Housework: What We Love and What We Loathe - Level 1

Last week on the podcast, I talked to you about how to time block the tasks that we do in our household, and I kind of divided those into different categories. And those categories are based on the Productive Home CEO theoretical framework. We talked about housework, we talked a little bit about home organization, and we talked about household management. Those are levels 1, 2, and 3. In this podcast, I'm gonna be talking about only level 1, which is housework. This is the work I did in getting my PhD. One of the research projects I did was how do we operationally define housework? Like, what does the American population say housework is? What is and isn't housework? And it came down to only 3 tasks. One is laundry, like anything related to clothes, cleaning clothes, putting clothes away, dry cleaning clothes. The next one is cleaning, anything related to cleaning your house, cleaning the counters, cleaning the floors, Cleaning the bathrooms. And the last one was food— buying food, preparing food, cleaning up from food, everything food related. And as I've been thinking about housework, you know, here at Organized 365, we have products that support levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 in the Productive Home CEO theoretical framework. And I often just skip over housework, mostly because it's housework. Um, And there are so many great resources already on the internet for cleaning checklists and cleaning routines and like everything related to cleaning. You can find like oodles of Pinterest and everything about how to get your laundry done, and the most content is around food. And based on the fact that I'm holding up protein bars, you should know where I am on my food knowledge and expertise. Very, very low. But these are the work of humans, of humanity. Like, from birth until death, we need to clean our spaces, we need to be fed, and we need to have our laundry done. So it's not like this work is going anywhere. It is mandatory work, and there are lots of resources that can help match it to your aesthetic and your time frame and all of that that you can find on the internet. What I want to talk to you about here today is the fact that this work must be done. It's, it's not Optional, unfortunately. And as I was reflecting that, and I was thinking about like, okay, this is like the foundational level one of the productive home CEO theoretical framework because it has to be done because all humans need it. What can I say to you about this level that would be new, novel, interesting? I don't know. So I was thinking about it. I was like, okay, I was thinking about my thoughts on laundry. I was thinking about my thoughts on cleaning, and I was thinking about my thoughts on food, as for myself personally, like when I do it, how I do it, how much time it takes, how I feel about it. And I was like, well, I love to do laundry, and I mean, I'm indifferent about cleaning— cleaning, not cleaning, whatever. I mean, if it has to be done, I'll just do it. And I loathe everything related to food. I'm just like If you could just tell me, if you could just deliver it and say you have to eat this, I would just eat it and move on. Like if I didn't have to think about food, oh my gosh, it would be so freeing. So I asked a couple of my friends and I said, okay, here are the housework things. Is there something you love? Is there something that you're like, whatever, and something you loathe? And they were like, yes. So now I'm gonna send it out to you guys. And on the YouTube channel, you guys can comment below, or in the podcast, you can go on over to the app or go to the Instagram channel and comment. Is there one of these that you love, one of these you just are indifferent about, and one of them that you loathe? And I'm gonna go through each one and I'm gonna tell you how long it actually takes usually to do these tasks, and then ways in which we can speed that up in this podcast episode. So we're gonna start with my love, which is laundry. I mean, I love laundry so much that when my kids were younger, I did another family's laundry so that she would bring me 2 meals per week because I just— she loved cooking and I was like, oh, I just don't wanna do it. So I did all of her kids' laundry. And it was a lot of laundry 'cause her kids were in a lot of sports. Anyway, I love laundry. And the reason why I love laundry, I think number one is because at the end you see like a finished product. You see everything all folded. But also I love my laundry room. So when we bought our house 30 years ago, before we even had kids, it had a first floor laundry. And where I grew up, I grew up in a ranch house and our laundry was in the basement. And our laundry, our basement was finished. But you know, to me, I never liked our basement. It was like the basement. I didn't want to go in the basement. Our basement is finished in our house