot of room because there’s too many things in here, but I guess I should only keep these things. Let me take these things out and you have a bigger, right?
So let’s just talk about tidying. Tidying is how you just get a room livable. And when you tidy, there are only five things. Like I said, trash, dishes, laundry, things that have a place and things that don’t have a place. And you get your little trash bag or your little trash can or your trash can on wheels, your little grabber, and you just pick up all the trash that you can find until it’s up.
And then you can get a laundry basket or even a laundry basket on wheels. And you just pick up all of your laundry. We don’t need to go do the laundry. We don’t need to take it anywhere. We just need to get it up into the basket. And then let’s go by let’s get our dishes and let’s take all the dishes from the house and put it into the sink and leave them there and then move on to all the things that have a place, right?
You know the difference between picking something up off the ground and your brain going, Oh, the deodorant that goes on my counter and my versus picking stuff off the ground and going, okay, this is my Kindle. Uh, I guess I could put this on my right. And all of a sudden there’s like the stress ball in your head.
Cause you’re like, Oh, I don’t know what to do with this. And you feel like stuck. So we’re just going to focus on the things that we know have a place. Cause you can turn your brain off as you put those things away. If you come across something that doesn’t have a place, you don’t quite know where to put it.
You just put it in a little pile at the end of the day. Then you have this pile. Then you can sit down and think about, do I need all of this? Where should I organize this? Where should I put this? Or you can go now I need a nap and put it to the side. And so that’s a really easy process that most people can kind of latch on to, um, when they have kind of a big mess in front of them.
Monica Packer: Okay. That is so fantastic and makes so much sense, especially with the, the categories and I’m even thinking bigger picture if they have, you know, they think laundry or dishes, like the systems wise, if they’re like, Oh, I have no systems. I’m, I’m thinking back to what you started with and it was laundry, right?
Or,
you know, so is it just picking one and, and starting there? Yeah.
KC Davis: it’s, it is a process of experimentation and recognizing that if you try a system and it doesn’t work, it is not you who have failed. It means the system doesn’t work for you. Systems for your home will operate Relatively easily if they’re the right kinds of systems and if you have the right kind of support, right?
So you might this is it’s it’s it. This is, um, you’re meeting yourself in the middle. So you might need some medication. You might need some therapy. You might need some support or some help or some outsourcing and we want to make our environment accessible. Right. And so some things that I think work well is sometimes it’s downsizing your wardrobe.
Sometimes it’s going down. If there’s fewer pieces, you’re not as overwhelmed with the laundry process. It’s everything is quicker to wash, to dry, to put away. You’re not as stressed out in the morning when you go to pick something to work. Um, when I downsized my wardrobe to what could fit in one load of laundry.
It was a night and day difference because now I can do all of my clothes in one day and they’ll be done as opposed to at any given point, I have some clothes clean and some of the laundry, some of the, and I don’t know where anything is. And, um, so I think that’s a big one. And if you’re, if you’re someone that maybe your weight fluctuates a lot, you don’t know, you won’t be able to rebuy clothes or you’re just not ready to let go.
You can fake a downsize. Like you can pick out the things that you have reasonably worn for the last three months. Right. Oh, yeah, I’m actually just like rotating between seven shirts for the past three months. Right. And you can put everything else in a bin or move it to a different closet put it out of sight and be like, for right now, I’m going to deal with this downsized laundry.
Um, and then there’s things you can do going forward. I’m someone who, like, when I find a shirt that I, that fits and feels good from a sensory perspective, I buy it in nine colors. That’s fine for me. Right. Um, it’s all, it’s less stress for me. Um, I think that, uh, you know, it’s sometimes difficult to talk about outsourcing because yeah, it’d be great if we all had the finances and the budget to outsource everything we wanted and not everybody does.
And, and however, there is a huge issue with us as women that. Even if we have the budget to do it, we feel like we’re not allowed to, or we’re not supposed to, or we don’t, you know, we shouldn’t, it’s not that bad we feel like we have to like, deserve, or there’s like a level of suffering we have to be under to say, actually, I just want to send my laundry to the lawn, to the like, wash and fold.
