Latest / Silver FM 100.6 / How to clean when it's the last thing you want to do

Transcript

How to clean when it's the last thing you want to do · Silver FM 100.6

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Maryel
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Raise your hand. If you think it's a moral failure
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to leave dirty dishes sitting in your sink for a day,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a funny question, right, I.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Don't know anybody that would say yes.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: But if you ask someone, do you feel shame if
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: you leave your dishes in the sink for too long?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: A lot of people say yes.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's true. Sometimes it feels like the dishes
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: are silently judging me from across the room. Same goes
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: for that dusty bookshelf and the unfolded laundry that's constantly
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: giving me the side eye. That was Casey Davis, by
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the way. She's a therapist, and she wrote a book
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: called How to Keep House While Drowning, a gentle approach
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to cleaning and organizing. She says, the problem is that
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: when we think of chores as a moral obligation but
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: we aren't doing them, it's easy to spiral.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I'm just not responsible, I'm just not mature, I'm just
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: not good enough. I just don't work hard enough. I'm
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: just lazy. When you believe that that's the issue, the
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: only solution to that is try harder, be better. But
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: I have found just clinically as a therapist and then
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: speaking to other therapist friends like.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: That's almost never the issue.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're dealing with a chronic illness, or you have ADHD,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: or you work two jobs, or you're a parent, or
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: you're just tired from life. The good news, and this
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: is the other message of the book, You don't exist
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to serve your space. Your space exists.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: To serve you.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's still labor that needs to be done, but
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: it takes off the pressure of how it's supposed to
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: look and how it should be done, because then the
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: only thing that actually matters is whether my house is
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: functioning and whether I'm able to live the kind of
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: life I want to inside of it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And once you understand that, you can start to think
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: of cleaning as a kindness to yourself.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Because everyone, everyone, no matter who they are, no matter
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: what they've done, no matter what they are struggling with,
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: deserves to live in a functional space.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: On this episode of Life Kit, we're going to walk
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: through a framework from Casey's book called The Five Things
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Tidying Method. It's informed by this mindset and her work
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: is a therapist and it'll help you get your space
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: back to functional quickly so it can start serving you again.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You have some really helpful concrete frameworks in the book
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that can help people, for instance, clean up a room
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: when they're having trouble mustering the energy or when the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: idea feels overwhelming and I want to walk through one
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: of them. It's called the Five Things tidying method. Yeah,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: first of all, what is the concept here?
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Well, the concept is that if you've got a big mess,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: we don't know where to start. When we do start somewhere,
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: we feel like we work hours at something to see
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: no progress. It feels for some of us like the
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: whole endeavor.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Is just so miserable.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: It takes a long time to sort of like psych
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: yourself up to do it. And so I came up
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: with this method when I was in my early twenties
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: because I felt all of those things and I just
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: sort of have to tell myself, like, in any room,
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: no matter how many things you think you see, there's
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: really only five things. There's trash, dishes, laundry, things that
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: have a place, and things that don't have a place.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: And for me, if I start at the top of
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: that list and I go category by category, ignoring everything
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: in the room and just looking for that one.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Category of item.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: It really takes care of a lot of mental blocks
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: that I experience, and I think that's true for a
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: lot of people.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say you're standing in the door of
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: your living room and you are looking around. The first
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: thing you do is you get a trash bag or
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: a trash can and you look for the garbage.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I always get the biggest trash bag that
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I can.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, And then so you're just collecting everything and you're
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: putting it in the bag or the can. Are you
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: taking the trash out at this point?