too, and I still am like, I don't want to go in the basement. So the fact that we had a first floor laundry was like, it was so cool. I, I loved that there was a first floor laundry. And so our house has the laundry room here, you go out to the garage, and then when you come through the doorway, you have the family room, the eat-in kitchen, and the kitchen area. And you could gate these 2 areas off. So when I was a stay-at-home mom, I lived in that kitchen eat-in area family room, and I could just go down this small hallway and do the laundry. Loved that. Also, the people who built our house bumped our whole house out by 4 feet, so our laundry room is 4 feet longer than it is in other homes. So instead of just like a washer dryer and like a little amount of space in that room, we have an extra 4 feet. So there's 6 feet between the entryway until you get to the washer dryer. So I've been able to put bookshelves in there. I currently have a dresser in there, and I have like all kinds of gift wrap and stuff in there. So it's a nice little like home manager office. And also, when you're in there and you turn on the washer and dryer and you've got the hum of those machines going, it kind of drowns out the chaos of the house. I'm just saying, like, if you can't find me in my house, you should look in the laundry room because that's probably where I am. And I might not be doing laundry, but that's where I am. So for all those reasons, I really love my laundry room, and I think that's why I like to do laundry. So one time when my kids were probably middle school age, maybe a little bit younger, Before I even knew, like, what the definition of housework was, I was just like an overwhelmed woman. And I was like, how long does this take? I put a piece of paper in my laundry room and I had a timer going. And every time I went into the laundry room, I turned the timer off. And every time I left, I turned it off. And I wrote down on this little paper, like, what I did and how long it took. And I did 9 loads of laundry that weekend. I went into the laundry room 9 times. So I guess I must have done 8 loads of laundry. And when you added up all the little times that I was in there, it was 90 minutes. So it took me 90 minutes to do 8 loads of laundry. But when I looked at those little times, like the first time I went in, I sorted all the clothes and started the first load. Let's say that was 5 minutes. I don't have the paper still, it was from like 20 years ago. The second time I went in, I just switched the laundry. That took 4 minutes. The next time you go in, you switch the laundry and then you pull out all the little things, but I didn't fold them, so that took 4 minutes. Next time I switched laundry, pulled out more little things, and I folded all the little things. That time took 15 minutes. You get the idea. So laundry does not take a lot of time, but it takes It takes a lot of broken pieces of time. And so if you don't like to constantly remember to go and move and move and move and move things, then you're like, oh my gosh, I have to go do the laundry again. You might just need to move it from the washer to the dryer. Now, little side note, we're gonna go on a little rabbit trail here. I love laundry. I've been doing laundry a long time, and I am like so obsessed with being more, you know, productive and squeezing every little second out of my day. And I remembered having done that, you know, 20 years ago. And that there were times that the only thing I had to do was move something from the washer to the dryer. And I was like, you know what would be a great idea? I should get one of those all-in-one washer dryers. Then I could just put my clothes in, it will wash it and it will dry it, and then that's one less time I'll have to go into the laundry room. Especially since now it's just my husband and I, we do like 2, 3 loads of laundry the whole weekend. Like, we should get one. So I did, for $3,600. I got rid of a washer dryer, which They didn't smell good. You know how these— you know, you know. Got rid of a washer dryer that still worked but, you know, had that smell in it. And I got this all-in-one washer dryer. I immediately did not like it. And the thing is so heavy you cannot move it. I had it not even for a full year and I said to my husband, can I please— he's like, get it! Everything stinks. I hate this thing. It never works. It takes like 3 hours to wash the clothes. Like, get a new washer dryer. I now have a Speed Queen, which is what I would recommend. When these were delivered, and I think that was also $3,600, my husband goes, did you just buy a washer and dryer from the '60s? I said, yes, I did, and I'm so excited. What I should have done 2 cycles ago. Anyways, sometimes we get to the point where we have things pretty much optimized. We're like, maybe there's another level. Maybe I can reduce going to the laundry room and only go 7 times instead of 9 times if I got this