Episode 332: Navigate Household Harmony With Teamwork & Compromise

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the Winey Palooza podcast, and I'm very excited today because I get to talk to Dr. Regina Lark. Thank you so much, Dr. Regina, for being here with us today.

You're welcome. It's so nice to be joining you.

I, I was just telling her that this topic is really good and we're gonna help me and a lot of other people. So I could tell you a lot about this impressive woman, but I'm gonna let her tell you about herself. So can we start with you telling us a little bit about your background and how you ended up being— I want to list this impressive list.

Oh my God.

A professional organizer, an author, a speaker, an educator, and my favorite, rain hacking entrepreneur. That is the coolest title I've heard. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got this amazing list of credentials.

Thank you. My, my short answer is a girl's got to eat. So you just got to, you just got to pull your stuff together really quickly. So I finished a PhD in women's history when I was 41, and I spent 10 years in higher education and my fields of study. And then I was an adjunct faculty and at many community colleges all over L.A. County. And my fields of study was 20th century history and women's studies. And so I'm kind of a walking encyclopedia on that. In '08, I had been, I had a job at a major university here in Los Angeles, and I was running their program. It was an adult learning program, so it was extension. And I had a huge portfolio of classes. It could have been a great job for me, but my supervisor was a textbook bully, and I'm a textbook, I'm going to HR person. So for you, but yeah, of course. And so that's how the job was. And in June of '08, I went to Jerusalem to visit a very good friend of mine. And while I was there, I said, Nadra, I don't want to be a tourist today. How about if I do your kitchen? And she said, Habibti, what does that mean? I said, Nadra, your girls are in their 30s. You got sippy cups in the cupboard. Just let me do what I do. And I'm just— Rebecca, I'm just wired this way. In my family of origin, there are 6 of us. 4 of us are like me. 2 of us need us.

So interesting.

I did Nadra's kitchen. It was a good result. I decluttered and organized. Didn't think anything of it. I get back to my desk at the university, and 1 week later, I learned that my unit was being dismantled, my position eliminated. Eliminated. It was June of '08 and it was budget cuts. Don't make that face, Rebecca. I was on a cloud. I thought, oh my gosh, the goddess of jobs had just done for me what I could not do for myself. So here I am unemployed at the age of 50. Now I can't find a job. I've never not had a job. I can't find a job. So I told Ronnie, my roomie, I'm going to organize until something better comes along. And nothing has. That was 15 years ago. Wow. And I've created a 7-figure business. And I hire— I have employees. I— they're called the Ninja Organizers. We crawl all over LA and Orange County making room for what matters in your life. So here I am now, history PhD. I have this professional organizing business, and I'm hearing very interesting things. So my first year 2 stories. One was the client who called me to help deal with paper clutter. Lots of paper clutter. And I walked in. Yes, there's lots of paper clutter. And we worked on piles of paper. And she says, can you come back? I said, yes. How about next week? She said, great. I said, before I come back, why don't you work on this pile right here? She goes, I'm on it. Great. Thanks. I love homework, she said. And I get back the next week, and not only was that pile not worked on, but there were more papers on top of it. There were other piles. And I— and rather than judge that, because who am I? I was very curious, and I thought, huh, when someone gives me homework, I do homework. And that was my first cognitive understanding about why people actually call people like me.

Mhm.

Because if they could do the homework, they would do the homework and they wouldn't need me.

Very true.

The next case that came up that first year, I was called in, uh, an older woman who wanted me to help her make sense of the massive amount of stuff that she moved from her mom's home after her mom died into her home. Stuff everywhere. And so I said, sure, because I was doing everything. And within that first 20 minutes of being in her house, she holds up an eyeglass case. And it was an eyeglass case, but it was her mother's eyeglass case. And she said to me, Is it okay if I let this go? And my very first thought was, yes, of course. But again, I became curious and I thought, geez, she only met me 20 minutes ago and I feel as though she's asking me permission to let something go. And I thought, she doesn't even know me. So I'm telling these stories to my new colleagues in organizing land. And they directed me to what's called the Institute for Challenging Disorganization. Hmm. And I see the Institute, I describe as where mental health professionals meet professional organizers. So there's all kinds of really great training and learning going on, and I earned all kinds of certifications.

That's awesome.