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: No, I because one of the things that gets us
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: stuck is that we get distracted.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So if you the more.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Times you leave that room, the more likely you are
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: to get distracted on some different project. And the other
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: reason is because I this is going to get our
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: space livable and functional. Like I can function with a
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: trash bag sitting by the back door. I can't function
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: with too much trash.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: All around the house.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: And I maybe it's just me, but like I will
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: have all the motivation in the world to do something,
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: and I'll do it for like thirty minutes and then
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the motivation will.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Fly out of my body like it has been exercised.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: And so like knowing that, like I'm gonna get to
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: a certain point and sort of run out of motivation,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: I want to get as much done to make the
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: space livable as I can.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: All right, So step two is dishes. Right, what am
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I doing with the dishes?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: You're just putting them in the sink.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, Now let's say this is a living room or
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: a bunch of like dirty cups and stuff, maybe some plates.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I'm bringing them to the kitchen.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can do that.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: You can also get a I like to have laundry
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: baskets that don't have holes in them because it doubles
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: as lots of other things.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And one of the things it works well with is dishes.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Like if you want to carry around a laundry basket
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: and put all the dishes in the laundry basket, you
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: can do that.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: You can get a.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Small rolling hamper and just pop a piece of hard
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: cardboard on top of it and then just put a
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: basket on top of that and roll that sucker around
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: and collect all those dishes, you know, depending on what
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: works for you, what kind of makes your brain feel
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: like it's on a greased track.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: The reality is there are going to be ways.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Of doing things that make you feel like you are
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: grinding gears with no oil, where every step of the
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: process kind of feels miserable and you have to force it.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I think you should find the way to put the
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: smallest amount of energy to get the most functional result totally.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Well, you have a tip for dishes once you are
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: doing your dishes later on. It's the dirty dish rack method, right,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and this works really well for you.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, So I realized that it's really overwhelming to me
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: to look at a sink full of dishes that I
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: really dislike from a sensory perspective, putting my hands and
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: having to get the utensils from the bottom where they're
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: like mixed with all the yucky water, and that I
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: couldn't use my sink like I couldn't get a pot
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: underneath to turn the water on. And so I thought, Okay,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: well I would really like a way to make some
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: of these things easier for me.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: I got this dishrack and what I started doing was
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: whenever I had a dirty dish I would stick it
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: on the dish rack dirty. But what happened was at
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: the end of the night when I would go to
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: my sink, not only could I use my sink all day,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: but I'm looking at this very organized dish rack where
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: it's like plate plate plate plate. Oh, this is all organized. Oh.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: It would take me just a few minutes to load
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: this up into the dishwasher, and it was just smoother,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: it was easier.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: I felt less resistance, less procrastination, less.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Avoidance, and that became like a life changer for me
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: when it came to dishes coming up.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about laundry and how to make it a
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: less overwhelming chore Casey, let's talk laundry. There are often
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: in a given room, I feel various types of laundry,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Like there's clean but not in the drawer, there's dirty,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: definitely dirty, not gonna wear it again, And then there's
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: somewhere in between. You know, maybe I'll wear it again,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: but maybe it's not clean enough to go back in
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the drawer. What do you do when you walk around
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and you see all this stuff?
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: So I'll tell you what I do, because I am
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: all about simplifying things for my brain. So I've got
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: ADHD that presents some problems with executive functioning. And one
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: of those things is like too many decisions, too many steps,
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: too many, Like my brain goes into gridlock really easily.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: So here's what I do.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: I don't have all those categories, and I'm not saying
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: that I don't, but like I don't. I just if
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: it's on the floor, it's going into the hamper and
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: it's getting washed. I don't care if I wear it once.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: I don't care if I wear a thousand times. I
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: don't care if I didn't wear it at all. I
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: just thought I was going to and I brought it
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: into the living room and set it on a chair.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: I have to in my mind, things have to be
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: one step, and those step is if it's not hung up,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: it's going into the washer's getting washed again.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: And that really simplifies things for me.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Got it. Yeah, So it sounds like in general like
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: that might work for some folks, or maybe some folks
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: will wanna like pick things out, but maybe in the
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: triage method, they walk around the room, they collect the
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: laundry in a basket, probably, yeah, and then they put
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: it in the corner for now. Yeah, and they move
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: on to things that have a place. Uh, and this
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: one seems pretty straightforward, like put the stuff in the place, right,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Do you do that right away?
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? And sometimes so it depends.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Like the house that I used to live at, we
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: had so our living room, dining room which we were
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: using as a playroom, and our kitchen. We're all in
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: one floor, and that's where we did almost all of
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: our living and so you know, I didn't I if
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: something belonged in the kitchen, it.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Was three steps to get to the kitchen, right right.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: So, and now I live in a house that the
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: layouts a little differently, so I'm not going to walk
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: all the way across the house for something, right, I'm
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: going to put it in a little basket of.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Where it goes, okay. And then last one is things
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that don't have a place. What do you do with
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: those in the moment? Do you just kind of pile
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: them up or where do you find a place for them?
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Like at this point, you still haven't thrown away your trash,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you haven't put the laundry in the laundry room, you
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: haven't done the dishes, so like, yeah, what are we
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: doing with this stuff that doesn't have a place.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: This is always sort of my check in moment where
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I kind of check in with myself and I go, okay,
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: how we feel in what else is on the agenda today?
