housework

Now that three of the children have moved out, all the household chores fall to me, my husband, and my son. It used to be that I divvied out the lion’s share of the tasks among the kids and then spent my days supervising, training, and correcting. (It was exhausting.) And then they grew up and I made them lists and they did all the stuff. (Like, seriously. For years, I almost never washed bathrooms, hung up laundry, or mowed.)

But now here we are. Just three people with a big old house to keep after.

Problem is, my husband works full time, and my son both studies and works (neither full time), and even though I’m at home much of the time and could shoulder many of the household responsibilities, I am also trying to work full-ish time on Milkslinger. So after some thinking, I came up with a plan.

Mornings, everyone is expected to complete some household chores.

• Husband: the milking, and other random piddlies that he just naturally does, like emptying the drainer and starting a load of laundry 
• Son: whatever is asked of him. (He’s supposed to plan his morning so he has an extra 20-30 minutes reserved for helping out. Does this always happen? No. But we persist.)
• Me: all the food stuff, like making breakfasts and lunches, prepping for supper, starting a batch of yogurt, wiping down counters. 

Throughout the day, I do some “running the household” tasks here and there, like baking bread, doing errands, making phone calls, keep the homefires burning (literally), but mostly I drill down on writing, video editing, and cheese work. 

And then — here’s the beautiful part — late afternoon, the guys come home, and while I cook supper and do the other maintenance kitchen work like cookie-baking, menu-making, smoothie big-batching, apple-schnitzing…

They attack the housework.

Sometimes I write out a list of tasks, but usually I just call things out as needed. 

“Collect all the dirty laundry and sort it.”
“Replace the flytape.” 
“Feed cows.”
“Drainer!”
“Vacuum!”
“Trashes!”

Towards the end of the week, I add in some heftier jobs so we don’t get bogged by too much deep cleaning over the weekend. For example, last night, Thursday, my husband washed the upstairs bathroom, I washed the stairs and the kitchen stove, and then I started putting away the Christmas decorations, which the guys helped with once they finished their jobs. 

Most evenings, we’re done with everything by about 7 pm, at which point we settle in for a cozy evening.

To be clear. We still fight about chores. We drag our feet. We bellow and snarl. We get tired. We fuss and whine. It’s not all roses over here, people. Do not be fooled. But saving the housework for the evening when we’re all around to work together has done wonders for my work schedule, my stress levels, and for the general wellbeing of the whole household.

For now, this works. 

This same time, years previous: caking a painting, she’s back!, the quotidian (1.3.22), my new kitchen: the computer corner, Lebanese dried lemon tea, high-stakes hiking, Christmas cheese, 5-grain porridge with apples, constant motion, cranberry sauce.