#454 - Chores for Normals: Make 20 Minutes Enough

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Hi there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. This podcast is not about hacking the system to find more time or hacking your energy to get more done. Hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity. It's exhausting and unsustainable, so here we do things differently. On this show, we value contentment, compassion, and living in our season. We favor small steps over big systems.

Here we are lazy geniuses, being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I'm so glad you're here. Today is episode 454. Chores for normals. Make 20 minutes an hour.

All right, I care a lot about helping people find easier ways to do things that matter. And taking care of our homes is usually on the list. We all have different approaches to tidying and cleaning and chore management. But foundationally, most of us wanna live in homes that function well, that are comfortable and welcoming, and that are not so overwhelmed by tasks and clutter that we just like wanna burn it all down.

those times are gonna come and there are other episodes for dealing with that energy. But today I want us to find a simpler path to daily maintenance at home. This will not be full of like lots of lists of things for you to do or guilt about what you're not doing. We just don't do that here.

Instead, we're going to talk about the normal obstacles that make housekeeping hard and what we can do instead. Then we're going to talk about what you could do for two to twenty minutes a day that will impact your desired quality of life at home.

Because when it comes to normals like us, people who are just trying to live our lives with kindness and contentment, we don't need to get all up in a twist about house cleaning. Let's just be wise about our homes, what matters in them, and find a way to make twenty minutes enough.

After that, for a little extra something, I'm gonna share my favorite convenience food right now. I was actually gonna share several, but it was almost like a whole separate episode. So in a couple of weeks, I am going to share some of my favorite convenience foods in the actual podcast.

Today I will just share my singular favorite right now. As always, we will celebrate the lazy genius of the week, which is an all-time favorite tip for dusting the house. And then we're going to close with a mini pep talk for when you're overwhelmed by the world.

Before we get into the episode, I want to remind you that we have a lot of episodes. This is number four hundred and fifty-four. But there are way more that aren't numbered in the form of bonus episodes and interviews we've done over the almost 10 years of this podcast. In some ways that's really fun. It's nice to have so many episodes to go to when you need to lazy genius something. However

It's also like, um, no, that's too many. What oh, it's too many. So a couple of helpful tools for you to notice to help you find what you need. First, we are starting to release reruns every month. sharing an episode from the archive that we think is super relevant to most listeners right now.

you don't have to do anything to get those except subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast listening app. I personally use Overcast, but you use whichever one you like. The nice thing about subscribing to a show, as you know, is that you don't have to remember to download something. It does it for you. It's just there when you open your app. And if you're subscribed, you'll you'll get those bonus reruns that are probably pretty great choices to listen to right now.

A second tool you might want to consider is that we have podcast playlists on Spotify. They are labeled like fairly accurately, things like guests, which is all the episodes that are interviews with other people. Margin, which is a collection of key episodes that help you find space in your life as you manage your time. There's work and summer sanity and cooking. And while the playlists don't have

Every single episode in that category ever, which would kind of be overwhelming anyway. It's a collection of essential episodes that can help you with whatever you're struggling with. And finally, if you ever have a problem or are struggling to figure something out and you think, I wonder if there is a Lazy Genius episode about this, there probably is. Use your preferred search engine and search lazy genius and then whatever topic you're curious about and see what pops up.

When anyone asks me if I have an episode on something, I usually do a quick search because I don't remember all four hundred and fifty four episodes. And also I'm like, I mean, yeah, probably. Hang on. So don't hesitate to just search the internet for what you need. You might get something super helpful right away. But yeah, so many episodes.

And it's an honor to keep making them for you. Uh, thank you for listening. Thank you for keeping the show alive for almost ten years with all your listens. It's just so amazing. All right, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, which makes this show free for you to listen to. But before we do, here is your quick reminder.

