Messy Homes During Work Hours

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Let’s talk about messy homes during work hours. Enjoy!

Full transcript:

Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.

Hey, hey, uh, welcome back. All right. Today we’re gonna talk about something that is kind of funny and light, but maybe lighter. It comes off lighter than it actually is, and that is the idea. For some people, it’s relevant. The idea of having a messy home. Particularly what I mean by that is a messy home during the workday.

Now, I’ve shared a lot on Instagram and it tends to resonate with people, so I just wanna share it here in case it resonates with you that I really leave my house pretty much a huge [00:01:00] mess during most of the day. We start off every day with a pretty clean house. I will caveat that by saying it’s more of like a clean kitchen.

The clean kitchen is very important to me, and inevitably by, I don’t know, 7:30 AM everything has exploded all over again, and so the house becomes a mess, and I leave it that way pretty much until the end of the day, until the kids go to bed. And then if my husband is home, he cleans up and I’ll come help after bedtime.

Or if my husband’s working, which is often the case, I will clean up once the kids are asleep. And I wanna talk about that today because I think that. For some people that’s not interesting. But for a lot of people, there’s something going on in your body. Either you’re like, yes, that’s me too, or it’s like, oh I, that does not feel good to me.

There’s some reaction to that that I’m having, and I think it’s good to talk about, because for me, and we’ll dig into three topics around this, but for me, what I want you to hear is that [00:02:00] mess when I see it is. Not, I mean, I, it bugs me in the sense that like I want it to be cleaned up, but it is evidence that I am spending my time on more important things, and I wanna talk about that more today.

So taking a step back, as I mentioned, I have gotten clear over time on, at least during this phase of life, and this can change what is important to me. And as I mentioned, having a clean kitchen when I go to bed at night is important to me because morning me loves walking into a clean kitchen and I have like a couple other tiny things that I would say.

Making my bed is one that’s, let’s go for 70% of the time. I find like having a bed made, it’s like suddenly you have a table in your room versus like a total mess. So I do prefer the bed to be made, but it’s not a hundred percent thing. The dishwasher must be emptied in the morning. That is a hundred percent thing because a dishwasher that is full, that is not empty, just jams up the whole kitchen.

Like everything stacks up by the sink and everything’s a mess. And so the [00:03:00] dishwasher a hundred percent of the time must be emptied. So beyond those things. The rest of my house is an intentionally neglected mess. There are approximately 900 discarded outfits piled up on my bed throughout the day. I wake up in pajamas, then I put on jeans for daycare drop off.

Sometimes, sometimes I just go in the. Sweatpants I have on. I might put on some workout clothes, or I might workout in those sweatpants. Then I’ll put on some work sweaters. Then that sweater will get itchy and I’ll switch to a different sweater or a different outfit. Then I get into comfy clothes again.

They’re just always clothes discarded all over the room, preferably on the bed if it’s made, but you know how it goes. Dishes stack up by the sink. Kids toys are everywhere. They just explode all over the house. Different clothes of theirs are all over the house. It’s a mess. Do I wish my house were sparkling all of the time?

Of course. Does the mess bug me? Yes. Do I want to spend my precious [00:04:00] limited alone hours when my kids are in school cleaning? I absolutely do not. I wanna use that time for work. Working out enjoying meals and quiet, walking my dog outside, running kid free errands, and sometimes taking a nap if, you know, sleep’s been hard to come by.

And so again, do I want my house to be tidy all the time, including during those hours? Yes. But do I want it more than those other things? No, and that is what time management is in my book. Realizing time is limited. I cannot do all the things that I might want to do. Wane the activities based on what I want out of that limited time, and then making a decision around where my time goes.

And that’s why for me, as I mentioned, seeing the mess, even if there is part of me that’s drawn to [00:05:00] clean it up, is still evidence that if my house is messy at the end of the day, that means I focused on the right things. I did not productively procrastinate while cleaning to avoid the more important things I have going on.

So I wanna talk about three things coming out of this that I hear. The first is listen to yourself. Like you may come to a totally different decision based on your preferences, and that is wonderful. I don’t believe solid time management means everyone should do. Either the system I use, like I don’t think the bright method is for everyone.

It’s just for people who, it sounds interesting and like a fit too. I also don’t think it means that regardless of the system, you should use your time like I do. I didn’t use. My time in the way I do probably six months ago, and I don’t plan to use my time in the exact same way in another six months or two years, like it evolves.

Then we have to know ourselves and what’s important to us in different phases, and so really listen to [00:06:00] yourself. But the bigger point is taking the time to think. What is important to me right now because I can’t get away from the fact that my time is limited, and so I do have to make some decisions, including tougher decisions around where my time goes.

