Reduce Overwhelm and Frustrations When Maintaining Your Home
EPISODE 38
by Dianne Jimenez
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Reduce Overwhelm and Frustrations When Maintaining Your Home
Managing your household tasks can be a lot on your mental health and well-being – especialyl if it falls on 1 person most of the time. As busy parents, we tend to truck through the every day grind on top of all our other obligations such as work, taking care of the kids and trying to squeeze in time for our own projects and passions. But WHAT IF, we had a system that could alleviate, even a little, the amount of overwhelm and frustrations we have when it comes to maintaining our home?
In this episode I take you step by step through a process that I’ve done myself for tasks that overwhelm me the most. If you have tasks that you wish would just disappear, then have listen to this episode now and get ready to take action.
Here’s the episode at a glance:
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Hey, welcome back and thank you so much for listening to another episode of Parenting Guide Organizing Habits Made Easy podcast, and you’re listening to episode number 38, and today we’ll be talking about reducing the frustrations and overwhelm from the never ending tasks of maintaining your home, where I’ll be taking you through a step-by-step process so that you can get control back and feel like you’re on top of everything.
So where did all of this come from? Well, one day I had this thought of how can I help you more, you my audience member? Because we all know that from the moment you wake up until you close your eyes at night, the house needs to be maintained. Otherwise it’s gonna be a disaster. And every single day, it’s just all gonna accumulate the clutter, the mess, the dirty dishes, the loads of laundry that are lining up the hallway, the shoes that are all over the place, and the bags in the middle of the kitchen floor. Am I making you feel a little tense all of a sudden? I know. So naturally, all of these things will accumulate if they’re not taken care of, right?
So what if we had a system or a guideline that would help make the maintenance a lot easier, a lot smoother, a little less frustrating, and a heck of a whole lot less overwhelming? Don’t worry, this episode will help you out.
How other people maintain their home
So a few months ago, I sent out this survey to a group of friends, some contacts and my email list, and the gist of the survey was to find out what the situation was in their household about all the chores that needed to get done. Like who was doing it, where does the bulk of it all land? Which ones were annoying them the most, or the ones that were most frustrating, and which of their top three that if they had a magic wand, it could all disappear. And a few ladies, because most of them were ladies, had responded that they only had three that were annoying them. Yeah, only three. So from what I gathered, the main two that kept coming up over and over again were laundry and doing the dishes. The rest was a mixture of different types of chores.
Some people were more specific like cleaning and mopping, and even meal prep. But laundry and dishes were the ones that were a big frustration for most. Like I said, I was sitting there wondering, how can I make your life easier at home? How can I make it less frustrating and reduce that stress? Because our house isn’t maintained consistently, and we all know when there’s clutter everywhere. That just adds to the stress because we see it.
find out how families with 3+ kids tackle the beast: laundry!
Maintaining your home can is frustrating
We have to process it all. We can’t find our things. It’s taking us longer to get ready or to leave sometimes, and we’re constantly feeling scattered and we’re rushing out the door to get to work or to get the kids to school. And then when we come home, it’s not as peaceful looking and serene as we’d like it to be. Right?
And I’m not talking about having soft music as you walk in or having candle lights and white linens and all these things. You know where it looks so minimalistic and everything’s put in place and there’s no dust. Like let’s be real. Although that would be really nice. It’s a whole different story when you have kids around along with so many obligations. And life is so busy. But it doesn’t have to be… and feel so cluttered and scattered all the time. So all this to say is not having our home maintained consistently, or as consistent as we’d like, I think that’s what’s the most frustrating.
And we often hear when it comes to our housework and home maintenance that we just can’t keep up. So this whole conversation going on in my head, I know I’m not the only one who does this, but it got me thinking about you.
Maintaining your home is like handling emails
So then the next thought in my head was about emails. I know stay with me. I don’t know why, but I had to think of a parallel of something that’s so relatable with many people that’s outside of our home.
For instance, when we receive emails at work all day, every day, and just respond to them as they come in. By the end of the day, you feel like you haven’t done much at all or any work for that matter because you’ve been busy responding to every single email in everyone else’s demands except doing what you needed to do for that day. And then you come home frustrated, or you end the day frustrated and stressed the next day, especially because you have all this work to do and to go through from the day before.
So on top of all of that, there are more emails coming in and more people asking you questions and interrupting your train of thought. Ugh, can you feel the frustration or are you tensing up right now? Because I know I am. And it’s tough. It really is.
