3 Ways to Share the Load At Home

Have you ever looked around your home and wondered how you ended up taking on the majority of the chores, a lot of the parenting, and the mental load of every single detail of your children’s lives?

You’re running out of freezer meals, your son’s child care backpack zip is broken, and your daughter’s pants are looking too short.

Add it to the 17,000 tabs already open in your brain and enter another day with a huge to do list for your home.

My mission for 2020 is to help 1,000 mums balance their schedule and the topic of inequality in the home comes up a lot.

These simple steps will help you feel ready to speak to your family about the load at home. You can have more free time and mental space without any guilt.

Stop cleaning

This is one of the most effective exercises I’ve seen to help divide and conquer household chores. If you’re feeling an imbalance here, sit down with your partner and make a request that you review what’s happening at home. Often the person doing less around the house doesn’t even realise what goes on behind the scenes day to day.

As a team, write down everything that needs to happen around the house on a daily or weekly basis – emptying the dishwasher, hanging the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and so on.

Then next to each item, decide approximately how long each task will take and add them all up.

Depending on your home situation, you can then both decide how much time each person will devote to the upkeep of your house each week.

You can split it 50/50 if that makes sense, or agree on a different division of time.

Then have a chat about what you prefer to do around the house – do you hate vacuuming, but are ok with cleaning the bathroom? Let them know.

Another thing I’ve seen work well here is to just let go of things you don’t really care about. For example, I don’t care how the dishwasher is stacked, as long as it’s done. However I do care how the laundry is hung out, so I’d take that task.

Once you have names next to each task, agree on the best way to keep this going around the house – a list on the fridge? A document you both have on your devices?

Write it down and agree to trial it for the next month. I promise you’ll see things shift.

Share the parenting

If you’re feeling a big imbalance in parenting duties, it is possible to find a rhythm that will work for both parents. If one of you is used to turning up and finding clean clothes, washed dishes, and activities planned for the day, then they may not realise you need help and just assume you’re taking it in your stride.

If that’s not the case, it’s time to play to your strengths again.

Do you love setting up craft for the day and choosing new books for your child to read? And despise washing bottles and wiping splatters from under the high chair?

Observe where your partner takes things in their stride and either start to back away from those areas, or again have a chat about what’s working for you or not at the moment.

You might find out they love doing kinetic sand and painting (my least favourite activities) and you’re happy to chill in the kitchen cooking dinner listening to music while they do that.

The key is to observe and ask, and not let the resentment grow.

Reset before the second shift

Back in 1990, sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the phrase "second shift" to describe the household labour married women did once they came home from their paying jobs.

I mean if they had to coin a term for it, it’s happening.

It’s probably unlikely that you’re able or want to remove all household activities from your evening, but that feeling of burnout and lack of free time can be solved.

You will likely have a window of time between work and picking up / re-engaging with your children, or between the afternoon and evening routine at home. Even if it’s five minutes, take it.

Don’t rush to get that last email out or shove the last things in the dishwasher. Take some time and read a book in the backyard with a glass of wine, do some yoga stretches – whatever it is, do it just for you.

There is a tendency to just rush on to the next thing without ever delineating our day and taking time for ourselves.

The value of stopping and doing something for ourselves will have a knock on effect you may not expect, and the evening will likely run more smoothly if you’re feeling rested and like you’ve had a moment to yourself.

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What is the number one strategy you want to implement at home? Observe how you’re feeling this week and see what’s weighing on you the most – household chores, parenting duties or the rush rush rush feeling between daytime and evening. It can be frustrating to know many of us feel this way in the home, but also heartening to know that it can change.

Creating the schedule you want is the most important skill you can hone, and those around you will most likely want you to have that schedule too.