Even if you want to do something like cleaning your house, that doesn’t mean that it might be the right decision of where you spend your time right now. And so just know, like as I’m talking about this, like this is the approach that fits me, and if you have a different outcome of how you wanna spend your time, great.

Just as I said, be clear on that. Because I let the house go and focus on the things I wanna get done when I’m alone. And then once the kids are in bed and my brain is spent, that’s when I clean up with like a fun podcast or a fun audio book, or listening to a friend on Marco Polo or whatever it is, and I get to spend that time.

In a good way that matches my energy and then a little bit more time in a clean home. And then I get to wake up to [00:07:00] that sparkling kitchen to kick off a new day. And that’s just what’s important to me. And you can focus on whatever is important to you, but just taking the time to know that is important and more.

So what I want you to hear is really listen what’s important to you, like not just the shoulds, there’s no moral. Benefit to having a clean house. That by the way, no one sees. No one sees it. And so there’s no moral like superiority to having an always clean house. And so really listen to how do you wanna feel at the end of the day?

What would make life like, what would have to be true for you to feel that way? And then decide if having a clean house where that fits into that feeling that you’re going for, not just the shoulds. The second point I wanna make that I wanna throw out there just to challenge. Again, I’m not saying everybody should do this approach, but I do think it’s important to make informed decisions.

And I wanna throw [00:08:00] out there that to me, cleaning can be almost like email in a way. In a way, it’s easier than doing the harder work. And what I mean by this is. When I go downstairs, ’cause I work from home and in my office upstairs, when I go down to the kitchen to grab coffee or things like that, that’s usually where like the bulk of the mess is.

And as I said, I like a clean kitchen. So that’s where it also bugs me the most. Am I tempted to clean then? Yes. Yes I am. And part of that reason that I, or like part of that draw to clean is because it is a lot easier than the work I am doing upstairs. Cleaning up, I get to see my progress. I get to like, you know, you really see like you do something and like that thing is no longer on the countertop.

It looks cleaner. You see your progress in real time really fast, and it feels really good. And that is easier than obviously the work I’m doing upstairs. [00:09:00] And I find like email is similar. Handling email, even though we don’t love being in there, is satisfying in that we send out an email, we get to reduce the numbers in our inbox, all that kind of stuff.

It’s a very, like we see the progress as it’s happening thing compared to some of the more heavy lift type work that we do, that you could work a solid hour and a half on something and you still have hours and hours left to go. It is less dopamine rushing satisfaction. Where email and all that kind of stuff does give us that dopamine hit.

And I think cleaning is a little bit the same. It’s a very, both of those places can be easy places to productively procrastinate of doing the harder work. And I think that that’s just an important thing to realize. And so, as I said, sometimes at the end of the day, seeing the mess is a good affirmation to me that I really was focusing on that harder stuff and not giving into the productive procrastination.

Then instead, [00:10:00] when my energy is low, when I’m spent at the end of the night, I can switch into I am not working the rest of the night, I am putting on something fun in my ears and I’m cleaning up the house, or I’m just having Alexa play some calming music and clean up the house from there. And that’s just such a good matchmaking of activity to my energy versus spending my higher energy, better energy for like harder work.

I keep saying energy, but you get the point on I don’t wanna spend that great energy on the lower energy required things if I can’t avoid it. Now, don’t get me wrong, if I need like a quick break. Like sometimes, you know, we can’t be like robots and work hard for like eight straight hours. So if you need pockets and you find that like physical puttering is great for you, awesome.

If you wanna do that, great. Like I do get the benefits of like setting a timer for five minutes and like starting the dishwasher in the middle of the day or something like that. But using those [00:11:00] breaks intentionally as breaks versus delaying work and maybe putting a timer on to help it not bleed into everything.

That’s more my point. Is really make sure that you’re matchmaking your good energy with good energy, like high energy required things and not with some breaks built in if you need it, but not spending too much time just productively procrastinating the important stuff. Now, one of the final things I hear here in this context is, well, my partner doesn’t want that.

How do I get my partner on board with this? And I think this comes up a lot when. I would guess the person listening works from home and your partner doesn’t, and then your partner comes home to a messy house and they don’t like it. On the one hand, I mean, I kind of get like a flare of anger when I hear things like this, but to put myself in another person’s position, we all like coming home to a clean house.

So I can’t blame someone for wanting to come home to a clean house, especially, you know, if they’ve been gone all day and wanna relax and it [00:12:00] can be a lot and like overstimulating to walk into a messy house. So knowing that. I think it’s important to have communication, which is a bit outside my lane, so ignore whatever you want, but communication around why the house is like that.

I think setting a baseline of you only get to expect like the person leaving the house. To work only gets to expect to come back to the house in the condition that they left the house in. And I think that’s important, especially if you have kids and or like the house just explodes in the morning with whatever situation you have going on with family.