…imagine the amount of stress and frustration you’ll have when you try to get the things that you want done and you can’t or you can’t yet, because everybody else’s needs have to be met first….Does this sound at all familiar to you?
Now, I know this isn’t a typical situation for everyone at work, that wouldn’t make sense, but it does happen from time to time. Sometimes you have days on end that are like that, or even just a glimpse of that in your week. But regardless of the frequency or if that, even if what I just described happens every single day, you can imagine the amount of stress and frustration you’ll have when you try to get the things that you want done and you can’t or you can’t yet, because everybody else’s needs have to be met first.
Does this sound at all familiar to you?
My Secret Sauce for setting the kids up for success
Work smarter not harder
I read somewhere that in order to work better or work smarter, not harder, they say that the best thing to do when it comes to tackling emails (and I know this isn’t for everyone and it depends about your situation at work), but they say to be more productive or to be the most productive and to feel more efficient at work is to block time to check your email during the day.
So whether that’s the first thing in the morning that you do for maybe an hour or the last thing you do before the end of the day, but whatever you do, be specific about the amount of time you’re spending doing that specific thing; which in this case is checking your emails and responding to them… if you can help it, of course.
So how do we bring this all back to the home front?
Step 1: Make a list
Well, I’ll take you step by step on how to schedule your tasks and chores so that it becomes less frustrating and overwhelming. So the first thing you wanna do is to set your timer for 10 minutes max and grab a pen and a paper and brain dump all the things that need to get done to maintain the house. And just to be clear, these are things that you normally do.
Otherwise it’ll all pile up. It’s gonna be a big mess, it’s gonna be cluttered. It’s just a disaster if neglected for too long. Now, I know the list may be really, really long, but do your best to respect the timer to just five, 10 minutes max. Okay? So funny enough, I was thinking of listing out examples of chores and tasks to maintain in the house, but I think you’re pretty good at knowing what they are, right?
Step 2: Put it in order
All right, so step number two from your list is you’re going to place everything in order of the worst, like the most suckiest ones, the ones that you wish would disappear to the ones that aren’t so bad at all. So try to do your best and put the ones that are the worst for you at the top, because you’re going to be choosing your top three most suckiest and wish-they-would-disappear tasks. Now remember, there’s no wrong answer and there’s not a lot of thinking to do here. So just take about five minutes max to put your list in order.
3 things to establish now before losing your s#!t later on (during the school year)
Step 3: Select your top 3
Now, if you are wondering why just three things, well, you know this, if we have too many things, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated, right? And this is what this podcast is for. This is why I am bringing this out to you today to avoid all of that, to reduce the frustration and overwhelm. So for now, let’s just focus on the three. Now that you have your top three that annoy you and frustrate you the most, or if you had a magic wand, it would all just disappear. We’re gonna get into the final part to decrease overwhelm and frustration when it comes to maintaining your home. And that’s to put them on a system and a structure so that it’s almost automatic where we work smarter and not harder, and also get everyone involved.
Maintaining our home by: Time Blocking & Doing Focused Work
Now the first part of our system that will help reduce overwhelm and frustration is to create boundaries around our schedule, and that is with time blocking. Do you remember the example about the emails? The one where we get them left, right, and center? And where blocking time off during the day whether in the morning or before the end of the day to tackle them? Well, it’s kind of like the same thing, but with our chores and our tasks. So in this case, we’d need to block some time and schedule it so we can just focus on it, that one time during the day. Do you know what I mean?
So these tasks that we don’t wanna do so much, that are not our cup of tea per se; the only way to kind of reduce the amount of overwhelm and frustration is that it’s not happening every single day, all day. And it’s the only thing we think about or it’s the only thing that we keep going to do and try to finish when we’re not working, driving around, prepping meals, helping with homework or tending to the kids. You know what I mean?
Maintaining your home starting with the never ending chore
For instance, let’s use laundry. Why? Because if you’ve heard me before, laundry is a beast. It’s never ending. It’s always there. It’s ready when you are waiting for you to be washed, to be folded and to be put away, and it can be overwhelming. So if you can put that in a schedule or put those things in a kind of contained way, like a box in your day, it makes it a little bit easier to manage.
First off, time blocking will help to keep everything in one time and one space only, where you just do focus work on that. Whether it’s an hour or two or even just 15 minutes. Whatever it is, it’s just that time that’s dedicated to that specific task. And I find that the best. Because you are tackling that item list without letting it overwhelm you so much because you’re only giving it that time in your day to focus on it. So for instance, at our house when it comes to laundry, we have a schedule going on where each day it’s just one category of laundry.
