I’m having trouble finding my ‘zen’ when it comes to house work and the like at the moment.
The thought of actually having to fold the pile of clean laundry sitting on the couch makes me want to curl up into a ball and go to sleep. I know I need to clean the bathroom, and do the shopping, and change the sheets… but ugh.
Just Ugh.
Even cooking dinner or making lunch has become such a heavy weight that I am pretty sure I can’t possibly get up off this chair to go do it.
A while a go I thought I was totally zen when it came to cooking for my family. I had this un-squashable, slightly big-headed, pride that grew every time I made a menu plan or cooked a ‘wholesome meal’ for my family. I felt practically saintly when I managed to cook dinner at lunch time, and akin to Mother Teresa when I baked lunch box treats twice a week.
But these days… even those lofty heights leave me feeling blah.
I am not looking for some deluded, Valium driven, 1950′s housewife kind of bliss. I don’t enjoy housework, I never will, and I don’t particularly want to. But I’d rather not be paralyzed by the loathing of it all.
I chose to stay home while our children are small. I knew this gig wasn’t going to be all play dates and chocolate chip cookies when I started. I knew that part of this job was to deal with the house work stuff. It’s how we worked it out, because I am here, in the house, a lot.
I’m cool with the division of labour at the Pickle Farm. I am not an oppressed, anti-feminist who thinks all women should make their homes nice for their hardworking husbands, and look beautiful at all times while they do it. I just want to find some contentment with the less than fun bit of my current employment situation…
So help me out here…
How do you find your house work zen?
How do you motivate yourself to do the bits of your job that you don’t like so much?
How do you find contentment in ordinary, every day, things?
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I have to use use a few tricks to stay on top of my housework:
1. I break up jobs over the week and assign a day to them (eg wash towels on Fridays)
2. I book in a treat right after a big bout of housework – Facebook time, long hot shower or bath, chocolate or wine!
3. I look for ways to cut down on it, shortcuts, technology, etc. I’m sharing a few on the blog next month :)
I could always use some new ideas!
I am in the same situation.. I cannot find my zen either and I really really need to! I have been having a lot of thoughts about this lately.. I could really use some tips for making the house work more zen :)
How do I find my housework zen? Ummmm … other than cooking and laundry, I don’t. I’m stressed by it more often than not. (Sorry, I know that’s unhelpful).
I have cultivated a zen approach to laundry with some success – I try to focus on the pleasure that the smell of clean, line-dry cloth gives me, to hold each stage of the process lightly and gently in as I pass through it, to wrap it up with time outdoors with my little one. It has kind of worked in that I am not longer resentful of or exhausted by the laundry. If only it would work for cleaning the bathrooms, vaccuuming, etc etc etc, we’d be cooking with gas!
How do I motivate myself to do the icky bits? Rewards :-) I tell myself, “clean the bathroom, THEN you can read your book for 15 minutes” or “strip & remake all the beds, THEN you can have a cuppa & a biscuit”. It might be juvenile but it works for me.
How do I find contentment in ordinary, everyday things? I use a combination of visual and verbal tactics. I try to enjoy – really enjoy – the beauty in the things I see around me, especially things like the sky in all its moods, my children (in all their moods!), and the little personal touches in my messy house – ornaments, beloved books, knitted blankets, photographs – that are beautiful to me.
The other thing I do is to write about it. This is why my blog is so important to me – it reinforces mindfulness and makes me more content. It’s like, for me, the word both reflects and makes the world. (Quite the opposite effect to the one the media seems to think blogging has on mothers’ attentiveness, in fact).
Kathy! That is so true… blogging makes me think more critically about things, figure out solutions for problems and motivates me to try them! Not at all what a lot of people think is it!
Sorry I can’t help you, every single thing you wrote sounds exactly the same way I feel at the moment I blame it on the change of weather. (not my laziness).
Hmmm….I have a 3 and 4 and homeschool — next year for kindy! I just try to stay organzed. I’ve always been a naturally organized person, so I have schedule of laundry day, cleaning day, errand day, even bill paying/budgeting, menu planning…does it all do according to plan? No, but just having the plan helps me keep up with it all. I also make sure to have the house in order every night before bed (toys picked up, sticky fingerprints wiped, dishwasher unloaded, kitchen cleaned, floor swept, coffee ready to push on in the morning, lessons planned). It helps keep me sane knowing my house has a fresh start every morning. HTH! I know this is not for everyone, but it is what works for me.
