Episode 260: When Care Is A Struggle with KC Davis
- KC Davis
Kate and Doree invite KC Davis, author of How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing, onto the podcast to chat about how to keep your veggies from dying in your refrigerator, living (and cleaning) with a neurodivergent partner, and how her TikTok comments section always seems to turn to a discussion of the patriarchy.
Photo Credit: Julia Soefer
Mentioned in this Episode
How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis
Follow KC Davis
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I am Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we are not experts.
Doree: No. But we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: Welcome to the pod today. If you're new here and you want to learn more about us, you can visit our website Forever35podcast.com for things, for things, for links to everything we mentioned on the show, you can find us on Instagram @Forever35podcast. And you can also join the Forever35 Facebook group where the password is serums,
Doree: And you can shop our favorite products shopmy.us/forever35. We have a newsletter, Forever35 podcast.com/newsletter. And you can call or text us at (781) 591-0390 and email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Kate: I recommended my favorite sweatpants in a recent newsletter, and I'm very curious if anybody purchased them.
Doree: Kate, I have not purchased them.
Kate: I mean, this wasn't like
Doree: Full Disclosure
Kate: Trying to get you to purchase them, but I feel like I had been searching for sweatpants for so long.
Doree: Yes. Yes.
Kate: And buying these fancy Instagram advertised sweatpants when all I needed was the Men's Fruit of the Loom sweatpants.
Doree: All you needed was Fruit of the Loom.
Kate: Do you remember those commercials when we were kids where it was like a person dressed up as a big pile of fruit for Fruit of the Loom?
Doree: Yes. Yes.
Kate: Do those, does that ring a bell?
Doree: I do. Kate, I do remember that. I was also thinking, you're very tall, so it must be hard to find, I mean, any pants but sweatpants that fit you
Kate: Well, you shared recently a Target sweat outfit that you loved and purchased, and it looks
Doree: I sure did.
Kate: Fantastic on you. It would not fall the same way on my body on my very long legs.
Doree: Right.
Kate: It would look, it would be a different look. It would be a different look.
Doree: Yeah. Not necessarily a bad look, but just different.
Kate: Well, I do appreciate stores that sell tall sizing.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: And there's more and more of them I find. But yeah, I often dip into men's because gender is a construct, and I don't really give a shit if who my sweatpants are intended for. Ugh. Who knew sweatpants could fire me up.
Doree: Well, look, a good pair of sweatpants are worth their weight in gold.
Kate: Doree, I think today's episode we can just really hop into our conversation.
Doree: Let's hippity hop in,
Kate: Because what's one of my favorite things about getting to host Forever35 is when folks reach out to us passionately suggesting a guest, and we've already booked the guest.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: And that has been happening a lot over the last couple of months. People have been reaching out and voicing their love for a one. KC Davis and I have just had to bite back a smile every time we get those texts and emails and voicemails about
Doree: That's true. True.
Kate: The impact a one KC Davis has had on your life because she's our guest today on Forever35
Doree: Yes, yes, yes.
Kate: So look, I'm not sure when she first came into my life, I think on TikTok or on Instagram, and you probably have seen her there, she is known for her compassionate and practical approach to self and home care for those dealing with mental health, physical illness, and hard seasons of life. She's got over a million followers on social media and grew that community in less than a year.
Doree: Amazing.
Kate: And she is especially beloved by us Neurodivergent folks. I think, as a person who really talks a lot about systems and other ways of quote being organized while also having adhd, which has been very, she's been a very helpful follow for my brain, but she's not just for us. She's been helpful for so many people. Her book, which is called How to Keep House while Drowning has sold over 70,000 copies.
Doree: Amazing.
Kate: It's an Amazon bestseller. I mean, goodness gracious.
Doree: She was really great to talk to, and I feel like shed some interesting light on my own dynamic in my own house in a way that I hadn't thought about. So I was grateful for that.
Kate: I really like her book and I would definitely recommend it if you haven't picked it up. One of the things I like about it is that the chapters are very short, which is intentional. And I have found her way of thinking, not just about the systems that you implement in terms of keeping house, but also the emotions that we bring to it, and also
Doree: also the way in which we judge ourselves.
Kate: Yes, the judgment Doree, the judgment, because you and I have both grappled with that when it comes to ourselves, I think.
Doree: Definitely.
Kate: So I think we are just going to hop right into conversation with KC Davis. What's a few more things about KCbefore we get started? In her bio, she notes that she began her therapy journey at 16 when she entered treatment for drug addiction and mental health issues. And after getting sober, she became a speaker and advocate for mental health and recovery. Professionally, she has worked most of her career in the field of addiction and roles such as therapist, consultant and executive director. And she lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and two daughters, and we're thrilled to have her on the pod today. Well, KC, welcome to Forever35. This is a real dream come true for us. We're thrilled to have you on the podcast. We know our listeners are going to be really excited, so thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.
