Outside of its most literal sense, when people talk about "drowning," it can mean a lot of things. When one of my closest friends from college texted me that she was drowning last summer, she felt strangled by the increasingly blurred lines between remote work and personal time. When a creative writing student of mine emailed me last fall that they were drowning, it was because they had found out their partner — whom they were bringing home to meet their family for the holidays — had a secret wife and child.
And when I wrote in my journal this winter that I felt a bit like I was drowning, I chided myself for being a dramatic because, moreso, I felt like I was just awash in a sea of seasonal blues that would occasionally manifest as random spikes of my body's "fight or flight" response; my stomach would sink and a random, visceral heat would spread from my cheeks down to my neck, before dispersing to my limbs. It was like my body was preparing to fight a burglar or run Scooby-Doo-style from a ghost, but in reality, I was just trying to make a morning cup of coffee.
Soon, the "flight or fight" periods began to stretch beyond just a few random moments, sometimes extending for an hour or two at a time. It impacted my sleep and made it tough to eat. "Have you ever tried to make dinner while your body feels like it's folding in on itself?" I asked a friend.
"I have a book you should read," she responded, sending a link to "How To Keep House While Drowning" by KC Davis, a licensed professional therapist, author, speaker, and the creator behind the mental health platform Struggle Care.
"What if a new philosophy to cleaning could teach us a new approach to mental health," Davis said in a viral TED Talk from 2022. She goes on to describe on stage, as she does in the book, how she had pretty serious postpartum anxiety with her first child and, as she was expecting her second, she decided that it would be best to put together a meticulous postpartum plan. It involved family members swapping out tasks for the first 60 days, a cleaning service for which she had budgeted would come once a month and a new mom's group with which she was involved would drop off dinners.
"I was so proud of this plan," she said. "And it ended before it even began."
This was in February 2020. After COVID lockdowns began, all the support Davis had secured disappeared overnight. She soon began to feel the heavy weight of postpartum depression, loneliness and all the chores that continued to pile up. At night, in bed when she should have been sleeping, she would tell herself she was a failure or that she was lazy.
"You see, for some of you, all of the steps and skills that go into care tasks run on autopilot," she said. "But for millions of people, the autopilot is broken. And what's worse, what if you had to do that while your mom just died, or your job just fired you, or you're using ounce of strength you have to just not kill yourself today."
I went into both Davis' book and TED Talk, again, feeling a bit like an imposter. My situation wasn't that bad; I had and have access to therapy and medical care, and we're in the process of figuring out the Venn diagram of hormones, blood sugar and emotional stress that has obviously thrown my body for a loop. But she makes it clear that her philosophy — which centers on the idea that things like cooking, cleaning and laundry are morally neutral — is for anyone who feels like the weight of those everyday care tasks has, for whatever reason, left you feeling like you are drowning.
"The truth is, it's not about morality, it's about functionality. Does your home work for you? Not some hypothetical house guest that is coming to inspect your closet."
"Now, I know that if you've been watching Martha Stewart for decades and scrolling the perfect Pinterest aesthetic everyday, that it can feel like struggling with these tasks is a moral failure," she said. "Like it's because we are lazy or irresponsible or we're immature. But having an organized closet doesn't make you a success."
She said: "The truth is, it's not about morality, it's about functionality. Does your home work for you? Not some hypothetical house guest that is coming to inspect your closet."
When things get really tough, Davis said, that's when you can ask yourself a simple question: What do I need to function tomorrow morning? Because if you can figure that out, getting through the rest of the day is a little easier.
Working in an industry that is often centered on aesthetics and aspirational content, Davis' message appealed to me — and obviously to a lot of other people, too. It was an NPR Best Book of 2022 and was a USA Today bestseller; additionally, across platforms, David has garnered over 1.5 million followers.
There are a lot of fantastic bits of wisdom in "How to Keep House While Drowning," and I would recommend picking up the book to take them all in (it's a short, punchy 160 pages). But I did want to share the tip that I found the most applicable to cooking and keeping oneself fed during tough times. Davis refers to it as "closing duties."
What are "closing duties"?
If you've ever worked in a restaurant or bar, you know exactly what closing duties are: sweeping, mopping, cleaning tables and chairs, slicing lemons, disinfecting the soda machines, rolling silverware. It's stuff that makes the next shift not only easier, but possible without any major headaches.
