Reflections on making housework manageable (and sometimes even enjoyable) for the kids

    It's been a huge goal of mine to NOT make housework feel as distasteful to my children as it felt to me when I was a child. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I remember becoming curious about chores and eager to help the adults. Once my family realized my capabilities, those chores quickly became MY (and my brothers) chores, with little to no adult support going forward.

    As an mom, I can absolutely understand why the adults chose to handle household responsibilities handoffs in this way. Being an adult is exhausting. Dumping undesirable tasks on other people creates one less thing that you have to worry about. As an exhausted mom, I get it.

    But as a 6/ 7year old, this introduction to helping around the house made me feel resentful and wishing like I should have kept my curiosity to myself. I'm positive that this abrupt hand-off contributed to the intense resistance toward chores that I experienced all throughout my adolescence.

    Fast forward to today, I empathize with my kids when it comes to taking on more responsibilities around the home as they get older. For this reason, I'm intentional about making the process of teaching my kids household responsibilities as painless as I possibly can. If we can't make it fun, my goal is to at least make it neutral.

    Does that always happen? No. Sometimes, I do have to go mama bear on my little ones. However, I can confidently say that we have more positive experiences than negative ones when it comes to doing chores. I feel really proud of that.

    We've been working on establishing routines and systems for a while. My kids can earn an allowance for their contributions to taking care of their home, among other thins.

But here are a couple of routines that we have been working on lately:

1. Put the house to bed- I set a daily alarm to go off in the evenings. When the alarm goes off, we'll play fun music and/or I'll set a 15 minute timer. Once the alarm goes off, the kids know that it's time to help tidy and reset the public spaces in our home. One big kid will empty and load the dishwasher. Another big kid will clear the dinner table and swiffer the floors. My 5 year olds scour the house, looking for things that are in the wrong place. While this is happening, my husband and I are guiding them & training them and jumping in where we can to make the process go faster. When we are done, the house looks pretty respectable. Most importantly, I feel like we are setting the example that taking care of a home is a team effort, and everyone needs to do their part. Prior to this experiment, we've been working with the kids for a while to learn how to do these basic chores. I've struggled to find the right approach to make this practice consistent. "Putting the house to bed" has definitely been a fun way to help with the consistency piece.

2. Laundry day- Everyone in the house has officially been assigned a laundry day. My husband and I work on our laundry on Fridays. The boys work on their laundry on Saturdays. The girls work on their laundry on Sundays. On Mondays, I wash miscellaneous items that don't fit into any of the other categories. On your assigned day to wash, you are responsible for washing your clothes for the week as well as your towels and bedding. The boys are mostly old enough to do this independently. Prior to implementing this routine, the boys have been helping sort out and put away laundry for years. Introducing this new step of washing the clothes has worked, almost seamlessly, with the routines that we established before. The boys being able to do their own laundry has lifted such a weight off my shoulders as a working mom. Since we've been stepping up their responsibility, they have a good attitude about it for the most part. The girls are 5, and they have been making progress with this new routine as well. I have a step stool in the laundry room that they can use to make sure they are sprinkling the detergent correctly and use when taking their washed clothes out the washing machine and moving it into the dryer. Just like the boys, the girls are familiar with sorting their clothes out and putting them into their (no fold) drawer system. At this time, they primarily need support with staying on task and hanging a few dresses. Otherwise, they are engaged, excited to help, and they are doing an awesome job l establishing this routine. Just like with my other initiative, I use my Alexa device to help remove the mental load of remembering to tell the kids when it's time to do their laundry. My Alexa device reminds the kids to check on their laundry hourly. Once the laundry is done for the day, the kids are free to shut off the reminders. It's an ongoing reminder, so she will automatically go off again next week.

There are a few more home maintenance routines I would like to establish with the kids before they go off into the world, such as keeping their bathrooms clean and learning how to deep clean, ect. I'm sure we will get there... slowly but surely. But for now, I feel happy with the energy around our new family cleaning routines. I vow to work very hard to protect that energy the best that I can... even if that means the house will be a little messier than I would like for now. We'll keep working together to close the gap.... eventually.

Peace and Blessings,

LaDay

Balancing Self Care and Never Ending Obligations as a Working Mom

The house is quiet and today.

This is not your typical quietness. Most of the quiet time I have during the week is usually paired with some sort of obligation. For example, when the kids are at school, I'm at my full time job. When the kids are sleeping, I, too, am equally exhausted and can be found in bed.