I think it’s important to clarify, as I just said, that the expectation is the house. Should only have to be as clean as you left it in. Just because I work from home doesn’t mean I have the added responsibility to clean up the house compared to what it would’ve been like if I were going into work. Just because I’m working at home doesn’t [00:13:00] whittle down the number of hours I have of work to do, and so I think that that’s an important baseline to establish.

That kind of sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but I don’t think always is, and so I think that that can be helpful to establish. I also think that in these discussions, it can be helpful not to have to defend where your time is going because you’re working a full day and then maybe they come home later, but you’re taking care of kids or doing something else during that time.

You shouldn’t have to justify it necessarily, but I’m also a realist and I think that it can be helpful for the other person to understand the realities of what time looks like. And so for me, obviously the Bright method is a massive way of communicating the workload. I think often. We are not even clear about how much we’re doing at home or in life on the personal admin side, all of that.

I truly don’t think we often understand [00:14:00] that ourselves. So trying to be fair, it’s a little unfair to expect somebody else to, and we don’t fully do it. And I say that as someone who teases out the invisible and mental load with women every day. Almost every day, clients are shocked by how much they’re doing.

And so I just say that to emphasize you are doing so much that you might not even realize it, that they definitely don’t realize it if you don’t realize it. And getting everything visual like we do in the Bright Method, is usually one of the first times, if not the first time, that people understand for themselves how much they’re doing, and then can visually show other people in their home how much they are doing in a very helpful way to get everybody on the same page.

So to the extent that that would help, I just throw that out there. I’m gonna set aside whether we should have to, again, I’m a realist. We’re just working with what we got here, and that can be very helpful for the other person. Understand how much you are doing that you need to [00:15:00] prioritize over cleaning up the kitchen during the day.

I think that it also then can open discussions about other creative ways, like if they want a clean kitchen when they get home. You don’t have the bandwidth to do it because the above, then how are you gonna get it? And if outsource season is an option and it’s that important, then maybe that’s what happens.

Or they just realize, you know, it’s not worth that financial cost or we can’t swing it. But I can’t expect my partner who’s at home just because they’re at home working all day to clean the house at the same time. It’s obviously a nuanced conversation that I can’t solve perfectly, but I do hope that some of that helps because I think that having the clarity of, you know, what would we expect if I were working in the office and also coming home around the same time, what would the expectations be there?

Well, it’s just how we left that house in the morning. So if we want the house to be better, then maybe we as a team need to clean up for 10 minutes [00:16:00] before you leave for work, and I go to my office. And then also having discussions around if the house, if both partners do not have the capacity to clean up or just don’t want to during that time and want to do it later, how do you creatively get to a compromised position that works for both people?

I’ll also throw out as a random last tip that I find useful is that I do really enjoy, especially if you have little kids and your partner doesn’t fully understand why the house is such a mess every day, I really recommend going out of town more and leaving them alone for a weekend With those said adorable children, because I do think that it really is helpful to remind everybody.

What actual real life parenting looks like, especially when you’re on your own. So I just throw that out there too. To the extent it’s helpful. Get outta town, go somewhere fun. Go on a staycation by yourself, whatever you need to do. And that can also help remind people, everybody [00:17:00] involved, how much mess kids can make on their own.

But to wrap this up, just know that sometimes the mess is a sign of a really great thing. It’s you. Prioritizing what you wanna do with very limited time. It’s you withstanding the draw, the like, just the appeal of productive procrastination and instead focusing on the most important things. It’s you not becoming the default cleaner upper just because you work from home.

It can be a lot of different things and I think that it is contradictory to the societal, like clean home moral thing that some of us have absorbed from growing up. I think that, I don’t know, I just wanted to throw my 2 cents out there. Sometimes the mess is a great thing and you can always deal with it when you’re more tired and shake things up with physical, puttering, whatever it looks like for you.

Celebrate the mess. Celebrate what it means you are doing and what you are choosing to do with your time. [00:18:00] And if I can help you weigh these competing things that you wanna do within your limited time and design out a realistic life that feels good to you. Then join me in the Bright Method program.

Enrollment is open right now. You can jump in whenever you want. The 10 week window starts from whenever you jump in. Enrollment does close on March 18th. If you join on March 18th, then you finish at the end of May, so you’re done before the start of summer. And then I’m not supporting clients after like basically if they jump in after March 18th, it’s closed after March 18th.

And then I just support the people that jumped in during that time through the end of May. So you have to get in by March 18th if you would like to join. And the program will not open again until mid-September. There will be no exceptions. So jump in if you want to. It’s at kelly nolan.com/bright. And most importantly, thank you for being here and I’ll catch you in the next [00:19:00] episode.

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Messy Homes During Work Hours

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