Read This Book…

KC Davis is a therapist who has a really popular TikTok account, @DomesticBlisters. A lot of her content is about cleaning. I’m not talking about vacuuming your mattress every night or labeling everything you own or organizing all your belongings in Roy G Biv order. I’m talking about the chores, or as Davis calls them, the care tasks, that seem like they’re simple for other people but when you have depression, ADHD, physical disabilities, chronic pain, trauma, lack of support etc. even the thought of doing these things can be overwhelming and fill you with deep shame when you can’t bring yourself to do them. It could be folding laundry, doing laundry at all, changing your sheets, brushing your teeth, washing dishes, or something else. If you are a person who does all of these things regularly and without issue, then this book is probably not for you. But if you, like me, have ever sat on your kitchen floor and cried at the prospect of doing a mountain of dishes, then I think you will get something out of this book.

The center of this book is this: You do not work for your home; your home works for you. KC Davis offers a helpful perspective on ways to make your home work for you. This book isn’t all tips and tricks (though honestly, why do baby onesies need to be folded?). The author wants to help put a stop to the shame that builds up over care tasks and not having the capacity to do them. She tells readers over and over that we are not bad people if we have a messy home. We still deserve things like love and rest and fun even if the laundry isn’t done.

This book is big on self-compassion and practicality. It stresses the importance of care tasks as kindnesses to yourself, sometimes your present self, sometimes your future self, like how washing the coffee pot tonight is a kindness to your morning self so you have a clean pot to make coffee in. If you’re into different tidying methods or cleaning shortcuts, there are definitely some of those offered in this book as well.