I know exactly how you feel, Kate, and I think it’s all part of a big cycle. Your zen will return in time, I’m sure of it. Sometimes, when I’m in that slump, I bribe myself with rewards if I do the things on my ‘must do’ list.
Also, if I do the thing that makes the biggest difference to the house – whether it’s picking up the floor, folding the washing or cleaning all the kitchen surfaces – it makes me smile, and I get motivated to keep going.
Get a good audiobook (Harry Potter read by Stephen Fry highly recommended) and you will start looking forward to cleaning and sorting the house (to a certain extent) :-)
I moan and groan a lot. We all spend Saturday morning doing the jobs together that I didn’t get to during the week. I have special treats lined up for after completing jobs (like a cup of chai after all the lunch stuff is put away, or computer time after the breakfast dishes and a quick whip around are done). I shove all the kids junk into a pile in the middle of the room and then make them put it all away.I cook big meals one day so I can keep 1/2 in the freezer and have the night off another day…. there’s probably more, but my husband is demanding lunch
Be kind to yourself. Don’t pressure yourself to ‘do it all’ and have everything perfect – keeping a home is a ‘Work in Progress’ not an outcome. We will never have it all done so aiming to is just setting ourselves up for disappointment. As with anything that’s getting overwhelming, just bite it off in small chunks. Eventually all of the chunks will join up and make one huge cookie, with which to reward yourself :-)
you need music to block out the norm and sing your head off thats the best way to get housework done
Housework being my nemesis, I couldnt not reply ;)
How do you find your house work zen?
I don’t really. I have tried that whole Buddhist approach of being mindful while doing mundane tasks. It shits me to tears (sorry lovely Buddhists monks, but it’s true). I distract myself instead; tv shows, podcasts, audiobooks, even in my case uni lectures help mitigate the unending tedium. I’m a billion times more zen about it now as a single parent though, not having the expectation of another adult with whom the load should be shared.
How do you motivate yourself to do the bits of your job that you don’t like so much?
I LOATHE laundry with a passion, and dishes almost as much. I’m very relieved to finally have a dishwasher! That definitely helps. Sadly, there is no laundry putting away robot-yet. I try to keep on top of that job because i know how hideous it is when it piles up. I remind myself that I could do 20 mins a day, or 2 hours a week. I have varying success with this mind you. I also delegate as much as possible to the kids! Again…with varying success. They are probably sick of the phrase “We all help in a household! Its not fair or right for one person to do ALL the work!’ LOL
How do you find contentment in ordinary, every day, things?
By enjoying the things which it takes no effort to enjoy (cups of tea in the sun while reading a good book, chatting with friends, hugs from my children). I will *never* find happiness in housework, so I don’t try. I just do the bare minimum and get it over as fast as possible so i can do something more fun! That said, I do try to remember that if the house is vaguely clean and reasonably ordered it makes things like getting out of the place in the morning, and cooking dinner at night so much easier and streamlined.
This is sooo me as well. I don’t hate any one aspect of housework, it’s just the mind numbing, daily grind that gets me down. Cook a meal and five minutes later everyone is hungry again – clean the floors and sit down with a cup of tea and they’re filthy in a flash. I don’t really stay sane but my tactics for not going completely round the bend are: I get my kids (6 and 3) to sort the laundry and put theirs away. The 3 year old needs help, the 6 year old can do it as long as I don’t care if he just stuffs things into his drawers (I don’t). I save favourite podcasts for boring jobs to give me a bit of an incentive. I ignore jobs I really don’t like (cleaning the bathrooms) until my husband does it (very mature I know). We eat out a couple of times a week and have home delivery takeaway one night. I buy pre-made meals from the local butchers which have meat and veg in them (dinky little pastry parcels which my kids and my husband love) which I just put in the oven for 30 mins to cook. I remind my husband every Saturday morning of something he needs at Bunnings so he will go and take the kids and buy a sausage for them at the sausage sizzle which means (yay!) no lunch needing to be made by me. I give my kids lunch orders ALL THE TIME (hey it supports the school!). So…yeah…basically I’m completely slack.