KC: I'm so glad to be here.
Kate: Well, hopefully you will enjoy the fact that we like to kick every episode off asking our guests what a self care practice is in their own life. And hilariously, you describe your podcast, your own podcast is a podcast about self-care, but you also say you hate the term for self-care. So with that in mind, we don't have to call it but a routine or a practice that you have, and you have shared so many of them, but what is one that you have now in your day-to-day life that brings you joy?
KC: So, okay, this is a hard question, right, because I feel like I have a bazillion methods and practices and examples I could give, but I think if I really were to think about a piece that runs through all of them, I think it's been learning to treat myself with tenderness. And sometimes that manifests in doing something. So sometimes that manifests in, I'm going to let myself rest today, or you know what? I'm going to go, and sometimes it's even the stereotypical stuff. I'm going to go get my hair cute, cut, whatever. But it's more powerful even in the moments where I've just screamed at my children or I'm super stressed out and I don't have time, or I just, I've got an alphabet soup of learning disabilities. And so I frequently transposed numbers. So the amount of times that I've missed a really important meeting is embarrassing. And in those moments from years and years and years, it took me to get here of learning to treat myself the way that I would respond to my 5 year old when she feels crushed at having made a mistake and to just be tender with myself. And that is probably the most powerful self-care practice that I do, is I when can manage it, tell myself that I don't have to atone for my mistakes by punishing myself or hating myself or feeling bad about myself, and recognizing that all of those feelings of self-loathing and shame are not required in order to feel motivated to make changes to do something different.
Kate: Oh boy. Boy. Did you just say self-loathing and shame, because those are two people I live with that I'm trying to get to move out of my brain. Go ahead.
Doree: Well, I was just going to ask, is that something that you also ever do retroactively? Because I find that kind of thinking about my past self and trying to have empathy for that person and that person's actions that maybe at the time I was so judgmental about and so hard on myself, that's been kind of a good but hard practice for me. So I'm wondering if that is something that also resonates with you.
KC: Gosh, I don't know if you can see that. For some reason that made me start crying because the answer is yes. I frequently think of 16 year old me when she was being checked into the psych ward and taken into impatient treatment. And I think it's really meaningful because I was not the kind of broken kid that you felt very sorry for because I was kind of an asshole. I did things that were not kind, and I was obnoxious, and I was egotistical, and I was all these things. So to look back on her and think you really deserved tenderness is really powerful.
Kate: I mean, you have the word gentle a lot. I mean, I think you use it a lot, but in your book it comes up a lot. And that word has been very powerful for me, and I think it kind of aligns with tenderness in this way as an alternative to, like you said, self-loathing and shame.
KC: Well, and it's also an alternative to liking yourself or having self esteem, or caring about yourself at all. You don't have to like anything about you. I spent a lot of years fruitless years saying my mirror affirmations and doing therapy work and trying to myself, and oddly enough, there was a part of my journey where learning how to be introspective was really important. Learning how to understand why I was doing the things that I was doing because I was doing all sorts of weird, destructive stuff and I didn't really understand it, and I needed to understand that. But almost, I almost took it too far where everything I did, I was hyper analyzing. And was that right? Was that wrong? Was that selfish? Was that, and so everything was about figuring out where everything came from. And I thought, and I was frequently thinking about how to do the right thing, how to do the good thing, how to do the moral thing, how to do the healthy thing, how to do the mature thing, and was that thing healthier? And I'm talking, I was analyzing thoughts for whether they were mature or healthier or not. And what I now realize that I look back, it's, I was thinking about myself just as intensely as I was just as self-absorbed when I was trying to be healthy and mature and right and kind as I was when all I was thinking about was getting what I want, doing what I wanted and all these sort of things. Like yes, it was more of a benevolent self absorbtion, but it didn't really, and listen, if I had to take one over the other, I would obviously take that one. Because then I wasn't dying of drug addiction and I had good relationships, but it was really cool to move to the next level of healing where it was like, oh, I'm just not thinking about myself at all. I could just think about what, I don't have to think about myself that much anymore and whether something was good, bad, right or wrong. And I'm not saying, I will obviously occasionally have someone say, Hey, that hurt my feelings, or, oh, I don't think you should have done that. Yeah, let me stop. Let me look at it. Let me address. But when it comes to all of those little thoughts and decisions and mistakes that I'm usually the one thinking about it far longer than the person that was even affected by it. I just sort of learned to look back quickly and be like, yeah, it was fine. Or, oh, maybe something different next time and then just move on.
Doree: Yeah, I mean, this kind of reminds me of the way you encourage people to think about keeping their houses clean. It's a morally neutral thing in the same way that these kinds of thoughts are, it sounds like you're encouraging yourself and other people to think of them as neutral, like morally or otherwise. And I was wondering if we could shift into talking about house stuff, because this has been something that has been an ongoing issue for me and my spouse. Our house is not, not dirty, but it's not clean,
KC: Isn't it? Isn't it weird that there's no other words as if those are the only two options that a house has?
