Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is about one way to keep the chores
Speaker 1: in check. Giving yourself a designated chore window means you'll
Speaker 1: get stuff done, but you won't feel like you're doing
Speaker 1: nothing but chores. Today's tip, like a few over the
Speaker 1: next few weeks, comes from my new book, Tranquility by Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Nine Ways to calm the chaos and make time for
Speaker 1: what matters. In this book, which is out October, i
Speaker 1: share nine time management rules and how they've helped busy
Speaker 1: people feel better about life and make more time for fun.
Speaker 1: One of the Tranquility by Tuesday rules is to batch
Speaker 1: the little things. I mostly talk about this in a
Speaker 1: work context. Set a small window each day or perhaps
Speaker 1: the larger one each week, to tackle the non urgent
Speaker 1: and not terribly important work that still needs to get done,
Speaker 1: you know, filling out that form, paying a bill, responding
Speaker 1: to an invitation. When you set a small window, you
Speaker 1: force yourself to be efficient, but you also let yourself
Speaker 1: relax or do deeper work the rest of the time.
Speaker 1: You don't need to interrupt your deep work to go
Speaker 1: fill out that form from HR. You know there is
Speaker 1: a time for that, and now is not that time.
Speaker 1: It turns out that batching the little things can work
Speaker 1: on the home front. Too. Many of us hit the
Speaker 1: weekend and realize we've got quite the backlog of undone chores.
Speaker 1: There are stuff all over the countertop, The laundry is
Speaker 1: half done, with clean piles drifting dangerously close to dirty piles.
Speaker 1: The mail stacks up, and there are those projects you
Speaker 1: keep meaning to get to but haven't yet. You know,
Speaker 1: like where are the size three T hand me downs
Speaker 1: so I can see what my toddler has for the winter,
Speaker 1: hanging up a picture, fixing a squeaky door. With all
Speaker 1: this stuff hanging over you, it can be hard to
Speaker 1: relax on weekends. The baby goes down for a nap,
Speaker 1: or you and your partner trade off kid time, and
Speaker 1: you immediately look at your long list and see that
Speaker 1: time disappear. I had that feeling on a recent Sunday.
Speaker 1: My husband took our two year old to the local
Speaker 1: children's museum for a while, so I knew I had
Speaker 1: some time, but not an infinite amount of time. I
Speaker 1: needed to divvy it up. My solution I was going
Speaker 1: to do some things I wanted to do for an
Speaker 1: hour and then do the chores I needed to do
Speaker 1: for an hour. Did I get everything done in that
Speaker 1: chore our Noope, But my closet looks a lot better.
Speaker 1: And I finally got the stuff hand washed that needed
Speaker 1: to be hand washed. My kids clean the kitchen with
Speaker 1: my help, and that was enough for the day. I
Speaker 1: knew I'd done a lot of stuff, so I didn't
Speaker 1: need to be doing chores the rest of the weekend.
Speaker 1: If you too feel like chores are taking over your weekends,
Speaker 1: you might want to consider how batch the little things
Speaker 1: could work in this context. Maybe you decide that you
Speaker 1: will do chores for a two hour window on Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: and then you will stop worrying about anything beyond doing
Speaker 1: the dishes for each meal after that. Some people do
Speaker 1: a small chore window after dinner each weekday. The dishes
Speaker 1: get done and the house gets tidied. But if it
Speaker 1: doesn't fit in that thirty minutes or so, then it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't urgent. Whatever the windows are, it's important to
Speaker 1: create these windows. Chores like email, can expand to fill
Speaker 1: the available space. We can come up with various hacks
Speaker 1: to clean quicker, or to send shorter emails or what
Speaker 1: have you. But ultimately the only way to spend less
Speaker 1: time on these things is to decide to spend less
Speaker 1: time on these things. So batch the chores and you
Speaker 1: will keep chores in check. That helps you calm the
Speaker 1: chaos and make time for what matters in the meantime.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our times. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from it. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod that's b E the
Speaker 1: number four than Breakfast p o D. You can also
Speaker 1: shoot me an email at Before for Breakfast podcasts at
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with
Speaker 1: all the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to
Speaker 1: staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Yea