newfangled thing that's advertised me on Instagram that wasn't advertise me on Instagram, but you know what I'm saying. And I'm here to tell you no. Some— your housework is just going to take how long your housework is going to take. Having a washer dryer is better than having no washer dryer, but there isn't really like some magical washer dryer that is going to make this whole process not need to be done. And if you don't like laundry, the washer and dryer probably is not going to solve the problem for you. So I'm just saying there's some things that we just don't like doing and we have to do them. And some things that we love doing, and even though we love doing them, there's only so much optimization we can have. The other thing I want to tell you about laundry specifically, I think the hardest part about laundry is the folding and putting it away. Do you guys agree? The folding and putting it away. It's not really the bringing it down, although that's not great, but the bringing down, the sorting, that's kind of like sorting puzzle pieces. That's fine. You get it going. You have to remember to keep moving it through. If you forget it and it's in the washing machine and then it smells, that's horrible. That's terrible. You should not do that. But what Once you get it all done, then it's like, oh, I gotta match the socks, we gotta fold the things, and then you have to get them back in all of the different bedrooms that they need to go in. My mom had a friend growing up solve this problem by having a family closet in the laundry room. So all the clothes were there, they just went from the washer into the closet. And she just had 2 kids and they just would come down and they would get dressed there. So that is an option if you want to do that. But most of us don't have the space or are not going to do that, so the clothes need to travel back up to wherever they actually live. I don't mind folding. Like, I'll take up all the clothes unfolded, I will fold them on my bed, and then I'll run around upstairs and I'll put them where they need to go. When my kids were younger, there are 2 things I did that really helped them help me put things away. The first one is we started hanging up almost everything. A shirt that is hung up, like, right out of the dryer and goes into the closet and then is put on a kid's body, usually it's not wrinkled. And back then I was still ironing things. I don't do that now. But if it's in a drawer, it can get wrinkled and they can't really see what you have. So hung up shirts are much easier, I think, for kids. And all you need to do is buy some hangers and then you're good to go. In our back hallway, we have a bunch of hooks where the kids hang up their backpacks and their coats. And so I would just hang up all their shirts back there. So when it was their time to put their clothes away, they just go grab their shirts or whatever else was hung up and they take it upstairs and they'd hang it up. This removed so much friction. Hanging up Instead of folding, I still got the I know, I know. But once I got it in their little hot hands and they went up the stairs, they would hang it up. We'd be done because it wasn't like they had to open a drawer and put it in this drawer and then open a drawer and put you know what I mean? That's so hard to do. It was easier when we could just hang it up. Second thing is when you are folding laundry in a laundry basket and you're like, okay, I'm gonna fold it all on top of the washer dryer, and then you're like, okay, here are the socks, here's the underwear, here's the pajamas, here's the whatever because they're going to go in different drawers when you get upstairs. We know what we're doing. But sometimes that is very overwhelming to kids, especially if they have learning disabilities or ADHD or any other challenges. Seeing a pile of already folded laundry that you have folded, which you would think this is the greatest gift you can give your kids— they don't even have to fold their own stuff— it's still too overwhelming. So they'll carry the whole laundry basket up and they will put it in their room and they will not put things in their dresser. And you're like, how hard can this be? It's like 1 minute to do the rest of this. It's hard, you guys. Some— for some kids, it's really hard. So I got— I went out and I bought new bins. I got laundry baskets that were wider because I had had like the squares that fit nicely in my washtub, so they weren't on my floor. So I liked it for space-saving purposes in my laundry room, but that square made me stack things on top of each other that made it harder for my kids to see what the piles are that I'd created. So I went out and I got them longer rectangular laundry baskets so I could have a pile of pajamas, a pile of socks, a pile of underwear. That made it— that made it easier. Also, I got some little clear, um, plastic tubs. So I would put in the bottom of their laundry basket, here