Speaker 1: Hey, listeners, if you subscribe to Before Breakfast, You'll be
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Speaker 1: your day from great to awesome. Good morning, This is Laura.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to
Speaker 1: reduce your chores, don't reschedule them. I read a lot
Speaker 1: of time management literature, and over the years I've noticed something.
Speaker 1: A lot of tips that purport to save time are
Speaker 1: really just about moving work to some other time. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: sometimes of the day can be more frenetic than others,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's helpful to spread the work around, but
Speaker 1: sometimes the so called calmer mornings or evenings that these
Speaker 1: tips promise come at a high cost of recreation or rest.
Speaker 1: For instance, meal prepping all afternoon on Sunday days may
Speaker 1: make your weeknights lighter, maybe, but at the cost of
Speaker 1: a big chunk of your weekend. Selecting your own and
Speaker 1: your kids clothes for the week on Sunday still takes time.
Speaker 1: Even if it's not during the weekday morning rush. It
Speaker 1: may actually take more time on the weekend, since you
Speaker 1: might be quicker about it in the mornings when you
Speaker 1: have to look presentable by eight thirty am. Many kids
Speaker 1: are home from school these days, but when they go
Speaker 1: back would you rather pack lunches after your kids go
Speaker 1: to bed or curl up in front of the fire
Speaker 1: with your spouse or a good book. When you reschedule chores,
Speaker 1: you wind up pushing them into what could be leisure time,
Speaker 1: or you decide to still have your leisure time after
Speaker 1: doing the chores and you go to bed too late.
Speaker 1: Grumpy mornings are never calm mornings, even if you laid
Speaker 1: out outfits, made lunches, and otherwise followed all that questionable advice.
Speaker 1: Rescheduling chores also creates another problem. You might move chores
Speaker 1: to times when other family members don't see them. You
Speaker 1: might also wind up doing work that other people could do.
Speaker 1: I'm particularly thinking about children here. If kids can't see
Speaker 1: your hard work, well, it's like the lunch fairies created
Speaker 1: the sandwiches with faces on them and decorated the homemade
Speaker 1: cookies that magically show up in their lunch boxes, and
Speaker 1: while it would be nice if there were lunch fairies,
Speaker 1: there aren't. Nor are there fairies who magically clean the
Speaker 1: kitchen and pick up the toys every night. Let's hope
Speaker 1: kids don't learn this for the first time when they're
Speaker 1: running their own households. Also, to be honest, sometimes other
Speaker 1: adults in the household persist in believing in these fairies too.
Speaker 1: If you do all the meal prep on Sundays, this
Speaker 1: implies that feeding your household is your job, and your
Speaker 1: job alone, unless your family has a specific agreement on chores,
Speaker 1: with other parties fully responsible for equally time consuming work.
Speaker 1: It's unclear why this would be the case. Better to
Speaker 1: reduce chores rather than reschedule them, consider whether all household
Speaker 1: tasks are worth doing. Rather than doing meal prep on weekends,
Speaker 1: you can just make simpler meals during the week. You
Speaker 1: can order in once too, to lower the burden rather
Speaker 1: than making lunches. When kids are back in school, you
Speaker 1: can have them start buying lunch or making their own lunches.
Speaker 1: You can streamline your clothes and let kids wear what
Speaker 1: they want. You can recognize that those toys scattered all
Speaker 1: over the living room are just going to come out
Speaker 1: again the next morning, so there is zero benefit in
Speaker 1: losing leisure time in order to pick them up. Rescheduling
Speaker 1: chores doesn't save time, reducing them does, so whenever that's
Speaker 1: an option, probably better to go with that. Have you
Speaker 1: found ways to reduce your chores rather than rescheduling them,
Speaker 1: You can let me know about it. Before Breakfast podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart media dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. M Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast pod. That's B the number four, then Breakfast
Speaker 1: p o D. You can also shoot me an email
Speaker 1: at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com.
Speaker 1: That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.
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