How to Overcome Overwhelmed by Cleaning Dishes

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When I open the dishwasher and it's full, I want to die. When there are eight things in my sink, I feel this full body sigh of relief. Instead of just loading it straight into the dishwasher, you organized it first. You come up with a ritual where every night at seven o'clock, when you come home from work, you put on your favorite playlist. So that my brain is getting little hits of dopamine from the pattern making, right? From the little finish lines I give myself.

Let’s face it: if chores were fun, they probably wouldn’t be called that. Because for most people, life can be overwhelming – and that means it doesn’t always look like a cleaning commercial where everyone is dancing their way to do laundry, take out trash, or smiling while washing the dishes. KC Davis is a therapist, author, podcaster, and TikToker who knows that caring for yourself can be a struggle. In this episode, she shares how radically rethinking “care” tasks –like not seeing a lack of cleanliness as shameful, or viewing messiness as a moral failure– can improve our quality of life. She also shares small strategies that could help us take better care of ourselves, because we deserve it. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts