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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

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Speaker 1: Today's tip is about one way to keep the chores

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Speaker 1: in check. Giving yourself a designated chore window means you'll

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Speaker 1: get stuff done, but you won't feel like you're doing

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Speaker 1: nothing but chores. Today's tip, like a few over the

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Speaker 1: next few weeks, comes from my new book, Tranquility by Tuesday.

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Speaker 1: Nine Ways to calm the chaos and make time for

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Speaker 1: what matters. In this book, which is out October, i

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Speaker 1: share nine time management rules and how they've helped busy

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Speaker 1: people feel better about life and make more time for fun.

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Speaker 1: One of the Tranquility by Tuesday rules is to batch

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Speaker 1: the little things. I mostly talk about this in a

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Speaker 1: work context. Set a small window each day or perhaps

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Speaker 1: the larger one each week, to tackle the non urgent

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Speaker 1: and not terribly important work that still needs to get done,

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Speaker 1: you know, filling out that form, paying a bill, responding

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Speaker 1: to an invitation. When you set a small window, you

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Speaker 1: force yourself to be efficient, but you also let yourself

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Speaker 1: relax or do deeper work the rest of the time.

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Speaker 1: You don't need to interrupt your deep work to go

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Speaker 1: fill out that form from HR. You know there is

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Speaker 1: a time for that, and now is not that time.

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Speaker 1: It turns out that batching the little things can work

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Speaker 1: on the home front. Too. Many of us hit the

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Speaker 1: weekend and realize we've got quite the backlog of undone chores.

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Speaker 1: There are stuff all over the countertop, The laundry is

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Speaker 1: half done, with clean piles drifting dangerously close to dirty piles.

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Speaker 1: The mail stacks up, and there are those projects you

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Speaker 1: keep meaning to get to but haven't yet. You know,

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Speaker 1: like where are the size three T hand me downs

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Speaker 1: so I can see what my toddler has for the winter,

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Speaker 1: hanging up a picture, fixing a squeaky door. With all

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Speaker 1: this stuff hanging over you, it can be hard to

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Speaker 1: relax on weekends. The baby goes down for a nap,

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Speaker 1: or you and your partner trade off kid time, and

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Speaker 1: you immediately look at your long list and see that

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Speaker 1: time disappear. I had that feeling on a recent Sunday.

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Speaker 1: My husband took our two year old to the local

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Speaker 1: children's museum for a while, so I knew I had

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Speaker 1: some time, but not an infinite amount of time. I

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Speaker 1: needed to divvy it up. My solution I was going

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Speaker 1: to do some things I wanted to do for an

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Speaker 1: hour and then do the chores I needed to do

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Speaker 1: for an hour. Did I get everything done in that

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Speaker 1: chore our Noope, But my closet looks a lot better.

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Speaker 1: And I finally got the stuff hand washed that needed

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Speaker 1: to be hand washed. My kids clean the kitchen with

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Speaker 1: my help, and that was enough for the day. I

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Speaker 1: knew I'd done a lot of stuff, so I didn't

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Speaker 1: need to be doing chores the rest of the weekend.

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Speaker 1: If you too feel like chores are taking over your weekends,

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Speaker 1: you might want to consider how batch the little things

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Speaker 1: could work in this context. Maybe you decide that you

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Speaker 1: will do chores for a two hour window on Saturday morning,

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Speaker 1: and then you will stop worrying about anything beyond doing

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Speaker 1: the dishes for each meal after that. Some people do

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Speaker 1: a small chore window after dinner each weekday. The dishes

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Speaker 1: get done and the house gets tidied. But if it

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Speaker 1: doesn't fit in that thirty minutes or so, then it

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Speaker 1: probably wasn't urgent. Whatever the windows are, it's important to

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Speaker 1: create these windows. Chores like email, can expand to fill

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Speaker 1: the available space. We can come up with various hacks

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Speaker 1: to clean quicker, or to send shorter emails or what

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Speaker 1: have you. But ultimately the only way to spend less

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Speaker 1: time on these things is to decide to spend less

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Speaker 1: time on these things. So batch the chores and you

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Speaker 1: will keep chores in check. That helps you calm the

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Speaker 1: chaos and make time for what matters in the meantime.

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Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making

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Speaker 1: the most of our times. Hey, everybody, I'd love to

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Speaker 1: hear from it. You can send me your tips, your questions,

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Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod that's b E the

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Speaker 1: number four than Breakfast p o D. You can also

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Speaker 1: shoot me an email at Before for Breakfast podcasts at

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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with

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Speaker 1: all the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to

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Speaker 1: staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit

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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Yea