DNF @ 74%

This is the most irresponsible, unhealthy, eye-roll inducing book I've read in a while. The fact it's written by a therapist is disappointing and concerning, but at least serves as an explanation for why the entire thing is written in progressive therapy-speak. In the 2 hours I spent listening to this drivel I lost count of the amount of times terms like 'valid' and 'morally neutral' were used. 'Don't call them chores, call them care tasks!'... Give me strength.

This book can parade itself as self-help for neurodivergent people all it likes, but it's nothing more than self-destruction. 'Only shower once a week? You're SO valid. Until a while ago, people didn't even have showers! And they were fine!' Yeah, K.C., because they BATHED. The fact this is coming from a licensed therapist is appalling. Again and again, K.C. tells her readers it's okay for them to live in their own filth, and to subject others to it. She reiterates over and over and over again that it's not a 'moral failing' to have bad hygiene. The main reason she seems to believe that it isn't morally wrong to subject people to your poor hygiene is because this makes you feel bad. However, that has nothing to do with whether or not something is wrong, and feeling shame about something is a good indication that it is.

This is not to say we shouldn't have compassion for those struggling with cleaning their house (or themselves) and believe me, I've been there. And now that I'm out the other side I just cannot tolerate the coddling and excuses. At 17 or 18 I was still getting my mum to clean my bedroom and en suite because, as I'd been told online, I had issues with executive function (which K.C. discusses on multiple occasions) and I literally couldn't clean my own room because of my autism! The thing is, my mum wanted to clean my room about as much as I did. And instead of finding ways to get it done myself, I let my mum take on the added work of cleaning my room on top of cleaning the entire house and cooking all of the meals, because the internet had convinced me this was valid. This book has very few tips on how to keep house, but it does have a boatload of excuses that will make you feel a whole lot better and 'valid' for not cleaning your house. And this isn't helping people. This is irresponsible, and it's discouraging neurodivergent people from learning valuable life skills and having responsibility.

The very few tips that K.C. does include are mind boggling. She states that she would leave wet clothes in the washing machine until the smell of mildew became noticeable because she'd forget about it, and then leave clothes in the dryer until they wrinkled. Instead of setting a timer for the laundry, she says to put a laundry basket in every room of the house, to not fold your clothes, and then put everyone's clothes into the same wardrobe or just leave them in a pile somewhere. WHAT? The thought of just leaving piles of clean laundry around the house is so stressful... how is that genuinely helping anyone? All of her solutions are the most outlandish band-aid excuses for putting things off, things that will genuinely improve your life (like having clean clothes). She claims that shaming yourself for not cleaning is abusive - but then isn't giving yourself a messy, chaotic and unclean living space just as bad?

So much of her advice centres around buying single-use products. Don't want to wash dishes? Just buy paper plates! Haven't donated your old clothes yet? Just throw them away for the landfill! Struggle brushing your teeth? Buy one hundred single-use toothbrushes. She then claims she actually really cares about environmentalism, and buying single-use toothbrushes is really just the same as using a covid mask, because those are also single-use. Why feel bad about creating waste when corporations like Walmart do worse? And remember everyone, feeling bad is NOT ALLOWED. Everything we do is valid! Don't question your actions because you don't want to end up feeling bad! [Self care jargon]. Ugh. It feels like she just wrote this book in order to feel better about things she's doing that she knows deep down are wrong. If you're a stay at home parent with two very young children, it isn't right to make them live amongst day-week old dishes, or week old wet laundry, or rubbish scattered around the house that you didn't put into the bin. I just don't believe that's right.

It doesn't help that K.C.'s opinions in this book are presented as facts. She states that laziness doesn't exist on more than one occasion. She doesn't let us forget it. At one point she even says, 'remember, laziness doesn't exist.' Saying it doesn't make it so. That goes for a lot of what K.C. has stated in this book. I don't believe that this book has any genuine skills, advice or tips to give people. The one thing of value K.C. writes is to set a visual timer for a task. Any article or video online could've given you that tip. If you're struggling with cleaning your home or your personal hygiene, you can get through this. But it starts with making a difference, not an excuse. I find watching cleaning videos helps to get me in the mood for cleaning. When I struggled with showering every day, I'd watch personal hygiene tutorial videos from the 1950s. You and the people around you don't deserve to live in or around filth. Cleaning and being clean will massively improve your life. If this review sounds angry, it's because it is. I'm tired of people coddling neurodivergents in ways that will have an active impact on their life. That en suite I never cleaned at 18? It ended up having a lot of mold that I then had to breathe in for the next four years. Don't set us up for failure by making excuses for us, because all its doing is making people feel temporarily better about themselves.