You can’t live like a healthy person and clean like a chronically ill one. BUT, chronic illness doesn’t mean your house has to fall apart—it does mean you have to approach managing it differently. This article is not specific to chronic illness. This is a how to for anyone that can’t function at 100%, whether it’s chronic illness, mental illness, or just a really busy season of life that has you chasing your tail. Let me also say, I have no ailments myself. By God’s grace I have not yet had to deal with any kind of chronic or debilitating pain. So, I am going to try and tackle this with humility and grace. I apologize in advance if something comes across as insensitive or privileged. As I said, this is not something I have dealt with, I have just had lots of requests to cover this topic.

With all of that being said, let’s dive in!

If you live with chronic pain, fatigue, autoimmune disease, mental illness, or any condition that limits your energy, then you have probably been told one of two unhelpful things: “just push through it” or “lower your standards”. I don’t agree with either of those. I believe every house—every household, regardless of ability—needs a small set of daily tasks to stay functional. Not perfect or magazine-ready, but manageable.

That’s where the Daily 6 and the House Shut Down come in.

Let’s first talk about the Daily 6. These are six simple tasks that when done consistently prevent mess from piling up. They are the tasks that, as I always say, keep your house manageable. They are not optional! I don’t want to sugarcoat this or make you think there’s a way around it because there’s not. There is a minimum maintenance requirement for a home to stay livable. When these six things don’t happen, the house doesn’t just get messy—it becomes harder to function in. And when you live with chronic illness you don’t have extra energy to deal with crisis-level messes later.

Find the Daily 6 here: https://organizedchaos4bus.com/2022/02/10/the-6-10-list/

Skipping daily maintenance doesn’t save energy. It borrows energy from the future—at interest! And that future version of you? She’s probably in pain, exhausted, and needs the house to be easier, not harder. As I always say, “don’t make it a future you problem”.

Living with chronic illness actually makes the Daily 6 more important, not less. Because big cleanups take more energy than small daily tasks, visual clutter increases fatigue and overwhelm, decision-making is harder when the house is chaotic. So the question is never should these tasks be done, but when. However, just because something is necessary doesn’t mean it needs to be done fast, all at once, or by one person. This is about prevention, not perfection.

The Daily 6 exists to prevent laundry room disasters, dish pileups, or waking up to a house that immediately drains you. You are not cleaning to impress anyone, you are maintaining your environment so it doesn’t fight you. Think of it like brushing your teeth: you don’t skip because you’re tired, you adjust how you do it, but you still do it. A house doesn’t care how tired you are or how much pain you’re in. If it isn’t maintained, it becomes harder to live in. And when someone in the house has chronic illness, that difficulty hits faster and harder.

Let’s go back to the House Shut Down. This is necessary to ensure tomorrow doesn’t start in stress. For people with chronic illness, this is especially critical because you don’t know how you’ll feel tomorrow. You may wake up already depleted and decision fatigue hits harder. The House Shut Down removes future pressure. Even if nothing else gets done all day, doing a partial shut down protects your energy for tomorrow. But just because these things HAVE to be done doesn’t mean they can’t be split across the day, split across people, done imperfectly, done seated, or done in five-minute increments.

Chronic illness changes how, not whether. Living with chronic illness doesn’t remove the need for maintenance—but it does change the strategy.

So, let’s talk about what a realistic execution of the Daily 6 might look like:

1. One Load of Laundry
   • This one can actually be optional to a point. If you don’t have in house laundry or if you don’t have a lot of dirty clothes each day, this one can be skipped or put off. But if you DO have a lot of laundry daily, then you can’t skip or put it off. This doesn’t mean you are washing, drying, folding and putting away all at once. As I’ve said, laundry is a river not a lake. It NEVER stops flowing, so you have to keep paddling. But it can also be a multi-step or multi-hour task. For example:
     • Load the washer in the morning
     • Switch it later in the day
     • Fold or sort sitting down
     • Then put it away
2. Wipe Counters
   • You do not need to scrub. You are removing crumbs and stickiness so it doesn’t harden and demand more later. So, just a few quick swipes will do.
3. Load the Dishwasher
   • Do this as the dishes are put in the sink throughout the day, not all at once. So, you’re walking by the sink and see a dish, stop and load it right then. If the sink is pretty full, grab a stool and sit down to load! You could stand up to grab a handful of dishes, lay them scattered in the top rack of the dishwasher and then sit as you get them properly placed in the dishwasher. And don’t overlook running your dishwasher without a full load. If it saves you time and energy, DO IT.
4. Wipe the Sink
   • The sink is the heart of a kitchen and where ALL the germs live. So, take the time to give it a quick wipe.
5. Make the Bed
   • Making the bed doesn’t have to mean hospital corners. I don’t even do that much! All you need to do is pull up the covers and straighten your pillows. And you don’t need a crazy amount of pillows like I have. If it’s just you, only use one pillow on your bed! Why does this matter? Because a made bed makes the whole room feel calmer—even if nothing else is done. It’s your first small win of the day.
6. Vacuum
   • This is the task people with chronic illness dread the most and for good reason. When I say “vacuum”, people think I mean vacuum the whole house and that’s definitely not what I’m saying. All I want you to do here is grab a small hand vac and go over any noticeable debris in the main living areas. If you leave a few moderate crumbs on the floor then people step on them, crunch them up, kick them around and suddenly those few crumbs have dirtied a considerable amount of your floors! Now, if there are no noticeable crumbs that day, skip it! And if it’s within your budget, treat yourself to a robot vacuum. The less you have to do yourself and the more you can automate, the better!