And this is what I walked away with. People who need people like me tend to have very weak executive functioning skills. And our executive function is the newest part of the human brain. It's located in the prefrontal cortex, and the executive functions allows us That's why we got on this call on time today. It's 9 o'clock my time. I don't know where you're at, but what— where are you?

I'm in Buffalo, New York, so it's noon.

Okay, so it's 11 o'clock, uh, 10, 12 o'clock.

I'm like, did I get the time wrong?

Yeah, no, I'm not a math person. History, not math. Um, but our executive function got us here. And if you were troubled with executive function and you knew that about yourself, chances are you would've had timers go off to make sure that you were here. So our executive functions allows us to have a— we have a good relationship with time, emotion. We're emotionally managed. We are able to plan, process, sequence, and prioritize. That's what the executive function allows us to do. Okay, I'm gonna put that aside. So here I am, I'm an organizer, and I'm sitting in the homes of these mostly women who are calling me. And I remember sitting on the floor with Sylvia, and I'm hearing her talk about how frustrated and anxious and depressed she is because she can't do this work on her own. And we were— I was there to help her declutter and organize her house, and she just had hot spots all over the place. So I'm listening to her lament, and she felt really bad about herself. And I said, why are you doing it all? It's clearly not a skill set for you. And she goes, I'm a housewife and this is women's work. And my head exploded. I sat on the floor and I gave her Women's History 101. I pulled out my, my history card and I talked to her about why this is considered women's work, what the historical platform is. And, and then I began looking at the work itself through the lens of executive function, because in order to plan, prioritize, stay emotionally managed, meet, have an internal clock. You've got to have strong executive functioning skills. This woman has ADHD, and ADHD could also be called executive function dysfunction. Yeah.

Good. Good.

Yeah. And in my training, I'm learning that ADHD, anxiety, depression, chemotherapy, introducing chemicals into your body, that'll throw your executive function off too. Marriage, death, birth, divorce, cancer, COVID.

Mm-hmm.

Those will throw your executive functions off. But for somebody wired like me and my 3 sisters and my dad, if we have a major life transition, when we have had major life transitions, we're knocked off our game, but we can get back into the game. Folks with executive function challenges, We're never on the game.

Mm-hmm.

Have these life transitions, and now you've got clutter everywhere.

It's interesting. Can I stop you for a minute?

Absolutely.

Because I'm thinking of very successful people. They're very successful in their career. They're very good at their job. But you, you don't necessarily know that if you go to their home.

So here's what I'm coming to now, Rebecca.

Yeah.

So if you are a successful professional female with strong executive functioning skills, chances are you delegate the shit out of your dog. People want to work on what you are good at.

Yeah.

If you're a successful professional with weak executive functioning skills, You've learned about delegating.

Yeah.

So delegating will either come naturally to you if you want to climb that ladder of success and you're— you become aware of what holds you back, like time management, not being able to sequence, whatever it is, you learn to delegate.

That makes sense.

Over the past 70 or 80 years since the second wave of the women's movement, the second wave of the women's movement brought us, oh, we could buy houses in our own name. We can buy, we could have a credit card in our own name. We can, we have shattered glass ceilings. We sit on the US Supreme Court. So much has changed for women and there's still a lot more to go. I'm not saying we've arrived by any stretch. Let's talk about pay inequity, but In the professional sphere, sphere, or what historians would call the public sphere.

Mm-hmm.

So much has changed. Walk through your front door, nothing's changed.

I was literally about to say that. So you have this term that you use, emotional labor, and most of it still falls on the woman.

Yeah, the majority of it. And what— that's— so here's the crux of it. There's this huge body of work that needs to be done at home. There's the very visible physical laundry, shopping, yard work, everything, right? The physical part. But then there's what's called the mental load. And the mental load is thinking about what's coming up, what needs to be done, what has to happen, looking into the future to anticipate family meals, holiday, to anticipate what's happening in your life.

Mm-hmm.

And then the emotional labor of the mental load is carrying out the love part of the mental load and the physical work. The emotional labor is that we care that the socks match. We care that there's ketchup in the refrigerator. We care about things. So we've been— so we stock the refrigerator, we think about what else needs to happen, and we do it because of that love and caring. And the love and caring is really important to the well-being of the family. Thinking about if we have enough ketchup is a little task, But when you have all of those thinking about and anticipating and the caring, that adds up to a whole lot of work that is entirely invisible.