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All right, let's get into chores for normals and how 20 minutes can be enough. One of life's greatest challenges is managing housework, along with all the other things. Like if you could just take care of a home. And like not also a job and people and mental health and hobbies and arrest and all the things. You could totally take care of your

You could do your chores, you could keep up with them regularly and not stress out about it. But chores are not the only thing you're doing. Plus, entropy is real and things never stay clean or tidy for very long. We are all familiar with this. The problem with chores. Is that things can quickly, quickly build up.

If you don't do a little bit most days, that entropy gets all high and mighty and you will be overwhelmed with more mess than you thought could come from a few days. Like it's almost exponential. How did it get this bad this fast? It's kind of like brushing your teeth. If you didn't brush your teeth for four days, you would be able to tell a short time of not doing a daily task has weirdly large consequences.

Brushing your teeth for a couple of minutes, a couple of times a day is way better for your dental health and overall life experience than brushing your teeth once a week for like 30 minutes. N while the comparison with chores is not exactly one to one, you get my point. It makes enough sense. If we treat the maintenance of a home kind of like we do brushing our teeth,

I think it might feel a little easier, like a little bit every day, does us way more good than all at once when our you know, our breath is bad enough to kill a small animal. But before you think I'm gonna zag when I'm really gonna zag, let's lay out what we're really gonna do here.

I am not about to say to you, Hey you, spend twenty minutes a day cleaning your house and everything will be fine. It's not that simple. There are some common challenges to daily home care that we need to acknowledge, befriend. And then we can make them a little bit easier, a little bit better.

There are also different chores that will specifically impact the overall feeling in your home compared to mine. If you have a dog that sheds or a toddler who can't quite figure out the mechanics of a spoon, you will likely want to vacuum more often than I do. So we need to acknowledge the obstacles, the differences, the seasons of life.

Create some reframes to give us more compassion in our perspective toward house cleaning. And then choose specific essential chores that fit our lives. That way our 20 minutes a day, it really can be. And to be clear, twenty minutes is like it's a bit of an arbitrary number here. I chose it because it's reasonable and sustainable for most of us. Like even people who work out of the home or have harder jobs can probably find Fifteen to twenty minutes to do intentionally focused work.

for their own lives and homes. Now I'm not saying it's easy. Uh, or that we're gonna do it with big smiles on our faces, or that it's not at the expense of other things. But it's a reasonably accessible amount of time for most people most days. General and reasonable is what we're going for here.

Adjust as you would like, right? All right. So first let's talk about the obstacles that can get in the way and keep us from cleaning our homes like normals. Obstacle number one, overwhelm. All right, you have twenty minutes? You want to spend it, as my friend Hannah calls it, blitzing the house.

You want to get as much done as you can before the timer is up because that time is like kind of all you have today. So how do you spend it? How many of us have spent the half of the twenty minutes like pinballing from room to room, task to task? thing on the floor to thing on the floor and feel like we got literally nothing done. Or we like spent half of the 20 minutes trying to decide where to start at all. Depending on the state of your home, you might have no idea where to start.

The bathrooms need cleaning, the breakfast dishes are still out, the Lego bin has been turned upside down and abandoned. And then as you're cleaning, you like spot an invitation to a party with an RSVP that's actually today and something else has become more urgent than your chores. So this episode is called Chores for Normals, and holy moly, is it normal for all of us to get overwhelmed by the scope of our chores?

By the urgency of something that we just spotted, by not knowing where to begin. Chores are easily overwhelming, so don't feel like you're the only one experiencing that. We all feel that. Your personality, your season of life, your executive functioning skills, your energy, all of it might shine a light on that overwhelm, like from a different angle or more than you might like.