Doree: Yes. Yes, totally. And so I was hoping that you could kind of introduce our listeners who, I know many of our listeners are familiar with you, but perhaps for those who are not, could you introduce our listeners to some of your kind of core beliefs about care tasks?
KC: Yes. So I mean, the main belief that I always start with is this idea that care tasks are morally neutral. And so by care tasks, I mean cooking, cleaning, tidying, organizing, exercising, grocery shopping, taking your medication, sleeping, any of those things, the things that you usually do in and around and about your house and your space. And they are simply just things you do to care for yourself and sometimes your family. And by morally neutral, I mean that the way you do them, how you do them, whether you do them, how good or bad you are at them has no material connection to who you are as a person, your character, your responsibility level, your maturity, whether or not you deserve to be loved or shamed. And it's not sort of that same thread of if you look at your house right now or you think of your house right now, this, the step number one is sort of shifting to this idea that it doesn't mean anything. If your house is really clean right now, that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't mean anything about your family. It doesn't mean anything about your house. It has no meaning. And if your house is really messy right now, that doesn't mean anything. And I think we get really caught up with like, oh, this means I'm in a bad place. This means that I'm good. This means that I'm responsible. This means I'm a good parent. This means that I'm never going to find anyone because look at how I live and I listen. I'm not saying surely I understand that there are people that will say sometimes my space and whether it's functional or not, is giving me information about how I'm doing. And it sort of prompts me to check in with myself. That's great. Your space can give you information. But I find it really helpful to let go of believing that our space means anything about us, because then we can just go, okay, so it doesn't mean anything about, because a lot of us, the whole motivation we have for doing care task is because of what we think those things mean about us. If I'm not clean, what does that mean about me? If I'm too messy, what does that mean about me? And if none of that means anything, then what is the motivation to do any of that? And you kind of come to this place of the only motivation to unload and reload my dishwasher, if a sink full of dishes doesn't mean anything about me is because I would like to have clean dishes. Because I'm sort of taking it one step further. I'm a person who deserves to have a clean plate to eat off of. It becomes less about the morality and the obligations and the expectations and the measuring sticks and more about just function. Does it function? And for many years, I function just fine with a sinkful of dishes. So it doesn't, A sinkful of dishes doesn't mean anything about me. The question that I have to ask myself is, is this working for me? is this functional? And if it's not functional, then you get to go, okay, but is it so unfunctional that I really need to fix it today? Is this the most unfunctional thing in my life? Does this really need to be priority? Or can this wait for another season when I'm not so overburdened with things? And so you can write that off or you can go, no, it's really unfunctional and it's really affecting my day-to-day impact, impacting my day-to-day functioning. I've got maggots or I don't have clean dishes in the morning when my kids are hungry. I walk in every day and I tell all of this kind of stuff. And so I think that's where it's much more helpful to just look at your, you don't exist to serve your space. Your space exists to serve you.
Kate: Yes.
KC: And it also leads to us realizing how many arbitrary rules that we follow when we do care tasks. And maybe it's okay to break all those rules if something is easier for you. I am all about making care tasks as easy as possible.
Doree: So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back. Okay, we're back.
Kate: You talking about not putting laundry away was revelatory to me, even though this, it's been helpful reading your work and following you, and also learning more about myself and my own neurodivergency and all these things. But it was just like, I read that and it was like, oh, that's an option. Oh, because that does work really well for one of my kids, especially. That's how she lit that system. She made that system and that works. And I'm always Put your clothes away. Why? I don't know. Because that doesn't work for me either. So it's just so freeing to think about the things that we have been taught as not okay, are actually systems that do work for us. And breaking out of those narratives is incredibly, it's scary, but it's also incredibly freeing.