Yeah. And frustrating because a perfect example, let's talk about ketchup for a minute. I don't use the ketchup, but my husband and my daughter do. And I love that you brought up ketchup because It's as simple as, I don't want to read your mind and know that you're out of ketchup, that you're out of bread, that you're out of snacks that you like. So how can we get our husbands, our kids, our partners more involved in this load?

Chances are pretty good that if you're asking this question, you've had a conversation or two with your partner. About this, maybe 5 conversations.

I would say every single woman listening is going to agree to that.

So what we want to do is to— what I encourage people to think about, yeah, is this concept of gender equity at home. Gender equity at home means that all of the work of the house, of household management, is visible and recognized and evaluated. What is important? One big suggestion is there's a couple of ways to go about this with as much love and caring and communication as you can muster in that moment. I'm gonna back up for a minute. I— if wanting to share the weight of the household has turned into stupid circular arguments, then you want to have this conversation in front of other couples or a good coach or therapist. Yeah, because again, it can devolve very quickly because one person is going to feel that they're being attacked, that fragility that some people carry. So here's one, one suggestion with much love, blah, blah. You say, I listen to this great podcast on Rebecca Green's show, and there's this person talking about sharing the load. And one of the suggestions was this: you and I are going to go into separate corners and we're going to write down everything we do. For the house, everything. If you're the one who dusts the top of the fan blades, write it down. Whatever it is, you just write it down and then have a date and compare lists. Yeah, just to begin recognizing what household management is really all about, because what we're doing is household management. I had another thought the other day. When the very wealthy need to run their household, they hire a household manager. Unwealthy call it women's work.

Oh my gosh. I love delegating. I love when I love it. I love when I'm able to. I love— I, I am learning to love it more and more.

So, and Rebecca, you tell me, do you, when you are delegating, on some level you have to be okay with the outcome of your desire to delegate?

Absolutely.

Well, yeah, that's what I think is very hard for people.

Oh, and how many women say I'm a control freak? Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead.

First, you're not a freak, you're gifted. There's that.

I like that reframe.

And then I think if you believe that there's only one way to load a dishwasher, and that's fine, you can believe that, that's fine.

That's a good example.

I wonder if that's where you believe you need to have control. And it's okay to want to have that control. I want you to be curious about why that is. Because people are going to label you a freak and you're gifted. But I also want you to understand, for example, I had this really smart, uh, estate attorney. She told me that there is one way to load a dishwasher. I said, let's unpack that a little. And then she told me the story about teaching her 5-year-old to unload the dishwasher, and the dishes in the cupboard were a result of her unloading. Mother-in-law came over, saw a speck of food on the plate, and gave her daughter-in-law daggers, dagger eyes. And so my friend's desire to unload the dishwasher has more to do with avoiding criticism. Mm. Than showing off her gift.

That is interesting. I'm gonna have to think about that because my husband teases me about the dishwasher. So I think it's funny that's the example you chose.

But it, that seems to be a big example in a lot of families.

And I think that everyone will relate to me when I say, if we delegate something like, here's your laundry, fold it and put it away. You might end up with the socks just thrown in the drawer. You might end up with all the drawers open. You're not— it's not going to necessarily look how I would want it to look, but learning to let go and delegate and let it turn out how it's going to turn out. Like, I don't need— I have come a long way. I don't need the dishwasher to be loaded perfectly because it's done and it's off my list.

And that's the basis for delegating. Mm. So one, so here we have you making lists and some lists are gonna be much, much longer.

Yeah.

Than the other. Perfectly fine. You look at the list and then you decide what actually has to be done.

Mm-hmm.

And begin radically delegating. This idea of radical delegation has much to do with what you just said. Get her done.

Get it off the— get it done off the list regardless of who's good at it.

I like that because I'm going to step back and go and meet Sylvia again. Sylvia doesn't have these high-level cognitive skills to plan, process, prioritize, stay emotionally managed, and have a good relationship with time. She's not good at the work, but we call it women's work. We don't call it household management.

Right.

