How I Maintain A Household While Working Full-Time

One of the women in a Moms Group I’m part of asked us to share how we maintain a household while working full-time, and how we get our kids and partners in on the initiative. Since several people found my response helpful, I want to share it with you:

“I have a housekeeper that cleans our house every week and does all our laundry. This is priceless. I know what my time is worth and its not best spent doing these things. Our laundry isn’t done or put away my idea of “perfect” but its done, and that makes me happy.

Our boys also don’t have a lot of toys and my husband and I don’t have a lot of things. Less toys, less we have to pick up or oversee our kids picking up. If an object comes into our house (or stays in our house) we must love it.

By trial and error my husband and I have figured out which home responsibilities are best done by each of us. I started to make all the zillion things I do for the kids’ school, doctor appointments, clothes, calendars, mental management and organization, etc. visible so he really knew all that goes into running a home, which then made him willing to take on more when I felt too much was on my plate.

We regularly have conversations to re-negotiate the balls we are each juggling when it feels like too much for one of us based on what we have going on at work, with our well-being, and in life in general.

Did we just snap our fingers and arrive at this place? Of course not. Reminding ourselves over and over again that we choose each other as life partners, and being willing to have regular conversations that come from a place of love that allow us to try, test, assess, and optimize the process over and over again has made it possible.

And perhaps most importantly, I had to give up control of what it looked like – letting my husband’s way of doing dishes or dressing the boys be ok, without me wasting my time and energy micro-managing.

Our boys help with feeding the dogs, bringing their plates to kitchen, dressing themselves, etc. and we are adding in more responsibilities for them, but have approached it as this is what you do to contribute to our family (with no explicit reward like getting paid to do it), as contribution builds a sense of belonging which is an intrinsic “reward” that all children desire.

Of course, sometimes they fight contributing or we have to remind them, but recognizing their age and development and that this is normal for a 3 and 5 year old helps to soften irritation around it.”

I can just imagine that someone is going to read this and say, “But I can’t afford a housekeeper…”

My response to that… Is this really true? I used to say I couldn’t afford a housekeeper but when I recognized it was necessary, I sat down with our household budget and figured out a way to make it happen. What do you currently spend money on that you’d be willing to swap for TIME?

I also calculated how much time a housekeeper would save me and how I could devote some of that time to income generation. Sure, some of us really can’t afford a housekeeper at different times in our life, so right now I’m talking to those women who can if they just make some adjustments or get over the “how will this person judge me when they see the mess in my house?” Question whether your finances are really holding you back, or if YOU are.

I can also imagine that someone might say, “But my husband was raised in a family where the woman does all the housework.”

My response to that… We teach people how to treat us. If doing all the housework, while working full-time, is not working for you any more (and how could it work for anyone?!?), you have the right to re-negotiate expectations, boundaries, and contributions. I won’t get into how to carry that out here, but understand you are never the victim of your circumstances, unless you choose to allow yourself to be.

It’s 2020 (thank God!) and time to give yourself room to breathe.

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