KC: Absolutely. I actually recently upgraded my whole closet system, so those of you don't follow me. I have a no fold laundry system, so I don't fold anything. I hang shirts belong to me and my husband, and then everything else goes into baskets. So I have a basket of my shorts, a basket of my pants, a basket of my kid's shirts, a basket of their shorts, a basket of their pants. So it's really separated out so it's easy to find everything. Things don't really wrinkle when there's just a few items and a basket. And so that helped me for a long time. We just moved into a house and we're still kind of doing, and we do a family closet. So everybody's clothes are all in the same closet at the new house. It's me and my kids. We have one closet together because I'm usually in their three and five. I'm still helping everyone get dressed. And because I'm the one that puts away the laundry and I don't want to go to different closets to do that. I want to go to one place. I want to be able to put everything away without bending down and standing up and bending down and standing up and bending. And I was standing up. So I recently purchased a rolling garage stool that loves lives in my closet. Cause I have hardwood floors so that as I'm taking, and then I also, we have this little, this tiny little ottoman that the top comes off. And I brought that in there so that I could put something on it so that it was the right height for me to reach into the basket when I'm sitting on my stool. And then I just wheel around. I just wheel around the closet putting everything away so I don't have to sit, stand, sit, stand, because I realize that I was avoiding putting the laundry away even when I don't fold it. And then I really stopped and was like, why get very precise, Casey? Why? What is the element that you find yourself procrastinating, resisting, dreading? And I was like, it's the up and down. And see, old me would've been not even to give myself permission to ask because it would've been like, you're supposed to do this, just do it. What kind of person? And if I did ask, I'd be like, okay, you lazy. S o b, go in there. Who cares? Get some exercise. I don't do that anymore. I go, how can I make this easier? And then I make it easier. And then I go, Ooh, but how can I make it even easier? How can I make it even easier than this? I just never stop asking that question when it comes to care tasks. And so now, you know, wash it, you dry it, you put the bring whole thing into the laundry room. I mean the closet you put it up on, its little ottoman and you just wheel around listening to a podcast. And all of a sudden this task that I used to dread so much that I would put it off and then we wouldn't have enough clean clothes is something I don't even mind doing anymore because I addressed all these little pain points. And it's a pretty big deal when you start giving yourself permission to do that, though.
Doree: Sorry, giving yourself permission to do things that you've been kind of socialized your whole life not to do is challenging. Kate, do you want to get to some of the questions that our listeners had?
Kate: Yes. Okay. We've got so many questions that we have and also some from listeners. Someone wrote, please tell her I love her and then ask about her fridge organization. How do we stop letting things die?
KC: Okay, so here's something that I started doing that I think is really helpful. So I often joke that if I designed refrigerators, they'd be six feet wide and six inches deep. I want front row only. If I put something behind something, it's dead to me in the fridge and God help it. If I put it in a drawer, the amount of bags of cucumber soup that I've pulled out of a produce drawer could feed an army and then they'd all die because it's disgusting. So I realized that the door of my fridge had all of this front row real estate, and I was putting sauces and condiments in the door, which I think most people do. But what I realized is when it came to specifically produce, like I will eat it if I see it. If I open hungry, open like, oh, carrots, yeah, I'll eat carrot. But I am never going to be somebody who's sitting on the couch being, you know what? I can go for right now, some delicious carrots. Carrots, they'll never be me. I just remembered I have carrots and I'm going to go look for them. Couldn't be me. But if I open it and I saw it, I'd be like, oh yeah, why not? So I realized that when I'm having a meal though, I do think to myself, what could go with this meal? Some soy sauce, and I'll go look for it. So I don't need to be visually reminded about the existence of my soy sauce, but I do need to be visually reminded about the existence of my carrots. So I started putting all of my condiments into the drawers, just like, oh, on their sides, messy in there and started putting all of the produce in the door. I did that for a long time. I've recently gotten even some containers, so they're not necessarily in the door, but I still do the same thing where I put all of the condiments in the drawers and I use the door for extra space to put front row items because I try not to stack items behind other items.
Kate: This is so smart. It reminds me of something I heard you say in your podcast about how as aggravating is often home influencers are, you often can find clear containers are actually very helpful in organizing. I know I've been doing that in my fridge of we slice everything up and put them into these clear organizers, and then they're just right here. So like you said, we aren't having cucumber soup, which is a literal thing that's happened in our fridge as well. I love that so much.
KC: Yeah, I mean, when things presented in that sort of aspirational lifestyle feel first so long, it's like you go from buying in and trying everything, and then you realize, oh, this is silly. And then you end up rejecting everything out of hand that has that hue to it. So when I first, because I would watch a lot of talks about restocks and I was like, oh my gosh, this person, even though it's satisfying to watch, but then I started actually using clear containers. So I am one of those people that decant everything before it goes into the pantry. And, but I've tried to do that before and it didn't stick. And I realized it's because every time I've tried to do it before, it wasn't about how does this spring function to my life? It was about, I just want to be the kind of person that has an organized pantry. I want to be that kind of person. That kind of person seems responsible, that kind of person seems like to have their life together. So I what I mean, that was the enjoyment of it was like, I feel like I've really got it together now. And so I then, I didn't do it for a long time. And when I started doing it again, I actually had this motivation of this makes my life easier. I remember what I have, I eat at home more often. I can see when something's running out. I don't feel as much like, oh, there's nothing to eat. Cause I can see everything. My kids can help pick out things. Things don't go bad. When the enjoyment of a task or a system is purely the functional upgrade quality of life it brings to me that I have found is intrinsically much more motivating than just, oh, this looks pretty. Or Oh, now I feel like I'm being a good mom, or, oh, now I'm, I'm that kind of person.
Doree: We got a question from a listener that was actually kind of related to a question that I had. I am neurotypical, my spouse has ADHD, and one of our listeners asked, how do I support slash fairly share tasks with housemates with A D H D? And my question is, he is my housemate, he's also my husband. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts or advice for those of us who are not neurodivergent but live with someone.