are your pants, here are your pajamas. Then I would put a smaller tub in there, here are your socks. Here are your underwear. And then I would take their hanging clothes and I would lay it on top. Now they would carry their laundry basket upstairs, they would hang up their, um, shirts or whatever was hanging up, they would put their socks and their underwear away, they would move that bin, they would put their pajamas away, they would put their pants away. And you may say, I mean, can't they figure it out? Maybe. I mean, they all— they do their laundry alone now. Like, my kids know how to do laundry now. But the process of learning housework, the process of learning how to move from being a kid who all of this is done for you to independently doing it, sometimes some need some additional scaffolding, some additional helps. So those are the ways in which I got it to where my kids could take it up and do it on their own when they were younger. Today I fold everything on the bed for my husband and I, we put it away, and then I hang up our clothes still downstairs, and I carry up my hanged clothes and he carries up his. So having separate places to hang up people's laundry, then they could just grab it and take it upstairs. All right, let's move on to cleaning. Cleaning can be done 2 different ways. You could do a little bit every day, like I'm going to do bathrooms on Monday and I'm going to do kitchen floor on Tuesday and I'm going to clean out the refrigerator on Wednesday or whatever. Or you could do it all in one big chunk. I like to do it all in one big chunk. I do it on a Saturday morning. It takes anywhere from an hour to 2 hours just depending on how dirty the house is. And then I also stack that with doing my laundry. I don't mind doing cleaning. It doesn't bother me. Clean my house. I've cleaned other people's houses. Right now somebody cleans mine. Like, it doesn't bother me. Like, I put in a podcast, I don't even think about it. I just go through. The only thing I really don't like doing in cleaning, and you know, you— what is it, everybody? Yes, the toilets. No one wants— who wants to clean toilets? Nobody. Nobody wants to do it. So I trick myself. Either I do it very first thing, or I'll get to the end, I'll be like, oh, all that is left is the toilets. And then I'll say to myself, okay, but once you do the toilets, then you can go get a bagel, or then you can go do a puzzle, or then you can go call your friend, or whatever. Like, I trick myself. Like, oh yeah, that's what I want to do. I'm— I'll go do the toilets now so I could go get my bagel, or whatever it is. So sometimes I will just trick myself. Cleaning is, you know, cleaning the floors, cleaning the counters in the kitchen, cleaning the bathrooms, floors, everything in the bath. You know what cleaning is. The more organized and picked up your house is, the easier it is to do cleaning tasks. The number one question we would get asked when I was doing in-home professional organizing for 6 years, as soon as we were done with the job, like they weren't even done writing the check to pay me for the services I had just given them, and they would say, Do you know house cleaner? Do you know house cleaner? Do you know how clean? Because when your house is cluttered, you can't have somebody come clean it because they're only going to clean the spaces they can see. So once you get your house organized and everything goes away and you can see your floor again, the next thing is like, can I get somebody else to clean this? So you need to organize and then you can have someone else clean it. I have always, and when I clean people's houses, this is what this is what I did. I have always cleaned floors on my hands and knees. I just don't like the little Swiffer-y things. I don't know. Uh, I do it every other week and I get it really good and clean. And also I have Pergo flooring that was put in 30 years ago and it shows streaks if I use a Swiffer. If that wasn't the case, I probably wouldn't clean it on my hands and knees, but I do. Um, and now I finally got my vacuum robot. If you've been around a while and you know that she wasn't good at cleaning, She now knows how to vacuum the floors. I'm very excited for her and for me. She just does the first floor, so I still vacuum the rest. But it's really a matter of time. The best way to embrace cleaning if you really don't like it is just find something that you would like to do while you're cleaning. Like, is there an audiobook you want to listen to? Is there a podcast you want to listen to? I remember whenever I had to— like, I didn't have to, but I found myself when I was on the phone with friends when my kids were little And we would just be talking and they were at school or they were sleeping or whatever, I would just start cleaning. I would just grab one of these rags and get it wet and I'd start cleaning my blinds. And that's the only time my blinds ever got cleaned