There’s no escaping household chores and tasks, and we all have to deal with the tasks in life that are essential but that we don’t enjoy doing. Whether it’s routine tasks like doing the housework, helping the kids with their homework, keeping the yard tidy, or sorting the recycling, or finding the enthusiasm to tackle a big job like decluttering or redecorating, there’s never a shortage of things to be done that make your heart sink rather than sing with joy. Is there any way of making your chores less of a burden and more of a pleasure?
Housework
Probably the biggest single category of chores that you wish you didn’t have to do. Housework can be dull, tedious and can seem to give you few rewards for your efforts; no sooner have you cleaned everything than it starts to gather dust and dirt again; washing and doing the dishes is just an endless cycle, and ironing is boring and never-ending. Thankfully, there are some things you can do to help make housework less of a chore:
- Make sure everyone is pulling their weight. If you live with other people, make sure they aren’t leaving everything to you, or worse, not bothering to make an effort to minimize the mess they make. Everyone can do their bit, no matter their age or other responsibilities. Young children may be the worst for making a mess, but as soon as they are toddling, start teaching them about putting their toys away, so they start to get used to the idea that the mess they make needs to be cleared up. You can make it into a game to start with, like seeing how quickly they can gather all their toys up or who can get the most toys in a pile. Don’t make it too much of a drag for them, or they will learn to dislike doing chores too. Older children and adults can all take a turn with everyday chores like laundry, doing the dishwasher and taking out the trash, and they all have a responsibility to avoid making too much mess in the first place. Don’t just resign yourself to having to be the one who always clears up – everyone who lives in the house and contributes to the creation of chores should also be contributing to dealing with the consequences.
- Go shopping! Deciding to reduce the workload around the house is an excellent excuse to get to the mall or browse online for gadgets that can help ease the burden. There are many very clever products that will make the job of cleaning less arduous. For example, instead of using a mop and bucket to wash the floors, get a Bissell steam mop that will do the job faster and more effectively. It’s not just gadgets and equipment, think about upgrading your cleaning products to ones that make the job easier, and using preventive measures like spraying an anti-watermark product onto the shower cubicle to avoid having to clean the glass so often.
- Be organized. Keeping on top of the housework can prevent it turning into a major chore. A whip round with the vacuum through the week will make the weekly clean less time-consuming, and make sure you deal with mail, recycling and laundry regularly will stop them building up into mountainous tasks. Try dealing with one aspect of cleaning each week on top of your every day clean, for example, one week go around the house and clear all the cobwebs or give one room a more thorough clean so that you set up a manageable cycle. You could assign each member of the house to be responsible for one particular chore, e.g., taking out the trash, or have a rota for regular chores.
- Make your chores more entertaining. Crank up the stereo and play some music while you work. This can help a lot because, for one thing, it distracts you from the tediousness of the tasks, and for another, having some rhythmic music playing can help you work faster as your body moves with the beat. If you can’t have the whole house full of music, use a personal stereo. You can always listen to talk radio, or an audiobook if you’d rather, or to make a change. When you’re ironing, stick the board in front of the TV and put something on that you don’t need to watch with one hundred percent attention, like a cookery channel.
- Get some help. If you can afford to have someone do the cleaning for you, then you eliminate the problem altogether. If you can’t afford a regular service, how about a quarterly spring clean, so you only have to keep on top of the basic chores in between? There are also specialist companies that can do specific chores for you, like washing the windows, cleaning out the oven, or shampooing the carpets.
Tackling big projects
This is probably the next biggest category of undesirable tasks. You know you need to clear out your wardrobe, or that the boxes of odds and ends in the loft need sorting but finding enough time to complete a big job like this is quite a challenge. As long as those jobs don’t get done, they will be on your mind, niggling away until they turn into stress contributors. The simplest way to deal with these big tasks is to break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces that you can get done in a few minutes. For example, instead of tackling your whole wardrobe, just sort out your underwear drawer, then move onto your pants on the next session. Just do one box at a time in the loft; it won’t take long to do one box, but if you did one night for a month, you could find the whole job has been completed with relative ease.
Thinking of ways to make your chores less of a chore is the best way of learning to get essential tasks done without them getting you down. If your chores are a real burden, put some of these ideas to work and learn to love them – or at least find them less onerous!