Okay, I want to be very clear about this—taking longer does not mean you are failing! If it takes you all day to do what someone else does in an hour, who cares! If your house shut down needs to begin at 3:00, then it begins at 3:00. Your job is not speed, it’s consistency at a sustainable pace. Sustainable means we aren’t going to suffer from burnout later. We are able to function at this pace for the foreseeable future. And listen to your body! This goes for everyone. Some days you may be able to work faster or longer than other days. Gauge your body and make necessary adjustments.

Now, most (not all but most) homes that include someone with chronic illness also include other capable humans. And this matters. The Daily 6 belong to the house, not one person. Tasks can be shared or assigned or rotated. Someone else can vacuum, start the laundry, load the dishwasher. You are not asking for help—you are allocating household labor appropriately. Chronic illness is not a personal failure. It’s a factor in planning. (And if your husband, partner, kids, refuse to help then send them my way…I would love to have a talk with them!) EVERYONE in the house should be helping. Everyone in my house helps. It was rough at first. There were lots of “loud” conversations that were being had and once in a while one of them still needs reminded, but trust me over time everyone gets on board.

What if you live alone? Well then hooray, the Daily 6 actually become more manageable, not less. Why? Because no one is undoing your work. No one is adding mess unpredictably, so you control the pace. This is where you lower friction, use tools and build systems that support your energy. For example: duplicate cleaning supplies, sit while doing tasks, or break everything into steps. Remember, your house does not need to look impressive. It needs to support your health.

Now, there is another piece of this that matters just as much as doing the work. For people with chronic illness, managing a house isn’t only about how you clean—it’s also about how you live. Because the reality is, you can’t live like someone without chronic illness and then just clean more slowly. That doesn’t work. Living with chronic illness means you have to limit inputs so daily maintenance stays possible.

Simplifying life is part of house care. If your energy is limited, then everything you bring into your house—and everything you ask your body to do—needs to be intentional. That might mean:

• Simpler dinners that create fewer dishes
• Repeating the same meals instead of cooking something new every night
• Wearing fewer clothes so laundry stays manageable
• Owning fewer outfits so decision-making is easier
• Going a little longer between washing certain items
• Choosing fabrics that don’t require special care
• Stop folding items and get a system where you can just toss them in a bin

This isn’t lowering your standards. This is engineering your life to match your capacity. Limitation is not failure—it’s strategy!

This part is uncomfortable, but important…people with chronic illness can’t function like other people. Not because they aren’t trying, but because their bodies don’t allow it. And pretending otherwise doesn’t make life better, it makes it harder. Limiting yourself isn’t giving up. It’s protecting your ability to function at all. When you limit choices, wardrobe volume, meal complexity, and household inventory you reduce the daily demand on your body. And suddenly, the Daily 6 becomes doable instead of overwhelming.

The Daily 6 are necessary, but they work best when your life supports them. If you cook elaborate meals every night, dishes pile up faster than you can manage. If you own too many clothes, laundry becomes a constant burden. If your house is full of excess, every task takes longer and costs more energy. Simplifying life is how you keep maintenance within reach.

This is about designing for reality. You don’t build a life based on what you wish you could do. You build it based on what you can do consistently. That’s how you avoid burnout. That’s how your house stays manageable. That’s how you protect your health.

You can’t live like a healthy person and clean like a chronically ill one.

When your life is simpler, the Daily 6 stop feeling impossible. Every house needs maintenance—and people with chronic illness deserve a way to meet that reality without sacrificing their health. The Daily 6 and the House Shut Down are not about discipline. They’re about creating a home that doesn’t demand huge cleanups or add mental stress. It’s about creating a home that doesn’t punish you for resting. When your house is manageable, you conserve energy for your body, your relationships, and your actual life!

Living with chronic illness means your energy is precious. The Daily 6 are not about doing more—they’re about doing just enough, consistently, so life doesn’t get harder than it already is. You don’t need to earn rest. You don’t need to keep up with anyone else. You just need systems that work with your body instead of against it. And this is one of those systems!