KC: Yeah, sure. So these would be generalizations, not universalisms, right? Everybody's exactly the same. But in general, people with H ADHD have poor working memory and we do better with visual lists.
Kate: Thank you. Oh my gosh, this is so validating to hear just selfishly. But thank you.
KC: So for months and months and months, I do this thing called closing duties where I have four or five things that I do in my kitchen every night. I would for, I'm talking months, maybe at least nine months in the middle of that list, I would have to stop and reference the list, even though it's the same five things every night, couldn't remember. And so visual lists are really helpful. The other thing I find helpful is there's this weird thing that I refer to as the flow, which is when it comes to energy and motivation and task initiate and drive to do things, I feel like I have this big energetic river and it just flows where it wants to flow. And so I actually am a super productive individual. I crush getting things done. But the issue with A D H D is not that you can't pay attention, it's that you can't really regulate your attention. So I will get something done and not get other things done that were probably more important that had deadlines. I'll go organize a pantry for three hours and walk by a moldy coffee cup multiple times. And the amount of times that I have tried to make myself a person that can do these odd one-off tasks as I see them, and I just don't. So I had to learn, okay, how can I make this energetic river of drive to do things, go over this moldy coffee cup, how can I dam the river and shift the river and make it flow over that thing? And so I find that taking those little, first of all, if you can help it, don't assign those little one-off tasks to people with ADHD. We hate them. They make us want to die. But at one point I made myself, Tuesdays were restock day. And so I would rather die than take my coffee cup downstairs after I get done with this, but give me a clipboard and a list, and Tuesday nights as restock day, I will restock everything in the house, check, get all the cups, check, put all the toilet paper. And so bundling those things together is really helpful for me.
Kate: Oh yeah.
Doree: This is very interesting. And what you said about the river pinged for me, because my husband has what he calls his window, and he'll just be like, I'm going to clean up the, I'm just giving an example. Okay, I'm clean up the living room now, help me clean up the living room or whatever. And I'm like, I don't feel like cleaning up the living room.
KC: The window closes, we can't do it.
Doree: He's like, like, this is my window. This is my window. Do this right now. This is what I feel like doing. And I'm like, but I was going to read something. We do it later. And he's like, no, he's, we'll miss the window. And I'm like, what is the window? I just didn't get it for the longest time. And yeah, I've been getting it more. And it's also, I sometimes struggle with resenting that, right? Well, it's like, okay, well you have the window, but I don't have the window. And can we talk about
KC: Yeah, exactly. You shouldn't have to work in his window. He can work in his own window.
Doree: But can we talk about a mutually beneficial window? But it doesn't work that way. Yeah. So I shouldn't have to work in his window, but I also want to accommodate his window. It's complicated.
KC: Sure. Yeah. I think the other thing is I find that I am most successful when I can make tasks into as few steps as possible. So for example, when I want to reset my house, I try to do this once a weekend. I usually do that for me, includes picking up all the trash off the floor, throwing all the trash away, basically picking everything up off the floor. And I have a system, so I pick up all the trash first and then I pick up all of the laundry, and then I pick up all of the dishes, and then I put away all the things that have a place, and I put away all the things that don't have a place. But so that helps. But the thing is, is that, again, with the bending, the bending and the moving bending, so ADHD, we know that we're not exactly sure what's happening in the brain, but we know it has to do with the regulation of dopamine. And so any way that you can remove small pain points makes it a lot easier to move towards that task. So in order to try and make this a flow and not feel like all these disjointed, weird steps, I got this giant commercial sized laundry hamper on wheels, and then I cut a piece of cardboard that cover half of it, and I put two laundry baskets on the top, and then I cut a little plastic shoe hanger and attached it with some shower curtain rings where I put the duster and the whatever and the whatever, all the stuff in there. And then I bought myself a grabber and then a dust buster that, and the dust buster sticks on the platform in the middle. So I have this little homemade, almost like housekeeping cart for my own house. And I put in a podcast that I want to listen to, and I wheel around my house with my grabber and I pick up the trash and I put it into one of the bins, and I pick up the clothes and I put it into the bin and I pick up the toys and I put it into the bin and I see some crumbs and I zip them up. And so that works for me. It's really hard for me as someone with ADHD to do things when I'm doing something else. So if I'm on the way to do something and I either am not going to notice something out of place, or if I do notice it, I can't stop to do it, because if I do, I'll forget what I was doing. So it's much easier for me. And that's a lot of executive functioning issues that go into A D H D and problems with what's referred to as attention shifting. You might be able to be going to get a band-aid for your kid, see a cup, pick the cup up, or see the cup, remember the cups there and come back for it. But those two options, which is grab the cup on the way, or just wait and come back, both of those utilize parts of executive functioning that are really compromised in ADHD. The first is attention shifting, which is, I was already, I'd already thought about