was when I was talking on the phone. So other than vacuuming, you could pretty much talk while you're cleaning. So find something you can do while you're cleaning, and sometimes that makes cleaning better for you. Also, I separate out when I change sheets on beds from cleaning time. I want my cleaning time to be, you know, 60 minutes to 2 hours. You figure out how long it's going to take you. And then changing sheets is on a different day for me anyway. Do we have to talk about food? This is a great protein bar, by the way. Food— I mean, I've never been good at food. Never ever. I've never been good at food. I tricked myself In the last podcast, you heard about how I used to do the grocery game and going and getting the food and getting it into the house. Well, that's a project. I like projects, like figuring out what the grocery list is going to be, figuring out where to get it the cheapest, how am I going to get it the fastest through the errands, bringing it in, organizing the refrigerator and pantry. And by organizing the refrigerator and pantry, I mean putting things away. I don't decant anything, nothing is labeled, I don't have any of these matching bins or anything. I tried that Um, cost a lot of money and all the food went bad, so it didn't work for me. You're never going to see my refrigerator or pantry on anywhere. It's just a regular refrigerator and pantry. So doing all that is fine. The inventorying, just fine. It is the preparing the food, the eating the food, the cleaning up the food that is the problem for me. I know it's probably not a problem for you. I'm just really weird. But I told you laundry gets done in about 90 minutes a week, even if you have a lot of loads, and cleaning gets done in about 90 minutes a week. Here's the bummer: we're looking at 7 to 10 hours for food-related stuff. Because just think about it: if you only eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, preparing, cleaning up those meals. Now, if you just eat a protein bar and throw away the wrapper, I mean, I guess that's technically no time or five minutes or something like that. But most people are not eating that way. Like they're They're actually making themselves a lunch. Even if you bring it to the office like we do and microwave it and eat it, that's, you know, 10 or 15 minutes, plus you had to prepare whatever it was that you brought to the office. So preparing, eating— not necessarily eating time, but preparing and cleaning up food— it's— you probably spend an hour a day doing that, don't you think? Then if you add in the grocery shopping and putting all that away, you know, 3 hours total to get all that done. 7 to 10 hours is a very conservative amount of time. Back in the podcast episode where I talked about level 1, I talked about how I estimate that my daughter does about 33 hours of housework total. I think she's now down to, um, the high 20s because she stopped breastfeeding. That was taking a lot of her time, and the baby isn't taking as many bottles. But it takes a lot of time. Like, doing the food portion takes so much time. And also Growing up, like your parents just put on the plate whatever it was going to be for dinner, and you sat there until you ate it all. And we use cloth napkins at my house, so you had to eat it all. And we weren't allowed to get up and go to the bathroom, so you had to eat it all. Like you sat there and you ate your dinner, whatever it was served, and you ate it all, and then you went and did your homework or whatever you did. Nowadays, like my grandson has food allergies. I have a menopausal body. Like, I eat different food than my daughter does, than my husband does, than our grandchildren do. And so we're like short-order cooks all the time. Like, we're making all these different meals, we're eating at different times. Some people are eating 5 meals, somebody— some people are only eating 2 meals a day. Like, there's a lot more variables today than there were when my kids were younger. And I'm even seeing it like with my grandkids. Like, there's a lot more variables for my daughter than there were when I was raising our So it's a lot of work. You may be like, oh Lisa, I'm depressed now. Could you? I thought you were like a fun podcaster. I am a fun podcaster. How can we if if this is the one we and obviously this is the one I loathe. If we're not like super excited about the food, first of all, go find all the gajillion people out there that talk about meal planning and all the different things you could do. Whatever your food type is. If you're doing keto, if you're doing vegan, if you're doing like all natural or whatever, or you want everything prepared and delivered to you— like, is that HelloFresh? I don't even see— I don't even know. Go find the people, find your person, do whatever they say. That's what I would do. But the other thing is really think about how you got into the habit of how you prepare food. So I am very