A Woman’s Work Is Never Done–Or Can It Be?
by Nancy Van Pelt
SEVEN SECRETS TO SANITY FOR BUSY WOMEN – PART 1
By Nancy L. Van Pelt
In lives packed with husbands, children, housework, and jobs, woman today face a crammed calendar and stress. Who or what comes first, and who and what get lost in the shuffle?
One survey revealed the activity time-pressed women give up first is housekeeping. As many as 82 percent of the women said they had to change their standards for housekeeping.
Another study confirms that women who work outside the home get 20 to 25 minutes less sleep per night than their husbands, who get 7 to 8 hours. Mothers with children under three years of age do even worse, getting 45 to 50 minutes less sleep.
In spite of many new labor-saving devices, women have six fewer hours of leisure time per week than a decade ago. The lack of sleep and resulting tiredness (sometimes women talk about sleep the way a starving person talks about food) takes its toll on women and their families. The result: women are overworked and underplayed.
They often feel alienated and resentful toward their husbands who cling to more traditional roles and refuse to get involved in housework.
Is there anything that can be done to help a stressed-out woman who feels she must carry the bulk of the load and suffers keenly from the “Superwoman Syndrome”?
Included here and in Part 2 next month are SEVEN SECRETS TO SANITY designed around a revolutionary new approach to daily living that frees women from the drudgery of never-ending housework–practical “how-to’s” to assist them in living out Scriptural admonition to “Let all things be done decently and in order.” (I Corinthians 14:40)
Secret 1: A Personal Daily Plan
A full-time homemaker spends an average of 55 hours per week on household tasks. But when a homemaker takes on full-time employment she will by necessity cut housework in half. Whether employed full-time or not, you can drastically reduce the time you spend cleaning house.
Just as big business profits from a work plan, you too can manage your home more efficiently by having a Personal Daily Plan.
It is unbelievably easy to set up a Personal Daily Plan. Near the left-hand edge of a piece of paper, write in the hours of your day in 15-minute increments from the time you get up till the time you go to bed. Divide the paper into seven columns–one for each day of the week. Quickly sketch in the following: rising and bed times; time for personal grooming; time for meals; regular weekly appointments, and work hours (if you work outside your home).
Now add personal time (devotions, reading, exercise); family time; and recreation and hobbies. This type of preplanning makes it more likely you will get to each item.
The third step is to create a plan for getting daily chores done without throwing yourself into Overload. First list all the weekly major tasks, such as laundry, vacuuming, dusting, bathroom cleaning, meal preparation and cleanup, and grocery shopping. (NOTE: A major task is any chore requiring more than 15 minutes of time.)
Next assign one major task to each workday. For example,
Monday Kitchen duties
Tuesday Change beds, do laundry, fold and put away
Wednesday Clean bathrooms, do menu planning and grocery shopping
Thursday Vacuum whole house, dustmop or wet mop bare floors
Friday Dust; cook for the weekend
Add three to five mini tasks each day to each major task. (NOTE: A mini task is any chore requiring no more than five minutes of time.) For example: on dusting day clean one window and one mini-blind.
This presents a totally different standard for what constitutes a clean house. It is time to reeducate our standards for a clean house with what is possible within time constraints. When the work load is portioned out with one major and several mini tasks per day, it is possible to keep a home in an acceptable state.
Best of all: if you miss a major task, put it off until next week, not the next day! When you put it off till the next day, it throws you into immediate Overload. (EXCEPTION: The laundry must be done unless you have enough clothes to last two weeks.) Even major tasks can be put on hold occasionally without creating panic.
Rework your Personal Daily Plan until it flows for you. Our lives and circumstances are in a constant state of change; rework your plan until it fits you. You’ll get more done in less time when you put your Personal Daily Plan into effect.
Secret 2: The Five-Minute Miracle
Before leaving for work or beginning your day at home, give each room five minutes: five minutes in the bathroom (hang up towels, put makeup away, wipe counter); five minutes in the bedroom (make the bed, hang up clothes, put odds and ends away). Have the children spend five minutes in their rooms making their beds and picking up. If you straightened up the night before in the family room, you can forget that room in the morning. After breakfast give the kitchen five minutes–rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher or stack them in the sink, put food away in cupboards or refrigerator, and wipe the kitchen counter.
