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Lantern Path Counselling

Cory Stevens, RCC

How to Keep House While Drowning

KC Davis, LPC

This book is a compassionate guide to re-evaluating your relationship with household tasks when your mental or physical health makes even small things feel impossible. The central premise is deceptively simple but genuinely radical: care tasks (i.e. cleaning and the tasks of daily living) are morally neutral. The state of your home says nothing about your worth as a person, your capacity as a parent, or your prospects for getting better.

What it offers

A full reframe of tidying, cleaning, and daily functioning. Rather than viewing mess in the home as a sign of personal failure, imagine mess as a representation of success at the endless tasks of living and cleaning as an act of kindness and support toward the self. Davis balances offers new, compassionate perspectives with providing flexible, low-bar strategies that actually account for limited energy, executive function challenges, and the reality that most productivity advice was not written for people who are struggling. The book is short enough to read in an afternoon, but the shift in perspective can stick around for a lifetime.

You Might Want to Read This If You:

  • Experiencing low mood/motivation, anxiety, or burnout
  • an ADHDer or struggling with executive function
  • Living with chronic illness or fatigue
  • A new or expecting parent
  • Carrying shame about the state of your home
  • Feel perpetually behind on “basic” life tasks

A Note From Cory

This book has really changed how I view and relate to care tasks (i.e. chores, household cleaning). It offers a beautiful, compassionate perspective as well as practical strategies that I now use daily. As someone who struggled with undiagnosed ADHD for most of my life, I carried a lot of guilt and shame over my inability to perform the basic tasks of life that everyone else seemed to breeze through. If you’re struggling with managing household tasks, have functional barriers, and/or pour shame and self-criticism on yourself for not being able to keep up, I would encourage you to read this book as a way to show kindness to one of the people we often show it to the least: you.

How Accessible It Is

Explicitly written with accessibility in mind. Short chapters make it easy to read in small doses and the author periodically reminds the reader to pull back and respect their current capacity by not doing too much all at once.