"I've already talked about how, when you have the opportunity to do a task and struggle with the motivation to start, it might be helpful to think you are doing a kindness to 'future you,'" Davis writes. "What does future you need to function tomorrow? On a good day, I like to unload and reload my dishwasher, pick up some toys, pack kid lunches for the morning, throw away whatever trash is lying around, take my medication, and make cold-brew coffee for the morning."
As she writes, it takes about 30 minutes each evening, but she knows that carving out that time will make things easier for future her.
How to apply it to cooking
Here are some suggestions I've found for applying Davis' work to day-to-day cooking:
Make a list of static kitchen closing duties: Think about a few tasks that consistently need to get done to make cooking or feeding yourself easier. For me, that includes: loading and unloading the dishwasher; hand-washing any finicky pots or pans that I plan on using the next day; preparing coffee for the morning and preparing some "snack plate" elements for lunch (more on that in a second).
Make a list of rotating kitchen closing duties: What's on your menu this week? Let's say you know that tomorrow, you're planning on having chicken curry with cauliflower rice for dinner. The night before, it might make sense to do a few things like put frozen chicken thighs in the refrigerator to defrost, blitz a head of cauliflower in the blender or even just gather your ingredients within eyesight in your refrigerator so you don't have to go digging for them when you get home from work and are tired.
Be realistic about what you put on your list: Honestly, there are some prep tasks that I know are helpful, but I'm just not going to do them the night before (peeling potatoes, making salad dressings, whipping cream). If it's not something that I'm going to realistically do, I don't put it on the list. Also, I know that my "limit" for prep work is about a half hour, but for you it might be ten minutes. Either way, this is not about overloading yourself with another to-do list; it's meant to ease stress, not cause it.
Meal-planning and prep when it feels hard: Sometimes there are going to be weeks where the idea of even figuring out what to make feels overwhelming — let alone the idea of trying to get elements of it ready in advance. It doesn't help that when a lot of people talk about meal prep, they talk about it in terms of taking hours over the weekend to cook, portion and freeze meal items. If you already feel like you are struggling to keep up, that probably doesn't sound super sustainable.
Store-bought is actually fine, I swear. Fed is best for babies and the same is often true for adults.
One thing you can do when you have the "spoons" — to borrow from writer Christine Miserandino's 2003 essay "The Spoon Theory" — is to sit down with a journal or a notepad and physically write down meal ideas that are based off convenience or quick-fix items, like instant rice or jarred pasta sauce. Store-bought is actually fine, I swear. Fed is best for babies and the same is often true for adults. Sometimes it's helpful to follow a simple checklist, like ensuring that you have at least a protein, a vegetable and a grain on your plate.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
- Quick-cooking, instant or frozen rice topped with rotisserie chicken, Japanese BBQ sauce and sliced cucumber
- Eggs scrambled with jarred salsa and canned black beans, served with tortillas (and avocado, if I'm feeling fancy)
- Jarred sauce, frozen meatballs and pasta, served with bagged salad
- Pre-marinated and sliced tofu, cold rice noodles, snap peas and bottled peanut sauce
- Jarred tikka masala, canned chickpeas, frozen peas and instant rice.
- The TikTok-famous kewpie salmon bowl, made with instant rice and canned salmon
For lunches, as mentioned above, I sometimes find it helpful to prepare some items for a snack plate as part of my "closing duties." This week, that included turkey lunch meat, cucumber slices, a Babybel cheese, fancy rosemary and sea salt crackers, roasted peanuts and golden raisins. I like having food to pick over the course of an afternoon and having it already made makes sure that I do actually do eat
If, like me, your body is not always ready for traditional American breakfast foods, like eggs and bacon, first thing in the morning, pre-packaged protein shakes and smoothies are a nice option, too. There are even some coffee-flavored options that are pretty stellar.
Having lists of easy-to-make options can make other tasks, from grocery shopping to deciding what to make, much easier for future you.
Give yourself some (a lot of) grace:
There are going to be days — and perhaps stretches of days — that your planned closing duties just don't get done. Maybe you're sick, maybe you're grieving, maybe you're just plain burned out. Those are the days where it's nice to have a stockpile of good, easy frozen meals. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods both have great options that just require you to peel back some packaging and flick on the microwave.
These are the days where it's also nice to keep a pack of paper plates or disposable cutlery on-hand. Are they the most environmentally-friendly choice? Eh, probably not. But if the thought of having to wade through a sink of dirty dishes is preventing you from eating, then, please, grab the paper plate. As Davis said, your space should work for you (not the imaginary houseguest who is going to lecture you about your choices).
Speaking of, don't underestimate the sanity-saving value of a good delivery pizza. The leftovers are good for future you, too.