So the fact that this work fell on her shoulders when she's not good at it at all, right, does not promote anything like equity at home. So what I think ought to happen is that you look at all the tasks that need to be done and then divide and conquer regardless of who's good at it. And if it's— and if you decide that you're going to take on laundry, which is sort, wash, dry, fold, put away, it's not just laundry. It's a sequence. It's time managed. There's an end result. If you're not good at it, look at YouTube. Really, there are so many resources available to learn how to do a task.

And back up to what you said. You said that Sylvia is lacking in executive functioning skills that allows her home to be in the order that she wants. So as you're working with people, are they learning executive functioning? Are they learning to get better at it?

No. Again, I send out a team to do the work and I talk about this to groups of women, but it's— we want to— and when I'm qualifying people about the work before we set the job, I'll talk about these things. In order to really make substantive change at home, you've got to understand it's a process and it's going to take time. And ideally, have a date night on the calendar and anticipate all the shit that's coming up.

Yeah, yeah.

Look ahead together and then divide and conquer and radically delegate what's coming up so that you can respond instead of react. I'm saying all of these words thinking, oh, respond and not react. Oh, have a meeting once a month. It takes a really solid and strong couple to be able to do this. They've got to. Yeah.

Because as you're talking, I'm hearing the resistance, not from me. I'm just hearing the resistance that we're going to get with women saying, I wish that my partner would sit down with me and I wish that we could go over the list and I wish that we could delegate to each other. I think there is, I hate to use the word resistance, But I don't know how many partners are going to be willing to do that.

Hey, it's called weaponized incompetence. There's a term for this. Oh, Google weaponized incompetence. Okay. And it comes out of the corporate setting when you ask an employee to do something over and they say, I can't do it. You stop asking them.

Yeah. Yeah, I hear ya. Yeah, that makes sense.

It's not— it's, it's how do we get our partners to just tone it down and look to see what the body of work is. Just make the invisible visible. Tone down the ego, tone down your sense of incompetence, because if you're in the paid workplace You may ask a coworker, is there anything I can do to help you? You look like you're under a lot of pressure. And the coworker will go, yeah, just refile this. You're like, great. You're not going to go to that coworker every single day. How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? And this is what a lot of adults in the household saying to their spouses. And the spouse is like, we eat dinner every day. We set the table every day. What do you mean, how can you help? Own some of this.

Yeah. And I love what you said. I wanna back up because you said something really important. You said go about it in a loving and caring way. I love it. And I wanna emphasize that as you're talking because I see women attack, and I hate to just say women, but it's mostly women who are listening right now. I'll see them attack their husband and say it in a way where the husband just wants to run away. So I think if we're coming at it in a loving, caring, supportive way, we're going to get a different response.

Sure. And I think, what is marriage? Isn't marriage— didn't two people— I would say the majority of people get married because they have this ideal about who they want to spend the rest of their life with. The rest of their life. And everything that comes with it. Yeah, not only having babies and raising them and launching them into adulthood, but your aging parents. There's this desire to become a unit, and it starts out with love, but what I see is that it devolves into something else. So if we could look at managing the house like we would manage a business, the very same, like, yeah, cognitive skills needed in corporate spaces are the exact same cognitive skills needed in household management.

That's an excellent point.

Thank you.

And I think that there's, there's probably people listening who have so much stuff and so much clutter and they don't know where to begin?

I would love to.

Yes. Can you give them a little advice with that?

Here's the advice. You really got to know your executive functions.

Mm.

Because the emotional management piece— I don't know where you live in— you live on the East Coast. I don't know if your community has a lot of public storage units. Mm-hmm. People that put their stuff in a place and they pay a monthly fee.

Yeah.

Public storage to me is the land of emotional mismanagement.

I'm writing that down.

It's the land of where we keep things we may need someday. And it's the land of where we keep the stuff that somebody gave us that we would feel guilty if we let go.

Oh, that's so good. Mm-hmm.

