Stress-Free Housecleaning

Well, I can’t put everything on my “not today” list. I mean, some days I can. But it can be helpful to take some things and say I’ll do “just this much” today. So, for example, you could say with weeding: “Weeding the garden is a ‘just this much’ item. I will pull 100 weeds today, or I will pull weeds for 15 minutes today.” Something that is easily achievable and not overwhelming. The garden weeding will get done within a few days that way. 

And what about your child’s handwriting that so desperately needs help? It’s easy to be stressed if you think of the whole load of what needs to be done for the desired end result. But we can’t do it all in a day anyway, so we can say, “We will do this much: We’ll work on G and H for 10 minutes today.” Or, “We will do this much this week: We’ll do one extra handwriting sheet each day.”

Another part of this approach is making sure that we don’t keep little but stressful things as “not today” items for too long. Different things stress different people out. For example, some people get stressed when beds are not made. Every time they walk by their room or their kids’ rooms and they don’t see the beds made, it really stresses them out. For other people, not having beds made doesn’t stress them out at all.