Avoid getting sidetracked as you move quickly from room to room putting clutter away.
When the employed woman leaves for work with unmade beds, dirty dishes on the table, and yesterday’s clothing lying where it was dropped, she will likely dread returning to undone chores after a hard day’s work and take her frustration out by crossly ordering the children around and being grumpy and irritable with her husband. Her house says to her, “You are a failure. You can’t handle this or do anything well. Your entire life is a mess.”
After practicing the Five-Minute Pick Up, the employed woman can leave for work with confidence that her home is “decent and in order.” The homemaker can more easily begin her major cleaning task for the day, thinking “I feel good about myself and my day already!”
Following the Five-Minute Pick Up plan daily will make the biggest, fastest, and most visible improvement in your home.
Secret 3: An Efficient Office
Do you sometimes forget appointments? Make to-do lists on scraps of paper you can never find again? Lose names and addresses? Then you need an office–one where the information needed to run “your world” is at your fingertips, an office where information never gets lost. The type of “office” I recommend isn’t another room to clean, but an organizer that fits into your purse!
The Day Runner Slimline System beats all organizers for size, style, and weight. I call it my “brains,” as it contains all the information I need to function in a given day. Let me share how I organize mine.
The first item in my Day Runner is the slim weekly dated calendar. Every time I make an appointment, I record it on this calendar. Presto! No more missed or forgotten appointments. All weekly appointments are viewable on one page.
Next is the Project Organizer, a set of dividers which I label to fit my lifestyle. The first section is for committees. Here I list the names, addresses, and phone numbers of those on various committees of which I am a part. One page is for my Wednesday-night prayer group; one for women’s ministry; another for church committees.
The second tab is Personal. Here there is a page for frequently-called numbers, one for family members, and several pages of miscellaneous numbers of such persons as my hair dresser, travel agent, and cosmetics dealer.
Tab three is designated Items Loaned and Things to Remember. Any items loaned–books, cassettes, etc.–are jotted down here with the date and crossed off as they are returned. Also kept in this section is a page of miscellaneous information I have difficulty remembering– directions to a mall in a nearby city, what kind of film is needed for my camera, odd bits and pieces of information I’m likely to forget.
The fourth category is Medical and contains the names and addresses of all family doctors and dentists.
Tab five is Household Information, and here I keep such information as dining room and kitchen table measurements, room sizes, scraps of wallpaper, and type of vacuum cleaner bags needed. A record of my monthly food budget is also recorded here.
The sixth category is Sermon Notes and Prayer Requests. I record the date, speaker, Bible verses, and pertinent points on one side, with prayer requests on the other. I get more from the sermon when I take notes, and I can remember to pray for the people who request prayer once I have written down the information.
The Address Book follows, with a blank tablet at the back for miscellaneous notes.
After waking in the morning or before dropping off to sleep at night, a woman’s mind frequently runs rampant with a flurry of things pressing for immediate action. As these thoughts hit you, take a minute to write them down on the pad in your Day Runner–phone calls to make, tickets to order, something to buy– and you will be freed from the stress of trying to remember all these items.
At home keep your Day Runner open to the current week in a convenient place. (NOTE: Never leave home without it! Make this a habit. You never know when you will need it.)
Next month the remaining four Secrets to Sanity will appear–Meal Planning Made Easy; Sort Through the Clutter; Clean Like a Pro; and How to Make Life More Beautiful, Joyful, and Elegant.
SIDE BAR
SEVEN SECRETS to SANITY
for BUSY WOMEN
Secret 1 A Personal Daily Plan
A revolutionary plan for having
your home in an acceptable state
of Sabbath readiness.
Secret 2 The 5-Minute Miracle
Five minutes in each room gives
the appearance of order, even
though you have not cleaned.
Secret 3 An Efficient Office
Put “your world” at your fingertips.
Secret 4 Meal Planning Made Easy
What 20 recipes, a menu planner,
and a shopping list can do.
Secret 5 Sort Through the Clutter
Sorting through useless clutter
simplifies our lives and makes
cleaning faster and easier.
Secret 6 Clean Like a Pro
Prevention and professional cleaning
methods save time and money.
Secret 7 Make Life Beautiful,
Joyful, & Elegant
Small touches elevate mundane
tasks to something fun