Many busy professionals feel like they come home or step out of the home office and start a second full time job. Are you one of them? Between cooking, cleaning, running errands and taking care of our family members, do you feel stretched to the limit! Maybe you are a working mom who feels like you never have a moment to stop. And for many people, the repetitive household tasks do not fuel a sense of purpose or accomplish those big goals and dreams. What can you do to streamline your household tasks so that you can concentrate on what is most important?
As a healthcare quality consultant and process improvement expert, a lot of my work included creating or improving business processes. By streamlining business processes, I have often seen task time reduced by over 50%! We can do the same thing at home! By designing and tweaking our routines and household systems, we can reduce the stress and the amount of time we spend on the household tasks!
This article explains a 5-step approach that is a simplified version of a widely used and very effective method to improve efficiency and outcomes in the business realm. I've used this approach many times over the years and have seen amazing results. If you can spend 15-20 minutes and start working through these 5 steps, chances are you can make a significant impact on household tasks!
Step 1: Identify your biggest stress triggers.
What household tasks do you find especially stressful or dislike the most? Is it doing the piles of laundry that you can’t seem to stay ahead of? Is it the general cleaning/dusting? Is it food shopping, meal planning and prep? Why is this stressful to you? Does the task take too much time, do you just really dislike it or is it physically uncomfortable or difficult to do? For example, I really dislike cleaning the bathroom and particularly the bathtub. Why? Because the bathtub is awkward! It’s hard to reach all of the surfaces when you are standing outside of it and because I’m not consistent it requires a lot of elbow grease to get soap scum off! It’s important to figure out the WHY because this will play into deciding on the best solution in the next steps.
Step 2: Decide on which task you want to tackle first.
In some cases, you might leave your biggest stressor alone for now and pick one a little further down on the list. You want a quick win if you are just starting this process, so don’t pick something that is going to take a big investment of time, energy or money at first. You can resolve these in time, just don’t start here! Another strategy for tackling the biggest stressor on your list is breaking it down into smaller tasks and starting with the smaller tasks one at a time. For example, I’m currently working on a meal planning system. Eventually I want to improve our diets, incorporate specific dietary requirements as well as consistently try out new recipes. But for now, my smaller task is just to come up with a consistent system for meal planning and shopping that works for me. Trying to do all of the dietary research, finding new recipes and coming up with a system for keeping track of all of that is going to be handled separately once I have a good routine down.
Step 3: Come up with 4-5 ideas that would help you tame your household responsibilities.
Try to come up with ideas that answer one of these three questions: “What can I get rid of entirely?”, “Who can I delegate this task to?” and “How can I create an efficient routine or system for this task?”
We can often get rid of portions of tasks entirely if we think creatively or realistically about the task. For example, if you know that you just don’t have time to cut up raw foods, can you afford to buy some or all of them already cut up? Let’s face it, how many of us still peel large carrots? Many of us have decided that a package of baby carrots (already scrubbed, peeled and bite-sized) is the way to go! A dollar or two of additional cost is worth it! Also, evaluate whether you or your family members really care about every element of a task. Are you just doing it because you grew up doing a task a specific way or because you think there is an expectation that you will do something? Poll your family, you might find out they really don’t care about a particular sub-task so maybe you can cross it off the list permanently! For example, do you pair and fold socks a specific way? Do your two teen-age sons care? Maybe they would be fine having all matching socks and just picking two out of a bin!
If you can’t get rid of tasks, can you delegate it to someone else? This might be volunteer (or voluntold) help from family members but it could also be paid help. If you hate housework, then maybe it’s time to pay for a cleaning service. For some households, this expense can be budgeted in with minor changes in spending habits. There is someone willing to do almost every household task for a modest fee – where would it be worth it to pay for some help? If money is an issue, could you consider trading with a friend/family member for helping each other with some of these tasks? In which case, you get help with your most stressful tasks and they get help with theirs (which works as long as they are different tasks). For example, maybe you are great with budgeting but hate meal planning. Can you share your system for budgeting with them and use their system for meal planning?