And there's fear there. So when I walk into a home and I see a house filled with clutter, I say, what's here that you think you're going to use someday? And they'll go, the rice cooker. I haven't used it in 10 years, but I want to— I know I'm going to use it. I said, okay, let's put a— let's put a date stamp on it. Let's give a date to someday. Because Rebecca, yeah, right this second is someday. Today is someday. Right now is later. When we put things off for someday and later, I think you will increase the likelihood that you can make a decision if you give it a boundary. And this is a biggie. If you can trust yourself enough that if someday comes and you don't have the rice cooker, you will now put a pot on the stove, put water in it, trust that you will be able to meet your needs. Yeah, because we catastrophize the outcome of the letting go. If I let this rice cooker come— go, and someday comes something not good is going to happen. So we'll catastrophize that outcome. We're afraid that— we are afraid if someday comes. So there's that. So we're holding on. We have our hand in front of us holding on to the future of someday. We're afraid of letting that go. Then we're holding on to all of this stuff from the past— bowling trophies, report cards, drafts of dissertations, whatever it is. Aunt Ethel's embroidered pillow that is now questionable. And, and if you put it through one more cycle in the wash, it's going to fall apart. Right. But we hold on to it because, gosh, Aunt Ethel made this for me. Did Aunt Ethel think we were going to hold on to it for the rest of our natural lives? I don't care. Because It's impeding me, and I'm the most important person in my house. I want to live with the stuff I use. I want to be comfortable and live guilt-free.

That's really good.

So when I'm holding on to the past, there's a fear of letting that go. I'm doing a disservice to the person who gave it. The guy who had, um, 200, 300 concert t-shirts from back in the day, Jefferson Airplane, everything. He said, if I let these go, how will anybody know I used to be cool? I'm like, George, you're still cool. It just looks different on you now. So again, we identify our past with our values. We hold on to something because of the value that somebody else gave it.

Yeah.

Oh, this has been in the family for generations. You can't possibly let it go. And I'm like, I don't need a player piano. You know what I mean? So it's like, how do we become clear about our desire to how we want to live? And begin to look around us. Are we holding on to this out of guilt or fear? Just be curious about it. Be curious about why you're challenged with the clutter. Be curious. Don't judge yourself. Don't resent or label yourself. Just be curious. Because it's the— I'm talking about the emotional management side of life. And then again, if you have weak executive functioning skills, you got a crappy relationship with time. And it's, uh, it's difficult to plan and process and sequence. So if you have a difficult relationship with time, part of that is that you don't really know how long it takes you to do anything. So experiment on something very benign. Work on a junk drawer. And as many people have heard me say, if it's junk, Why are you putting it in a drawer? But we do. They do. It happens. So junk drawer, not very emotional. It's time to get rid of all those Bed Bath Beyond coupons because they don't take them anymore. And usually it can be a quick process. Give yourself 10 minutes on the junk drawer. If it takes you longer, it's good information. Don't go, ah, I should have had this done. It's good information because now you're going to need a little bit more time. What, what were the distractions? How come it didn't happen in the time that you allotted? So this idea of self-curiosity.

Yeah, I love it.

Understanding our relationship with time, understanding our relationship with our emotional well-being. These are the things that will help you start thinking differently about stuff and clutter.

And as you're talking, what's coming to me, and I know this isn't so easy for everybody, I would rather, and I'm working on this, I'm working on what we're talking about. I would rather have a clutter-free house than hold on to something that might be sentimental.

Okay.

So I'm—

Take a picture of it.

Yeah. I want you to tell everybody about your awesome books that you wrote.

I have two that I love. One is called Psychic Debris, Crowded Closets: The Relationship Between the Stuff in Your Head and What's Under Your Bed.

I love that.

It's all about this last segment of our conversation, the emotional time management of it all. And the other book, which I also love, is called Emotional Labor: Why a Woman's Work Is Never Done and What to Do About It. I did a TEDx talk on that. And so if you put that in your show notes, that would be great too.

Oh, I would love to. I would love to. We talked about so many things. Is there anything else that you think is super important to share before I let you go?

Yeah. I encourage all women to quit apologizing for things they don't do. Love it. And love yourself enough. Be curious enough to start having these very difficult conversations with your partner.

I love it. So tell everybody where they can find you and all of your awesome information.

Regina Lark. Just Google me. I'm proof positive that nothing ever leaves the internet for good or ill.

You, you are a hoot to spend time with. I have just had such a good time talking to you. I learned a lot. You're making me want to end this and go work on decluttering more. I've been making Really good progress. You would be proud of me. I'm doing good. Thank you so much for spending time with me. Really appreciate it.

This was wonderful. Thank you.

This is Rebecca Green, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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