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: How motivated are we? What's our body feeling? Like, what's
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: our concentration level? Because sometimes I just put it aside
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: in a basket and have to do other things, go
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: you know, go the trash away. But if I'm really
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: kind of feeling like no, I want to tackle this,
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: I want to get this done, then I will sort
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: of look inside and you have to make some decisions.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: So sometimes the easiest thing is to go okay. Sometimes
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: things don't have a place because like you don't need
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: that thing. Is there anything ere I can purge or
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: donate or get rid of? And then I go, okay,
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: is there anything in here that kind of.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: Like has cousins or or or close friends?
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: And what I mean by that, you know, is if
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: I have a pair of scissors and I don't really
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: have a place where these specific scissors go, well, is
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: there a place in my house where I'm key being
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: similar items like do I have a drawer where I
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: keep my box cutters?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Because I could just add the scissors to that.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: If you're coming to the end of the five things
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and like you've checked in with yourself and you're like,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: all right, I either have the energy for this or
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I don't. So maybe you maybe you pile up the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: things that don't have a place in the corner. If
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: you don't have the energy, and then you're looking at
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the five things that you've collected, you throw away the trash, right, yep.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: You bring the laundry to like your washing machine, or
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: if you if you do your laundry at a laundromat,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: maybe you just like put it from the door or something. Yeah,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: maybe you do the dishes.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: I I almost know you.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: That's always the thing that I leave. And people are different, right,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Like some people they really need to do the thing
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: they dread the most first, and then they kind of
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: feel free, like, oh now I'm not dreading this.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I'm the opposite.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: If I know that I have permission to not touch
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: those dishes, I will do everything else in my life else.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: You talk in the book about care tasks as a
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: potential kindness to your future self. Yeah, like that's one
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: more reason to do them. If you If it's the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: evening and you're like, you know what, I don't really
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: feel like doing these dishes right now, but I know
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in the morning, it would be really great to have
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: an empty sink, so I'm going to do something to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: make that happen.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: I think so often we clean reactively, as if having
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: to clean our space is a punishment for having lived
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: in it.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: You know, it was great to have that dinner party,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: but ugh.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: I have all these dishes, all right, I you.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Know, I did a project, but now I have to
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: clean up after myself.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I want to flip that.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Instead of thinking that care tasks are always cleaning up
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: after ourselves, I want to start thinking of them as
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: forward facing tasks. You know, I'm going to clean for
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: or myself. I'm going to put two dishes into the
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: dishwasher because it would be a real kindness to mourning
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: me to be able to just have a clean dish
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: to eat off of in the morning. I want to
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: put my slippers next to my bed at night, because
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: I have tile floors and my feet are cold in
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: the morning, and what a kindness it would be to
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: myself to be able to wake up and put those
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: slippers on before having to walk across the tile. And
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: when you start doing things out of kindness, things start
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: to change. And sometimes I say, I'm not going to
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: even touch these dishes because I deserve rest, and I
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: do that out of kindness too. I'm going to go
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: let myself lay down on the couch.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put some of this stuff into action
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: in my life. Seriously, it's one of those things that
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: shifts your perspective.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Well when you do, just remember that there's no way
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: to fail at this. You do it and it makes
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: your life better. And then maybe you fall off or
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: you don't do it, and then you.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Go, oh yeah, let me I want to I'm want
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: to go pick that tool up again.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Are you like hearing the voice in my head or
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: something like.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I have the same voice. That's how I know.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, time for a recap. You don't exist to serve
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: your space. It exists to serve you. With that in mind,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: do your housework and self care in ways that make
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: sense for your brain and your body in general. If
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: you're doing the five Things method, go through all the
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: steps before you put away the trash or do the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: laundry or the dishes, and if you find yourself struggling
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to do a care task, think about why it's hard
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: for you. Are there changes you could make, ways you
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: could do it differently, It might make things easier. Lastly,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: remember that a messy house is not a moral failure.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: The dishes aren't going to come alive and say judgmental
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: things to you or make you a ten course meal.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: You've been watching too many Disney movies. That's our show.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: By the way, do you love life, kid? So why
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: not hang out with us on the NPR app. It's
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the best way to catch every episode. And if you
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: turn on notifications, we'll let you know the second and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: new conversation drops. Download the NPR app and let's keep talking.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: This episode of Like k It was produced by mia
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: ven Kat. Our digital editor is Malica garib and our
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: visuals editor is c. J. Rikolon. Megan Kane is our
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire, Marie Schneider,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Margaret Sereno, and Sylvia Douglas. Engineering support comes from Jimmy Keely.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I'm Mariel Sagara. Thanks for listening.