Finally, if you can’t get rid of it or delegate it, you can almost always create a routine or system that will help you accomplish the task with less stress and more efficiency. For example, just the way you handle dirty dishes can make a difference! Do you through everything in the sink and then have to dig through it to determine what should go in the dishwasher and what needs to be handwashed? If so, you are doing double work! Figuring out a system to get items in one place for handwashing and a separate place for the dishwasher will save a lot of time! Or better yet, figure out the dishwasher routine so that dishwasher items get loaded immediately after the meal! Which means that unloading the dishwasher before the meal may be a routine delegated to one of the kids (double win – you now have a system and have delegated to someone else!)
Step 4: Out of those ideas from step 2, pick the one that seems like it will work best and try it out!
This step is all about taking action! If the idea works, great! If not, then switch quickly to the next idea. This is an experimentation phase so don’t be afraid to try something and then abandon it if it doesn’t work. You will learn from trying out different approaches and this will ultimately help you decide on the best solution. You are not going for perfect, what you want is a noticeable change! You have landed on the right solution when your time or stress level goes down– in the business world we are looking for a 50% reduction in time so that is a very reasonable goal!
Step 5: Optimize the solution.
As you get used to a new routine, continue to make small adjustments as needed until you really feel like you have that specific task under control. If you delegated part of a task (paid or volunteer) perhaps you realize that there is more of it that you want to delegate. Maybe you got rid of part of a task and you realize that you don’t miss it – maybe there are other pieces you can get rid of! If you started a new routine/system you might realize that most of it is working but maybe you need to change the timing or you see a way to make it better. For example, let’s say you move over to ordering your groceries online for pickup at the store. You like the system, but let’s say your pickup day was on the weekend and you find that you are consistently waiting for 20 minutes before your order is brought out. By changing the pick-up day to a less busy weekday, you may be able to save an additional 15 minutes.
Once you start using these 5 steps and see some improvement on one task, you can then follow this same 5 step method for the next biggest stressor on your list. Keep working through them until you feel like you have tackled most of the big household tasks and your stress goes down.
A personal example:
I don’t like housecleaning or outside work. Living in an RV, most of my housework has disappeared and obviously, I have very little outside work since we stay at campgrounds where someone else does it! What has increased with RV living, is the amount of cooking I want and need to do. Sometimes, this is because we are way out in the wilderness and there are not great options to just go out for a meal. My husband and I also have some specific goals around our nutrition and it’s a whole lot easier to meet those if we eat in!
At the beginning of this year, I identified that the daily scramble around what to eat is my biggest “household stress” and my goal is to figure out the best system for meals. When I evaluated why meals stress me out, I realized that I like cooking, so I don’t necessarily need to reduce cooking time. What is stressful for me is the stress of getting to lunch or dinner time and then trying to come up with something in the moment. This means I need a good meal planning and food shopping routine.
Some of my initial ideas included printing out some new recipes and keeping a folder of those, delegating some tasks to my husband, looking for some pre-made meal kit options, finding a meal planning/shopping system or just creating my own meal planning system. Because we have some specific dietary needs and our shopping options change depending on our location, I decided I’m just going to create my own system. If that doesn’t work, I’ll revisit other options.
I decided to start my meal planning with the food in my freezer. This is because we have been at my parent’s house for the better part of the last 6 months, so we’ve been eating most of our dinners with extended family. We are now on the road again, but I have a freezer full of frozen items that should be used soon. My first step was to go through my freezer so I could see what we had and make a physical list of the items. Next, I handwrote a weekly menu of lunch and dinner options based on the freezer list. The freezer item list and the meal planning are both up on my fridge. For the first few weeks, I’m keeping it simple. I’m not hunting for new recipes or focusing on healthy eating. I just want to get the routine down.
Next, I added the ingredients I needed on our shopping list which I take a picture of when we go to a grocery store. It’s very low tech and that’s just fine. Don’t feel like you need a complicated routine. Keep it simple!
The whole process took less than 30 minutes. I’m good with 30 minutes a week for meal planning! If this works, I will tweak it later to incorporate new recipes. I’m already thinking about creating boards on Pinterest creatively titled “Week 1 recipes” “Week 2 recipes” etc. when I’m ready to try new things. I will also be improving our diet and opting for healthier meals over time. I may decide to use the meal planner/shopping list on my tablet organizing app. Those are all tweaks once the basic system is down. For now, I know that just having a meal plan will improve our eating habits and start reducing stress!
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