3 steps to reduce your mental load (and maybe get on top of home chores)

How to get your Home Organised! In 3 easy steps.

I'm getting my home organised, this is what has inspired me to do it and the three easy steps I followed to tame the chaos!

I want an organised life that is easy to manage and enjoyable to live. I wear a lot of hats so this is not as easy a I thought it would be, (the pain of unmet expectations!). But I’m doing it, and I'm doing it in my own nerdy way!

I have been various levels of organised throughout my life and in different areas of my life, but lately I have been inspired to get back on top of my organising game. I've been listening too, watching and reading a lot about this topic, as I tend to do when an interest strikes. These are the main things that have me inspired to do this RIGHT NOW!

Book "Radical Homemakers" by Shannon Hayes

Video “The ULTIMATE Homestead Planner! | 2023 Homestead Journal Planner Flip Through” by Homesteaders of America

STEP 1 : DEFINE ROLE AND TASKS

I wear a lot of hats, you probably do too! So I though I should sort that out first, really define what my roles and duties are as a first stop in a big hands small map kind of way. I ended up with 55 tasks, this is a lot, I am trying to live a slow and simple life so I was surprised by how much stuff there is to do and organise every single week. Also this seemed like a good way to make the invisible work, visible. Generally this invisible work is left up to women. My partner is willing to do his share, but we can’t really work out what is a good share if half the stuff is invisible right??

Then I went though and assigned a frequency of how often I have to do that thing, daily, monthly seasonally, on a certain cycle day etc. I used a spreadsheet but you could use this free printable worksheet from Sarah K Butterflied- Here is just an example from my list:

Role	Duty	Frequency
Employee	100 hours per month	Daily
	Quarter Rally & Social Participation	Daily
	Unbillable work (filing emails, time sheets, emails)	Daily
Home Manager	Home Maintenance Outside	Seasonal
	Home Maintenance inside	Daily
Cooker	Cook Dinners every M,T,W,Th	Daily
	Weekly Yoghurt, Kombucha, Sourdough	Daily
Cleaner	Stay on top of washing, cleaning house, DISHES everyday	Daily
	Seasonal Chores	Seasonal
	Seasonal Clean out	Seasonal
	Scrub Shower	Monthly (CD 14)

STEP 2: SCHEDULE, DELEGATE and REMOVE

Ok, and then I went ahead and tried to organised it into what actual days/time I would do these things for the daily things first. Predictably I could not fit it all in one day/week! I have to cut some stuff out or delegate or something.

So I had my husband do roughly the same thing and we could see that I had much more on my list than he did on his (may also have been due to the effort he put in!). We could also see that I had many more jobs and responsibility in the parenting department than he did, so that helped really see where he could help more. He agreed to take on a bit more of the invisible work and mental load. I found this video helpful to talk this though with my partner - Mental Load: Invisible Work And How To Balance The Burden. But even with both of us doing stuff, we still have too much stuff to do.

I dropped a bunch of stuff years ago like removing my body hair and folding the laundry, I don't have time for that! So I thought what else can I get rid of? I feel like I'm down to bare bones! But I decided to ditch the weekly floor mopping and hopefully we can get away with a monthly one (except the kitchen which is a daily quick mop.) And we came up with a schedule that works for both of us in theory, we will have to see about in practice!

STEP 3: EXECUTE & ITERATE

Do it! Follow the schedule, hold yourself and other family members accountable to the schedule, talk about it every time you feel like you are taking on extra duties and extra mental load (like being the only one to hold others accountable!). This is not a once and done, you have to keep on top of it everyday!

To execute I re-did our command center and added these sheets (all free printables).

ICE sheet - brooklynactivemama.com

Babysitter sheet - The Incremental Mama

I got my husband to write out the recipes we use every week and put them up in the kitchen. I set a reminder on my phone for the top three things I don’t like doing/”forget” to do. It has really helped.

And we will go over this in a month so that we can fine tune it!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this has been helpful. please comment below on one item of your mental load.