Zip Through Your Household Chores

There are so many things in life that require your attention, even if you are facing a crisis like cancer. Thankfully, one of those things can be somewhat ignored for a while: household chores. Unfortunately, they can’t be ignored forever.

Even if you are accustomed to a neat and tidy home, it’s really important to give yourself and your family members some grace when it comes to household chores, because they can quickly pile up. This is especially true if you have children and/or teenagers at home.

While the world won’t fall apart if your house is a mess, a backup of household chores can put some people on edge and overwhelm them even more. The best way to deal with this is to find a happy medium.

Acceptance

Accept that right now your home will not look as polished as you would like it to look.  This is a difficult season that will last an undetermined length of time, but it will come to an end at some point. When that happens and life gets easier, you can put more energy into your household chores.

Accept help whenever it’s offered. Help with household chores is often the most difficult kind of help to accept. Caregivers, especially, think it’s their sole responsibility to take care of these tasks. When our home is messy, we feel embarrassed and don’t want family and friends to see how far behind we’ve fallen. Nevertheless, it’s important that you find one or two people you can trust with your cobwebs and clutter. Some people are naturally gifted at cleaning and organizing. If they are willing to lend you a hand, take it with gratitude.

Home Blessing

There are an organization and cleaning expert known as the Flylady. She has lots of great advice on how to manage your household chores. I am going to share one of them: The Home Blessing. Basically, the home blessing is when you take one hour, once a week, to do some bare essential tidying up. I’ve tried this a couple of different ways…

2 Ways to Zip Through Your Household Chores

Method 1 is to spend about 7 minutes doing each of these household chores. For example, you would dust your entire home as quickly as possible, and then move on to vacuum all of your floors, etc.

Method 2 is the method I prefer because it seems more efficient. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Then, start in one room and spend about 10 minutes zipping through it, doing these basic household chores until the timer goes off. Then, move on to the next room starting the timer again. Continue this process until you’ve gotten through the rooms.  You should be able to get through 6 rooms in an hour.

• Pick up clutter
• Dust furniture and clean glass
• Vacuum
• Quick Mop
• Change Sheets
• Empty all trash cans

Perfection isn’t the Goal

It helps a lot to do this as a team, whether it’s a team of 2 family members or 4. I like to assign each of my kids to a room. They don’t necessarily do the jobs as well as I would like, but that’s okay. Perfection isn’t the goal. You are just trying to get your home in order so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by the household chores that you are putting off. Then, when you have some extra time in your day you can choose a room and give it some extra TLC. For now, this will help you feel good about your home and allow you to relax.

The A to Z Blogging Challenge

Once again I will be doing double duty in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I will be sharing ways to avoid burnout, here at Facing Cancer with Grace.  At Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker, I will share ways of thinking creatively, using Brainsparker’s Kickstart Course of A to Z prompts. I hope you’ll visit me at both sites.

How do you make household chores simpler?

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Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

ABOUT HEATHER ERICKSON

In 2012 doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan, with stage IV lung cancer. Since then, our family has been learning what it means to face cancer. I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My book Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, is available on Amazon.com

Also, check out Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer.

Also, put your memories into words with The Memory Maker’s Journal.

I also blog at Heather Erickson Author/Writer/Speaker