planned, designed a motor plan and initiated going to get this band-aid, and now I need to shifting my attention to this, thinking about where it needs to go, designing another motor plan to reach down and grab it and integrate that into what was existing, sort of the steps of what I was doing. But the other one is requires working memory, which is, okay, I'll do that as soon as I'm finished with this. But for me, I will have forgotten that I saw anything by the time I finished getting the band-aid. And if I stop to do the thing, I get the, anyways. So those are not great tasks to put an ADHD person in charge of, it's not as helpful for someone to say to me, I just want you to pick up after yourself. It's much more helpful for someone to say once a day, can you go around and pick up the clothes? Or for me it's like once a week I reset everything because if I can make that what my attention is on, especially if I have a good podcast, that's much easier. Anyways. I dunno if that's helpful. That's helpful. I forget we're answering multiple questions and I just start talking, so
Kate: It's so helpful. Yeah, it's helpful for me as the ADHD person and understanding myself better because I do f I feel like I, no, I, I've always known there was this thing with me but never known what it was. And then really understanding and getting an ADHD diagnosis as an adult, et cetera, et cetera. I know it's so clarifying. It's like finally everything makes sense as to, and I don't remember where I was going with this, but yeah, it's very validating. And I love, you mentioned, you were talking about the way you do the five things tidying method. For our listeners who just have never heard of it, can you just tell folks what those five things are? You mentioned them in passing just now, but just to really hit it on the head.
KC: So I take a room or maybe a couple rooms or a space, and I go down the list and I go around with a trash bag in my hand and I pick up all of the trash I can find and put it directly into the bag, tie off the bag and leave it there. And then I get a laundry basket and I go all around the room, put all the laundry in there, put it down, leave it there. I go around and get all the dishes and I take 'em to the sink and I leave them there. And then I pick a little corner and go counterclockwise. And I put everything away that has a home. And anything that doesn't have a space, I just make a pile in the middle of the room. And so once everything is put away that has a home, now I have this pile of things that don't have a home that need to be maybe purged, maybe given to someone or maybe organized and found permanent homes and that I can do with a Netflix show on or something like that. So that's what I do. And then I can go back and throw the trash away into the dumpster and start the dishwasher and start the laundry.
Kate: So helpful. So helpful. Because I do the thing that you talk about where it's like I bring the dish to the sink and then I'm like, I got to do the dishes and then I forget every, and then everything is just left.
KC: Yeah, It helps you from getting distracted. The other thing I'll say is not everybody has the resources or the budget to be able to outsource care tasks, but there is this really big Venn diagram of people that do have the resources and just like aren't letting themselves because they feel like that's not justified. And I like to say if you have a partner that's ADHD or you are h adhd, like you have a disability and these things are legitimately harder for you. And if you have the resources to, for example, send your laundry out to a wash and fold, even if it's a couple times a month or you have the resources to get your groceries delivered, or you have the resources to have someone come in once a quarter and do the deep cleaning, it's okay to allow yourself to do that. There's not some arbitrary level of importance. Something has to be justify you just getting to make the decision that you want to do that.
Kate: Yes, chapter, chapter 36 out outsourcing care tasks is morally neutral.
Doree: So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Kate: Alright, we are back.
Doree: We got another question about your TikTok. Someone is wondering the comment section on your TikToks can be wild. How do you deal with it?
KC: Yeah, they can be wild. So sometimes I just really get my feelings hurt, frankly. There comes a time, especially if I have a really viral video, and you can see in the feed of comments when it starts to turn and you reach this critical mass of this has now got. And so the TikTok algorithm is weird and then it pushes it to the people that follow, you know, or people that would be in various demographics that are familiar with the type of topics. And you can actually pinpoint the moment down to the hour when a viral video moves beyond those concentric circles and just starts to hit random fyp because the comments will turn into the most vicious mean comments that you've ever heard. And oftentimes I have to make the decision to turn the comment section off because it's just not healthy to be pelted with that kind of insult over and over and over. There's often times, there are frequently times where somebody says something that's extremely one of the isms or ISTs, racist, homophobic, or transphobic that I have to delete the comment altogether because I just don't want people to see that. What's harder is that there's often times where somebody says something where it's like, ah, that's not the right way to think about that. But then you also, it's like, where do you stop though at some point? Well right, it's like that's that person. They think that, and I might be a sneak thing to think, but it's not, it's not really hitting the is isms stuff. And it's like, well, I or I disagree with that. But it's like, well, I mean they get to say it, I guess. You know what?
Doree: Well, It's also, that's also labor for you to be constantly monitoring your comments section and responding to comments. That is a lot of work and a lot of time. So are there particular topics that you feel like turn or does it seem sort of random?
