How to Keep House While Drowning

I’ve had many extremely validating moments since realizing I had adhd a little over a year ago. This book was another major milestone where I felt validated in my struggle to keep up with laundry and cleaning and all the chores.

I will have to re-read it to take notes but the general principles of giving myself grace have been wonderful. It’s okay to leave my laundry unfolded, for instance. Oh and one specific tip I’ve found helpful is to do hard chores during bounded time. For example, if you put something in the oven for 20 minutes, this is a nice bounded chunk of time to make progress towards organizing a closet. Relatedly, I should reward any progress towards hard chores than only completion.

This book is far less about helpful tips for actually doing the cleaning, and more about giving yourself permission not to be perfect. I cleared that hurdle long ago. I am sure there are many people who will gain a lot from this book, but I wasn't one of them.

An interesting book. The author stresses gentleness and flexibility, things I don't think I've heard from other people in this space. She also goes beyond just "cleaning," but touches on other areas of care in one's life.

A helpful guide to approaching housework from a functional rather than moral perspective. It's short enough to blitz through quickly or dip into briefly over time, making it very accessible. As a result it might not have the heft of other stuff help books but this is more of a manifesto to get you thinking about housework more helpfully. This style is partly to make the book accessible to neurodiverse readers and it's interesting to find a book written with that clearly in mind. If you've ever struggled to keep on top of the chaos, this may well be the book that helps reset your expectations and figure out how to make your space work for you.