Mmm music, lots of really cool music, some gorgeous house mags to inspire and a glass of wine helps too ;) x
Oh Kate, I feel your pain. Laundry and meals are basically the only two things I achieve on a regular basis – probably because we’d all be running around naked and hungry otherwise!! Have been thinking a lot about how to stop dragging my feet when it comes to keeping the house semi-respectable. I give myself pep talks about how much better I will feel if I clean, and how it will make my brain stop feeling so cluttered. Alas, it seems pep talks are not my strong suit. Must. Try. Harder. Loving the other comments – perhaps some of these ideas will help me!!
H xo
Kate, it makes me feel better when others admit they struggle with housework. It is the thing I find most difficult about being at home with the kids. I’m not a naturally tidy person – naturally messy for sure. I’m always striving to maintain a neat house, but I just instinctively mess things up. It’a talent I’d rather not have. I have loved reading these responses. I don’t think I can help you find your zen, but when you do, I’d love to hear what it is. Who knows, your zen zone might work for me too!
Yay, its a relief to know that I’m not the only person who becomes ‘paralysed by the loathing of housework’!! At the moment I actually hate being in my house and when I return home from being out my legs start aching and it actually feels harder and harder to walk the closer I get to home. I hate messiness yet I just can’t make myself tidy and clean it, knowing that is a futile exercise with a 2, 4 and 7 year old plus a messy husband. I find it so depressing living in a messy house and that zaps any ‘cleaning’ energy that I may have had. I have worked part time in the past but at the moment I am at home full time, and I can guarantee that I acheive far more when I am at home for only part of the week. I could get home from work and tidy the house up, whereas now I get to the evenings and just shuffle toys in to a pile so they are not in the way. There must be a name for housework phobia! I’d love to know the cure, but I’m very sceptical that there is one.
I think that I have got myself in to this state because we haven’t got enough storage at the moment and stuff is just on show all the time and so always looks messy.
One thing that does help me is to re-arrange a room, or even re-arrange where things are on my desk. This way I can clean and tidy easily because i am excited about the result of seeing the new arrangement.
I will keep an eye on this page to see if there are any suggestions that will work with me. But until then I will continue to feel drowned by all the boring jobs that surround me!!
I also blame it on the weather, I had a fortnight of it totally getting me down. After blogging about my laundry issues last week (mostly in an attempt to shame myself into tackling it), I am now getting sorted on that front. I do try and fold as I pull things off the washing line. Since I don’t iron I find this is the best way to keep clothes crumple free.
I also TRY and have the house organised again before I go to bed for a fresh start the next morning. This doesn’t always happen, especially as I work 4 hour night shifts each night, so it’s truly the LAST thing I want to do when I come home!
I’d rather eat beans and rice and hire a cleaner. That’s my zen!
Oh my gosh, Kate! I feel EXACTLY the same way here! I used to pride myself on menu planning, experimenting with new recipes, flipping through cookbooks etc. Lately (as in the past 6 months) I HATE cooking. Hate it. And worse yet, I”m not even doing it well anymore. I think it’s the negative vibes that I’m sending out to the food these days. I”m burning things and turning out pathetic versions of what I used to cook. Thankfully, my hubby has stepped up and kind of taken over on the weekends, but my kids know how much I hate cooking right now, and I feel bad about that. Like what if when they grow up, they forget about all the years that I lovingly baked and cooked for them, and instead just remember having a mother that hated cooking? That’s awful! That’s SO not who I am! I have to get my mojo back! As for my not loving housework as much as I used to, I blame that on facebook, blogging and Pinterest. I used to just clean when ever I was bored. Now, with all of my internet goodies, I’m never bored. lol
I’ve never thought about putting an audiobook on! Truth be told, I’ve never thought about audiobooks full stop. Anyway, I don’t mind doing laundry (though our bedroom floor is where we go for clean clothes). What I do loathe is cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes and tidying up after my toddler. What do I do? Usually, I leave it to another day, get annoyed with myself, have one massive clean-up, and the cycle begins again…..
With something you do everyday, you have to find happiness in it. You have to for your own happiness. And, I know with children—there is a lot of cleaning to be done. We share how we are inspired by Montessori and Waldorf classrooms to make cleaning a peaceful, calm time that we enjoy: http://www.wordplayhouse.com/2012/03/clean-calm.html
I do so hope you find your cleaning zen too! -heather