Tidying the Abyss

A Practical Guide to Cleaning and Organizing While Exhausted and Overwhelmed
A gentle, hands-on resource offering mental health-sensitive, disability-informed advice for those who do not have the privilege, bandwidth, or access to keep their home-and life-in a perfectly-ordered state.

A gentle, hands-on resource offering mental health-sensitive, disability-informed advice for those who do not have the privilege, bandwidth, or access to keep their home-and life-in a perfectly-ordered state.

When we see people in desperate situations, we are quick to sympathize but also quick to explain to ourselves why that couldn't be us. We could never live in squalor-we're just too responsible! We could never get a disabling illness that prevents us from easily enacting life skills-we're always so good about exercising and taking our supplements! And we certainly couldn't spend our lives in endless, menial suffering-we plan to be blessed!

But the truth is, desperation and chaos are just a few unfortunate events away for any of us. Keeping your life clean, orderly, and peaceful involves skill, but it also involves privilege, luck, and having access to a responsible adult with the bandwidth to teach you. Even then, responsibility does not save us from chaos. And when our lives are upended, our dishes, our laundry, and our bills mercilessly persist, piling around us, an oppressive burden.

In Tidying the Abyss one-time clinical social worker and current professional organizer Amanda Dodson provides a gentle, step-by-step guide to keeping house even when one's life is turned upside-down by an unexpected and permanent change to their, or a loved-one's, ability. Dodson advocates for the abandoning of perfection to make room for creative, livable solutions, no matter where one falls on the spectrum of being chronically ill, neurodivergent, or hopeless at home maintenance.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.