Or I just want to get a housekeeper to come once a month or whatever. Uh, and there’s not you can just do that because you want to, if you have the budget um, I’ve never met a woman who feels guilty for taking their, um, car to get the oil changed. They’re never like, I should be doing this myself,
Monica Packer: Hm. Yeah.
KC Davis: but I have met a lot of women that feel like, well, I can’t, I can’t take my laundry, do a wash and fold.
I should be doing it myself.
Monica Packer: Yeah, I get that all the time. And, and it’s funny, I just did a whole, um, episode on how to make time for yourself. And one of the categories was outsourcing, but starting with free outsourcing, you know, within your own household and who can actually do what task, even if it’s different than the way you do it or not at the level of the way you do it. And also like cheaper, they’re, they’re, they’re picking up groceries. That’s actually outsourcing. It doesn’t have to require a ton of money. And I think everything you’ve shared today has been so both hope giving and really doable. And that’s what I want women to take away is if you are in a space where the systems aren’t in place and the home is not functioning, with what KC shared today with, you know, not judging that it’s hard.
Let’s just start there. Stop judging that it’s hard because it is, and it’s valid. It’s valid that it’s hard for you. And with that, have the courage to be creative. It is. And just start somewhere. Try something. And with that mindset, you can, you can do so much. And I was wondering if you just have anything else that you would want to add?
If there’s one thing you can do, only one thing, what would that be? Yeah.
KC Davis: do for this process is to embrace self compassion. Um, and self compassion is very different than self esteem. Self esteem requires that you like yourself and think good things about you. Um, and self compassion, you don’t have to like yourself. You do not have to care about you to care for you.
Um, you don’t have to like yourself at all. You don’t have to be any better. You don’t have to be worthy to make the choice to recognize when you are speaking cruelly to yourself and shamefully to yourself and instead speak compassionately to yourself and say, yeah, I’m having a hard time. People have hard times.
Um, sometimes I can find uh, actually a happy thing, right? I can look at my walls that maybe are a little smudged and have crayon on them and go from, ugh I wish my home looked like XYZ and go to, you know what? I have such creative kids. that are growing up in a home where they’re not scared to make a mistake.
Um, and, and all of a sudden it’s okay, what could this mess mean about me? Right? There’s all these boxes in the hall oh, I’m so lazy. Okay. But what else could it mean? Could it also mean that I’m a mom who has, who thinks about what we need? and is on top of ordering the things that we need.
That’s why there’s so many boxes, because I know when we’re going to need dog food. I know when they need new swimsuits. I know that’s why those are there. Um, and, and you can’t always turn a, you know, a negative message into something great and positive, but even if you are going to deal with the crock pot that has been sitting there for three weeks and there are maggots in the crock pot, it’s you don’t have to turn that into some lie about Oh, I’m, I’m such a good, you know, zookeeper.
Like instead. You, but you can still be compassionate and say, wow, I am having a hard time and people who are having a hard time deserve compassion and your people too, and you have a better chance of not repeating maggot crockpot if you treat yourself with compassion, because compassion frees us to be creative and find ways that work for us and to make things functional and shame paralyzes us and freezes us and makes us want to hide and not ask for help and not think creatively.
Monica Packer: I’ve had so many light bulbs and things I can do from here that I just want to thank you. What an amazing conversation. I want to also make sure we direct people to both your book and your podcast, because what we’ve talked about today truly is the tip of the iceberg on how you help people, including mental health, which we weren’t able to touch on even as much as we could have.
And that could have deserved a whole other conversation. So can you tell us where you want them to go and what they can check out? with, with you.
KC Davis: Yeah, so my book is called How to Keep House While Drowning. It’s a gentle guide to cleaning and organizing. It’s a short read. It’s also an audiobook. Um, and my podcast is called Struggle Care, where we cover, um, those topics and more all about mental health and wellness and self care without shame and without prescription.
Monica Packer: Beautiful. Well, you’re speaking our language here at About Progress. KC, this has been so phenomenal. Thank you very much for your time.
KC Davis: Thank you.
Monica Packer: Okay. I’ll stop the recording here. That was so good.
or more functional cleanups? Um, what’d I say? A more functional cleanup. I’m going to say it one more time. A one more, sorry. It’s because my six year old is coming up the stairs.
So I’m just like, sorry, my husband’s going to go and get him.