much a batch person. So when I had the kids were younger and I was making all of the meals, and I always had like a Sunday dinner on the, uh, an evening dinner, we had a family dinner every night. Some weeks I would just make the food. Sometimes I would do like Crock-Pot cooking. So I would create all these Crock-Pot recipes on a Sunday and I would freeze them all, and then I could just pull out a Crock-Pot meal whenever I needed it. Uh, sometimes I did other freezer cooking that wasn't necessarily just Crock-Pot, but it was a bunch of frozen bags of things I could pull Sometimes I would plan the whole week in advance and then I would prepare all the meats on the weekends. And that's kind of what I do now. So I plan out whatever my meal is for the week and I order the food in and it comes in. And then on Sunday afternoon, it takes me about 1 to 2 hours depending. I'll bake my loaf of sourdough bread. I will prepare all— I have these little cereal packets that I put in my yogurt. I'll prepare all those. I have these little protein cups with protein, creatine, and salt that I put in water. I'll prepare all of those. I'll make my black beans and sour— my black beans and sweet potatoes. I'll prepare all of those. Like, I prepare all my lunches and dinner— breakfast, lunches, and dinners for Monday through Friday on Sunday, and then I stack them in the refrigerator or freezer wherever they need to go. And then Monday morning I bring them all into the office. Yeah, and I, and I eat a lot of foods that were like, you know, I eat one of these every day. I have a yogurt every day. I have a very formulaic Menu plan, and I just order basically the same foods every week. And I spend about one to two hours on Sunday preparing all those things. And then when I go to eat, I just eat it, clean out the dish, and I'm done. Eat it, clean out the dish, and I'm done. But I am a you know working woman who does not have children at home. You would probably not if you can get away with this when you have kids at home. That would be amazing. My grandson, I mean just preparing food for him on one day probably takes three hours. He He eats all the time, and he's such a large five-year-old, but he's all muscle. Like he's—he needs a lot of food. He has a lot of—he's seventy pounds, you guys. He just turned five. He's seventy. That's a huge child. I think I was in eighth grade when I was seventy pounds. Maybe not. I might have been in high school. Like the kid is like one solid muscle. And so my daughter is doing, and she loves to cook. She loves cooking. She is meh about cleaning, and she loathes. Laundry. That's— that is her nemesis. You know, we all have a nemesis. I was talking to a friend of mine and she was going through, you know, trying to find time in her week. And I will be doing podcast episodes coming out soon, virtual organizing podcast episodes, and finding time in your week is going to be one of the things that I will do because I do have a superpower of being able to figure out where you can fit some of these tasks in. But I was listening to how she was spending her days. She's like, I have no time. I do all these things. And I said, are you telling me that every single morning you get up and you make a hot breakfast? And she was like, yes. Now you've just heard my stories, you wouldn't want to take advice from me on this, right? And I was like, do we really have to make a hot breakfast every single morning? She's like, oh my gosh, yes, I have to make my kids a hot breakfast every single morning. Like, like, as in I'm not a good mom, me. And of course I'm not when it comes to food. I know I'm not doing a great job. I said, okay, I'm not saying that you have to give them like, I don't know, Froot Loops instead of bacon and eggs. I'm just saying, are you telling me every single morning you're like making bacon or you're making sausage? And she goes, yeah. I'm like, do you know how long that takes to make bacon and sausage? And then you got the pan and the grease. And she goes, yeah. I'm like, why don't you just make all the bacon and sausage for the week on Sunday? And then you don't have to clean all that up every single— because she's got a 30-minute commute. You don't have to clean all that up before you commute into the office and back. And she goes, huh. So she started doing it, started making all the breakfast meats on the weekend. Bummer for her, her kids are growing and they started eating it faster. I was like, do you think they're eating it faster because it's already made or because they actually need more calories? She's like, they need more calories. I don't know. But she's like, oh, this is a great idea. And I said, yes, you should be making hot breakfast, let's say 2 or 3 times per week. Once for sure on the weekend, you got plenty of time, clean it up, whatever. But whatever you make on Sunday should make it for Monday and Tuesday. Then let's say you do hot breakfast again on