KC: Yeah, for sure. Anything about the patriarchy always turns if it goes viral. Yeah, because the patriarchy, it's funny though because it'll always be some video about how men don't like women, they just get socialized to be sexually attracted to them. Or it'll be like, men don't see women as real human beings with complex thoughts and feelings. It'll be some commentary like that about the patriarchy and it'll get into the hands of men outside of the ones that would listen to that and be like, what an interesting thing about the patriarchy that maybe I'll reflect upon. And their response to it is like, do y'all cuss on this podcast? Their response will be like, it's not true that men don't like women. You fat fucking bitch. I'll be like, Hmm, me thinks you doth protest too much.
Kate: Yeah, yeah.
KC: You know what I mean? I'll be like, we don't see women just as sexual objects and I don't even how I even know why you could speak on this because who would want to fuck you? And it's like, do you guys not see yourselves? They literally prove my point in the comments by being just wildly misogynistic. And it's, listen, a lot of men follow me and I follow a lot of men and it's like never men who are like, yeah man, I've been unpacking my privilege and things like that. It's always just random, random randoms, right? So those always turn. I often find that I try really hard to address when I see racism and homophobia and transphobia and misogeny and those sort of things. Sometimes what happens is that the call will be coming from inside the house. It won't be some random right wing person. It'll be like someone who aligns with me on lots of different issues that will say they will then weaponize their marginalization. Interesting as, you can't call me out. I have this disability or that disability or you know, like that kind of thing. And so then it becomes weird cause it's, but I can. And so that's always hard because then it can often snowball into KC Davis being an ableist. Then it's like, well, let's back up for a second. So those are sometimes hard when you have to address those kind of nuances.
Kate: Can I, on that topic, can I share a listener question they asked? How do us neurodivergent folks do struggle care in capitalism and white supremacy culture?
KC: Well, a lot of, I think understanding a lot of the roots for where we get the messages we do about perfectionism in care tasks come from a white supremacist culture. They come from the patriarchy. They come from the idea that women are supposed to cook and clean and stay in the kitchen, but they also come from a great deal of racism in our country because when the aristocracy from England moved over, they don't do their own care tasks. They enslaved people to do their care tasks. And so the image of a beautiful, thin white woman with perfectly quaffed hair and looking nice and put together and clean, standing in a sparkling clean living room is a status symbol. The ease at which we perform care task is a status symbol. And I learned all this from Danita Platt, who is amazing. You can follow her at Danita plat on TikTok Platt has two ts and she talks about care tasks, but she's a black woman. And so she talks about the history of care tasks and how that comes into play. And so follow that down the line. And even after slavery has ended, we continue to exploit black and brown people and primarily women to do care tasks for us. And it wasn't really until civil rights movement and a lot of labor rights things where, and then the wealth gap of capitalism creates this wealth gap that we're now in where all of a sudden for the first time in our history, poor and even most middle class families cannot afford to hire domestic help. We are still required to get married and have all the kids and go get the career and be the perfect mom. So we still have the standards that were levied at our great-great grandparents who had a whole staff, even if you had poor great grandparents, ask them. Most of them still at some point were able to hire someone to help. So we still have those standards, but we don't have any of that help and we're crushed under it. And so I think it starts with the recognition of where that comes from and that rejecting those, that perfectionism, rejecting that stuff is in and of itself the beginning of your activism. It cannot be the end of it, but it can be the beginning of it.
Kate: I mean, I want to keep you here for five hours.
KC: I want to stay for five hours.how does that sound?
Kate: I know, but I can't, that wasn't part of the agreement. But I think that's just, you give us so much to think about and I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your work. It just means a lot. So thank you. Yeah, it's so invaluable. Yeah. And yeah, especially, anyway, you could go on and on. I'm going to slow my roll.
KC: The little cherry on top of that I think is I'm, I'm going to assume a white person asked that question. And what has been really beneficial to me is to ask myself, why am I asking that question? Because there's a big difference between how can I care for myself and my family and engage in black liberation versus how can I make sure that I'm not participating in white supremacy so that I can maintain my feel good feelings about being a good white person? How do I make all the right decisions so that I can be one of the good ones and then I just get caught up. But that is white supremacy. It's like how can I continue to be perfect? How can I continue to do all the right things? It's because I'm too scared of someone telling me that I'm doing something problematic. And that really centers me and me and nice white liberal moms as opposed to how can I make room in my life to contribute to the liberation of black people, brown people, queer people, trans people. There's some way that I can materially do that. And it might be in a very, very, very, very small way. But that's more important finding room in your life to do something. I think if I'm understanding correctly, what I've been listening to from the black people that actually talk about this, that's more important than thinking about how can I take on these huge systems and make my life so that I'm never participating in these systems? Cause that's impossible. That's the whole point. It's so locked in.
Doree: Right. Well this has given me a lot to think about. And for everyone who doesn't follow Casey on TikTok, please follow her and get her book, watch her Ted Talk. There's, I've already learned so much from you and I so appreciate your work. So thank you for coming on our show.