Today's quiet is different. I choose for it to be obligation-free and instead I'm using it to nourish my soul.

It's not that there aren't other things that I could be doing. The sink is full of dishes. The bathrooms could use a good scrub. I could be planning a birthday party, making a meal plan, or preparing a shopping list.

Today, I choose not because I know that I could be working, planning and doing chores indefinitely if I'm not intentional about taking breaks and incorporating self care along the way.

In my current stage of life, getting all my work done before rest & play no longer makes sense for me.

It worked for me in my early 20s. Between school-work, part-time work, and dorm life, I had a fairly limited amount of responsibilities that I could easily check off of my to do list. I had an abundance of time and energy to engage in other activities that I enjoyed and ample time to refill my emotional cup.

Today, as a working mom, my to do list is indefinitely long. Between taking care of my family, my home, my career and myself, there is ALWAYS something to do. Despite this circumstance, however, I'm the one who has to take accountability for my rest, my play, and for my emotional wellbeing. Which is why I chose to enjoy today's quiet.

The work is never done... but somehow it always gets done. I know that this may sound contradictory. But if you're a busy mom, you may understand. The work somehow always gets done, whether I'm taking care of myself along the way or not. After years of battling chronic burn out, I've learned, when possible to choose the peaceful path and for me that means prioritizing self care as often as I can.

I'm grateful to have a life where self care is an option.

Peace and Blessings,

LaDay

Breaking the Myth of Laziness: A Working Mom's Guide to Managing Energy

One of the worst pieces of advice I ever received as a working mom trying to manage her home was to not be lazy. Here's why....

The underlying message was that if I wasn't tackling all of my goals and taking care of everything that needed to be done, it was because I lacked good character and discipline. I was told to work harder to get everything done.

But as a mom, there is always work that needs to be done. And it's not just a one-time tasks either - that includes cyclical stuff we do that comes back again and again. 

The 3 Different Energy Times (Inspired by Human Design)

The Most Abundant Energy Type

Some people have seemingly unlimited energy and can tackle anything and everything. But holding them up as a standard for all of us to reach is not fair, because many of us will never reach that level of abundant energy. It's just not in our genetic makeup.

Furthermore, having an abundance of energy can actually be challenging as these people may feel pressured to do any and everything that seems necessary, regardless of whether it holds personal significance to them or not. This lack of selectivity in energy expenditure can lead to a busy schedule filled with societal expectations, leaving little to no time for introspection and pursuing one's own goals. Consequently, it can cause one to question if life is simply a monotonous cycle of chores and routines.

The Selectively Abundant Energy Type

There are also those of us who can tap into an abundance of energy, however we need to be doing things that light us up and that feel meaningful. If scrubbing baseboards is not our thing, we may struggle with believing that we are lazy because we can't commit to cleaning labor for hours upon hours. But that's not the case - some of us our designed to thrive when we are intentional about where we spend our time and energy. If we do what we love, we will find an abundance of energy for that. We have to be selective with what we do outside of the things that we care about, because we won't have the energy to sustain doing those types of tasks all day. 

There is nothing wrong with being created this way. Those of us in this category can do a pretty decent job of keeping up with household responsibilities by setting up short, realistic routines that focus on high impact tasks and leverage the part of the day when we tend to be the most energized. Consistently showing up to short, strategic routines may not seem like a big deal in the short term, but it does add up. If you need an example of what this could look like, check out my free YouTube course called The Peaceful Home keeping Challenge.

The Most Selective Energy Type

Some people just don't have a ton of energy for one reason or another. They have to be the most intentional about where they spend their time and energy. Once again, there is nothing wrong with this energy profile. This group of people have their own strengths and contributions to offer the world, but it's just not going to be their physical output. All these energy types would benefit from outsourcing and asking for help. But strategies to minimize the mess to begin with and asking for help will be of the utmost importance for people whose energy levels are set up like this. And that's okay.

Learn to Thrive In Your Own (Energy) Lane

In conclusion, we're all designed to function in different ways energetically. What hurts all of us is to believe that one energy type is superior above all of the rest. All of these different energy types have their strengths and weaknesses, even the high energy type society tells us we should all aspire to. Instead of trying to get it all done, the goal instead should to be to become self aware, learn where you are energetically, and find strategies to help you thrive in your own lane.

Peace and Blessing, 

LaDay