Free training: "How to find time in a busy schedule"
What this looks like at our house
For example, let’s say for instance on Sundays, the kids and my husband, they do jiu-jitsu in the mornings, and then when they come home, they bring their geese and put them downstairs in the washing machine. Then afterwards they hang them to dry and then fold them at night. So it’s ready for the rest of the week. Now, on the other days of the week, I have towels on Mondays I think, and on Fridays are another set of towels, or is it Thursday? I don’t know. I can’t remember everything on the fly right now. But that’s why I have a laundry schedule. I’ll put the link in today’s show notes so you can set one up for yourself.
Alright, just to go back to what we were talking about with laundry and overwhelm, it was overwhelming. Laundry was frustrating, but now it isn’t anymore because I’ve applied what I’m teaching you today. So let’s keep moving. Okay? Now, the second part of our system to help reduce overwhelm and frustration when it comes to our tasks at home is to automate things.
Maintaining our home by: Automating it
Now, what do I mean by this? If we set it up so that your machines work for you instead of against you in a sense where they’re working, when you don’t have to be there to monitor it, in other words, it means your machines are working while you’re asleep doing something else or you’re at work. For instance, for us, we run the dishwasher overnight, we unload it in the morning, it gets filled the rest of the day. And then before we go to bed at night, we schedule it so that it runs at one or two o’clock in the morning. Therefore, it’s ready to be unloaded by one of the kids the next day. So that’s what I mean by automating something and working a lot smarter than harder.
Now, speaking of the kids unloading the dishwasher the next day, we are at the final point to reducing stress, overwhelm and frustration when it comes to our tasks at home.
Maintaining our home by: Delegating & Sharing Tasks
And that is point number three, delegate and or share the task. I know delegating might be something tricky or delicate or very challenging to do, especially at the beginning. Some kids might be very resistant or even protest and not want to do anything, or maybe it’s you who doesn’t wanna give these tasks away, I dunno. But it will only help them in this whole big picture. Yes, it is helping you right now because it lessens the amount of things on your plate, but it actually helps them in the future. So when they have their own place, they will know what to do. So here’s an example of where delegating fits in our house.
Stay on track with laundry & tips to getting the kids involved
What this looks like at our house
And surprise, surprise, I’m gonna be using laundry because it’s never ending. And if it’s not taken care of, it’s just gonna pile up and everybody’s gonna have to walk around naked, which it’s not gonna happen. So basically I start a load in the morning and then I go about my day, whether it’s working from home, going to a client’s or going to work at the school and running my errands.
Then I come home in the afternoon and one of us, either it’s myself or the kids, will do the switch and put whatever that’s in the wash into the dryer and maybe start a second load if needed. Then after supper in the evening, we’ll either have time to take it out of the dryer and then fold it at night with my husband, or it gets folded the next day or two by myself with the kids or just the kids alone.
So you see where sharing and or delegating the tasks work beautifully here, everyone can participate so that this task is getting done or gets closer to being finished. That way it alleviates all the stress and frustration and overwhelm from you. And to tie it in with time blocking, it’s on a schedule.
Chore and activity chart to help maintain your home
By the way, speaking of the kids doing the tasks, if you do follow me on Instagram, I occasionally post images and posts of my kids doing their tasks and different chores based on a chore and activity chart that we created, myself and my husband over the years. This is probably iteration number six or seven, but maybe one day I’ll show you how we do this, but it’s got some pretty sweet deals and incentives to help get the chores done at home with the least resistance possible, and at the same time balancing out their leisure time activities and studies.
Let’s do a recap
All right, so just to wrap all of this up, these are my three recommendations to reduce the stress and frustrations we have when trying to maintain our home from your top three most stressful and overwhelming tasks. Number one, time blocking and doing focus work on the tasks that are not quite the ones we enjoy doing, but the more condensed and focused time that you spend doing that, the less overwhelming it is. Then you have “Making things automatic”, like setting up your washing machine overnight or even setting up your Roomba like we do three times a week, so I don’t have to vacuum. And finally delegating and sharing the tasks so there’s less on your plate and everyone is getting involved.
Thank you and please share this episode with a friend
So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please let me know your one takeaway that you got by DMing me on Instagram or on Facebook, but I’m mostly on Instagram, so let me know what your takeaway is from today. And again, as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a positive review on Apple Podcast. All right, my friend.
Thank you so much for listening today. Have a great rest of the week and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.
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