KC: Thank you.
Doree: We mentioned your TikTok, we mentioned your book, but where can our listeners find you if they want to follow your work?
KC: So I'm on TikTok as domestic blisters. I'm in, I'm on Facebook and Instagram as struggle care and I have, my website is strugglecare.com. So if you go there, you can pretty much get to everything. My podcast is named Struggle Care
Doree: Oh yea, And your podcast.
KC: which you can get through the website, my book is called How to Keep House While Drowning, which you can get through to the website. I've got lots of downloads and printables and things like that. I have a online course on how to clean Your Depression house. My TED Talk is linked there. Really everything's on the website if you just kind of want to go to one central place.
Doree: I think that was how I first initially encountered you was I bought one of your downloads.
KC: Oh, cool.
Doree: Yeah, I don't remember. Someone must have mentioned you and I was like, I need this. So, and just all kind of snowballed from there. Well, thank you again. This was such a delight to get to talk to you
KC: Thank you.
Doree: And we really appreciate it.
Kate: Doree.
Doree: Yes, Kate,
Kate: I have learned a lot. Sometimes there are times where I feel like I think I know everything about a topic or I know everything that I'm going to ever be able to know about how I, Kate Spencer can stay on top of things and then I realize I know nothing at all. And that was, I feel like I learned so much in our conversation with KC. And after reading her book, and one thing that has been helpful is using my time timer, I've busted out my time timer again.
Doree: ooh, We love a time timer.
Kate: So if you're not familiar with time timers, they are visual clocks that you can set up to an hour or up to 60 minutes and they visually show via color the time ticking away. So for some of us who, if you say, Hey, we have 30 minutes until we have to leave the house, for some people that registers and for other people it doesn't. And a visual reminder is really helpful. So in the mornings my daughter and I have been using are really big time timer. It's like the extra large size so that we know at 7:45 we're going to get ourselves 30 minutes and we have to walk out of the house at 8:15. And I think it helps both of us.
Doree: That's great.
Kate: Yeah, it's really a powerful tool. So
Doree: I love that.
Kate: If you aren't time timing, I highly recommend it. Doree, can I share an anecdote from our personal lives?
Doree: Oh my gosh, yes. Okay.
Kate: So your intention last week was your mammogram? Yes. And we were texting and I was like, blah, blah, blah, look at this document. And you were like, I'm in my mammogram. So you did it?
Doree: I did do it.
Kate: You checked it off?
Doree: I did do it. I did check it off. And actually this week my intention is to make a couple of other doctor's appointments that I have just not made. So going to try and get those. Just get those set.
Kate: Well done, my friend. Well done.
Doree: Thank you. How about you Kate? How did cold Care go?
Kate: Cold Care has been a challenge just because it's been an extremely hectic week this week with some stuff that is going on at my kid's school for which I'm volunteering, which has been amazing, but it's not the best in terms of laying low and not talking and resting and that sort of thing. But
Doree: Yeah,
Kate: I am making a point to just drink a ton of liquids, make sure I'm going to sleep, taking a NyQuil if I need it, and just doing as little as I possibly can. I'm not, not piling things onto my plate right now.
Doree: That's great.
Kate: So for this coming week, my intention is patience With myself, with my family, with my dear, dear dad who I love so much who's visiting and me putting a lot of expectations on myself for having the house be organized and the house be clean. And I get kind of high intensity when I'm stressed and I want to have, and then I lose my patience with others. And so I want to make sure I have patience with those around me and also with myself. And I'm very excited to have my dad and stepmom visiting. Oh my gosh. I talked to my dad yesterday and he did an imitation of us,
Doree: Of us.
Kate: He was like, I love on the podcast where you'll say something, you'll tell Doree and Doree just goes, and then you'll say something else. And yes. And he was like, and then Doree tells you something and you go, I love that he was doing a full on.
Doree: Oh my God,
Kate: I guess he's been listening to the pod.
Doree: That's amazing. I'm sorry. That is amazing.
Kate: It was really funny. And my stepmom also listens to the podcast, which is so sweet. And I just like,
Doree: That is so sweet.
Kate: It's so awesome. And
Doree: what?
Kate: I know. So that really was cracking me up. It was really me laugh. He really has our number as they say.
Doree: I mean, look, he begat you, so he obviously gets it on some level.
Kate: Yeah, I'm like, half of this is from is your fault my old man? You know, wonder why I'm talking about my anxiety so much.
Doree: Oh God.
Kate: Genetics. Anyway.
Doree: Well, Kate, this has been great. Been fun.
Kate: Let's tell the listeners about our show.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: Forever35 is hosted and produced by you and me, Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer. And it's produced and edited by the one and only Sam Junio, the fantastic. Sami Reed is our project manager. And our network partner is the awesome Acast.
Doree: Bye everyone.