Wednesday with enough for, um, Thursday and Friday, and then have your husband make the hot breakfast on Saturday. She's like, this is a great idea. I'm like, yeah, you went from making breakfast 7 days a week To making breakfast twice a week and your husband making it once a week, but everybody's eating hot breakfast every single day. And that has been working really, really well for her. And then we went to— I was like, are you telling me you're making dinner every single night? Yes, I'm making dinner every single night. You don't have to change the family mealtime or the quality of food that your family is eating, but you can start to batch the processing of the food. So that it's not so labor-intensive every single meal. So if you make similar meals all week long, are there any things you could do one night? And so here's a really easy way to do dinner. Let's say you make chicken breasts. I'm gonna be terrible. I can't even think off the top of my head. Uh, chicken breasts, potatoes, corn, and a roll. That's what I would have made like in the early 2000s. That's going to be your dinner on night one. Then on night two, you're going to take the leftover chicken, shred it up, and you're going to make chicken tacos. So the chicken is already ready for the chicken tacos. I mean, I don't know. Maybe you make extra chicken breasts so that you can do that. I don't know how to cook, so I can't even go forward with this analogy. But the basics are: don't make, don't do every single step for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the most controversial thing. I don't know if it's controversial. The thing I feel weirdest about when I tell you about it is stop doing your dishes so often. So if you are making breakfast and doing dishes, putting them all away, making lunch, doing dishes, putting them all, making dinner, and you're like, yes, Lisa, we're doing that. That's what humans do. You eat and you do your dishes and you put them in the dishwasher. Well, this human does not do that because it takes too much time. So I have a little bin that I put in my kitchen sink, and that's where all the dirty silverware goes. And then I stack up whatever else on the counter. And then at the end of the day, when I was a stay-at-home mom, at the end of the day I'd run the hot water and I'd put it in there with some Dawn soap and put it in there with all my little, um, silverware. And then I'd wash all the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, and then that stuff was ready to go into the dishwasher as well. And then I would just run it at night. Now You all know I only do dishes a couple of times per week, so there just aren't enough to run the dishwasher. And I mean, like, you can put it straight into the dishwasher, but that's a whole nother story. I wash dishes before they go in the dishwasher. It's a me problem, not a you problem. But I'm just saying all this out loud like a crazy person. You have options. Just because you've always done it this way, or your parents did it that way, or you think somebody's gonna come check and make sure you're doing it this way— they're not. You don't need to. So which one do you love? Which one do you loathe? And which one do you just think meh? And hopefully I gave you some ideas to take the thing that you really don't like doing and either making it easier or helping you move through it. Um, and you know, I haven't even given the option that maybe somebody else in your family does it other than you. And I'll just say the reason that I do that is because Of course, if you're living with other people, they can help you with the load. Of course, if you're living with other people, we should come together and do the housework together. However, I'm not in control of that. Sometimes you're not in control of it. So if we have other people that take on these responsibilities, like my husband does everything food related for the family, that's awesome. But it's not something that you necessarily can count on. Of course, you could pay to have your house cleaned, but that's also not something that you can count on. It's expensive, and sometimes you could do it in some seasons and not all seasons. So I try to give examples or things that are not other people or financially dependent so that we can take and make these, make all the things in the Productive Home CEO theoretical framework work for us and our family. And they will constantly change with who does the role and how it is done, or if anybody in your family does it at all, or if you outsource it. I think people know how to outsource things. I think it's harder to figure out how to do things when you are the labor that is going to do everything in the productive pyramid. So comment below or comment over in our app. What do you love? What do you loathe? What do you think meh? And let's help each other get some good ideas for how we can reduce some of this housework. Have a great week.