31 Best KC Davis Quotes you NEED to hear (Struggle Care & Domestic Blisters)
Anyone who struggles with mess & overwhelm needs to hear these quotes from the wonderful sentient ball of stardust that is KC Davis.
KC Davis from Struggle Care (aka Domestic Blisters) is one of my favourite creators because her content is compassionate, validating and life-changing.
Her book (How to keep house while drowning) made me tear up several times …and that’s with me already being years into my journey of accepting myself, my messiness and my ADHD.
If I’d read her book a few years ago when I was still beating myself up about having such a cluttered home, I think her kind words would have absolutely broken me.
I’d be hyperventilating in a puddle of tears on the floor - unable to comprehend all of the love and acceptance she was piling on to me.
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31 of my favourite KC Davis quotes
1) No one ever shamed themselves into better mental health
2) Shame is a horrible long-term motivator. It is more likely to contribute to dysfunction and continued cycles of unsustainable practices.
3) So many of us frantically attempt to get our lives together as a way to try and atone for the “sin” of falling apart. When the drive to get better is driven by perfectionism and shame, is it any wonder that our attempts at “self-improvement” yield no permanent positive change?
4) When I approached cleaning and organization as a way to become a worthy adult, it never worked. When I started being willing to think I am worthy of love and care just as I am today it suddenly became easier to start taking care of myself and my space--even if it wasn't picture perfect.
5) Care tasks are morally neutral. Being good or bad at them has nothing to do with being a good person, parent, man, woman, spouse, friend. Literally nothing. You are not a failure because you can't keep up with laundry. Laundry is morally neutral.
6) When mental, emotional, social, or physical factors make it so that getting out of bed, feeding oneself, and showering take up a large portion of one's energy and time, they must then prioritize how to use the remaining time.
7) Remember, you are allowed to be human
8) Bare minimum is a gift to the weary soul. Just functioning enough to get to the next day is not a failure but a success.
9) You deserve kindness and love regardless of how good you are at care tasks.
10) If your load outweighs your capacity, then you must learn to prioritize which tasks to complete, find easier and more accessible ways of completing them, and and still allow yourself time to be "off."
11) Even when one possesses optimal mental and physical health, care tasks can become insurmountable in the face of some pretty simple life changes. Having a baby, losing a spouse, coming down with a debilitating illness, or having to pick up a second (or third) job can quickly make care tasks switch from something done on "auto pilot" to something that can only be done with purposeful thought and energy expenditure, of which someone in these circumstances may now have none to spare.
12) You don’t have to care about yourself to start learning how to care for yourself
13) You can choose to take care of yourself even when you don't think you deserve it
14) Every degree of effort in between a little and a lot is valid
15) Anything worth doing is worth doing partially
16) Throw away what you think care tasks "should" look like and work towards a way of doing them that works for YOU. The goal is not to do them to Martha Stewart's standards. You should be aiming for good enough.
17) No one ever lays on their deathbed wishing they’d cleaned the bathroom more.
18) I signed up to ensure my family always has clean clothes not that they never have dirty ones
19) I have found that the real feeling of home begins when we stop seeing home care as an exercise in meeting magazine cover aesthetic standards and instead embrace a functional view of our home that frees us to create a space that serves us
20) Everyone needs to eat but only some people like to cook. It's the same with homes. We all need functional spaces but whether you make those spaces coherent or aesthetically pleasing is entirely a matter of interest
21) Perfection isn't required for my space to care for me
22) What's the point of having a home if you have to exhaust yourself taking care of it
23) Care tasks are a never-ending list, and if you wait until everything is done to rest, you will never rest.
24) I so often look back on these seasons of limping through and say to myself with tenderness, “Wow, I was really doing the best I could with what I had.” And that’s the funny thing about doing your best; it never feels like your best at the time. In fact, it almost always feels like failing when you’re in it.
25) Most people fear that if they embrace this type of self-kindness, it will simply enable them to stay unfunctional forever. I think this fear is unfounded. I don’t believe in laziness, but even if I did the good news is that self-kindness is extremely motivating.
26) I think a lot of us think that if we have a system that works, and then there’s a life interruption and the system doesn’t work - that we’ve somehow failed. But I’m not failing and neither are you. I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re the only one still having weeks like this (this is a snippet from a really powerful and vulnerable video that KC made about a difficult time - you can watch it here)
27) You are not responsible for saving the world if you are struggling to save yourself. If you must use paper plates for meals or throw away recycling in order to gain better functioning you should do so. When you are healthy and happy you will gain the capacity to do real good for the world. In the meantime, your job is to survive.
28) (On faking a closet downsize - I love this so much!) Pick out 1-2 weeks worth of clothes and bag up the rest. Put it anywhere BUT your closet. Enjoy a few weeks of a simpler closet, less laundry, and more function. If you'd like to add back in some articles a little at a time go for it! If you want to go through your bags little by little and find pieces to donate, that's a great plan too.
29) Do a little. Do it badly. Do it incompletely. Do it kinda/sorta. Do it for 5 minutes. An excellent life is made up of a lot of littles. Who has time for perfection anyways?
30) You can be a fully functioning, fully successful, happy, kind, generous adult and never be very good at cleaning your dishes in a timely manner or have an organized home. How you relate to care tasks--whether you are clean or dirty, messy or tidy, organized or unorganized, have absolutely no bearing on whether you are a good enough person.
31) Remember that your worth is not tied to your productivity. Remember that care tasks are morally neutral and don’t determine your inherent goodness. Remember that your home should be functional for you and your family. Remember that you don’t have to do it all, especially not all at once. Remember that there is no shame in getting help.
If you like these quotes, you have to go check out some of her videos too - they’re even better!
There’s an extra layer of hilarity, humility and genuine care that the written words can’t quite convey.
I hope she brings as much joy & peace in to your world as she does mine. Enjoy 💚