But we all feel it. We all feel it. So first I want you to befriend the overwhelm. It's normal, it's common, and it's gonna happen again. Don't ignore the overwhelm or make it the enemy. Just acknowledge that it's there and learn how to befriend it. In fact, your resistance to being overwhelmed by housework. is why you probably make multiple versions of chore chart.

and buy PDFs of how to clean your house. You have bought the lie that you're supposed to know exactly what to do and not be overwhelmed by your home at all. If you are, if you are overwhelmed, they say, it's because you haven't figured out the right system yet, and so here's the one that will work for you. It's false. False. And my best Dwight Schroot voice, false. Taking care of a house, even if you're the only one living in it, it will always have periods of feeling like too much.

And the more people in your home, the longer those periods usually last. Don't fight it, befriend it. You're not abnormal. You're not missing a special cleaning gene. You're very ordinary and human. And you need to remember that chores can be difficult.

And they do not end. Like that's a little overwhelming. Just be there with it. Now, one practical way you can meet that feeling of overwhelm and and stop it from getting out of hand is to know what you're going to do. You know, you go into your 20 minutes, essentially knowing how you'll spend it.

That's the second half of this episode, so hang tight. But ultimately, just be kind in feeling overwhelmed. Like we all feel it. It doesn't make you bad at this. It just makes you normal. This is just how it goes.

Okay, so that's obstacle number one is overwhelm. Obstacle number two is your season of life. Being at home with tiny kids is an obvious obstacle to keeping a house clean in any reasonable way. Tending a home with toddlers underfoot. should come with like prizes at the end. It is so intense. It's so repetitive, so messy. Why are tiny humans so dang messy?

As we always say, it's like, it's good that they're cute. It's a good thing they're cute. But that's not the only season of life that can make consistent chores difficult. Even for compassionate normals like us. I have several friends who, like me, have part time to full time jobs that do have flexible hours and can be done at home, that they still have to be done every week.

We all have kids and multiple things who need driving around. We have workouts and therapy appointments and trips to Costco and errands to the post office to fit into the weirdness of our normal schedules. And then housework gets attention, but like not at the same time of the day most days, right? It's just so much to manage and juggle.

And at the end of that kind of day, when you've been juggling all of the things, like who in the actual world wants to be like, Okay, time to do my twenty minutes cleaning routine? Like not many of us, like at least not with a smile on our faces. It's just a hard season of life to clean in. And there are a lot of seasons like that. You might be single and have only yourself to clean up after, but man, is it lonely and hard to have everything fall?

just on your shoulders all the time. It's like Groundhog Day, but with tiding the same things over and over again, and that can feel really discouraging. We could go on and on. Your season of life is almost certainly an obstacle to your housekeeping rhythms. And that is normal, expected, and okay. Try not to disparage your season of life.

But instead live in it. Befriend it. Remember that seasons of life change what matters to you. You get the good gifts of having laser focus about what you can do and what you cannot. You can experience the freedom of being a genius about some things and lazy about plenty of others because of your season of life. That clarity is really freeing. And seasons of life life help us see it.

Just this morning I noticed that the um the like the rims of my kitchen cabinets are super dirty. We have um like shaker style cabinets, which was a mistake because it's like a little ledge for dirt and dust. And I cannot remember the last time I cleaned them. Now, the old me, before like learning to be a compassionate person towards my time and my stuff.

would be like, Man, I need to run the vacuum over every single of one of those every time I vacuum the floor. Mm that will keep them in better shape and I get all like in a tizzy. But thankfully I am wise enough now to know I don't have to maintain everything. Like the cabinet fronts, they can stay dusty. I don't really care. Like you can, I do not. That's not a task I'm gonna concern myself with in this season of life.

I seriously looked at him and I was like, Kendra, sweet girl, there's no reason to focus on this right now. You're trying to teach a boy how to drive. Like I just I just don't care. Now, sure, if a cabinet ridge is like sticky in a truly bothersome way, and I have a soapy rag in my hand from washing dishes, I I'll s wipe it up real quick. Whatever.

But I'm not going to see an unimportant task that does not deserve the limited time in my season of life and try and do it better. I'm just going to leave the cabinet. So your season of life might be an obstacle, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Befriend it, accept it, let it drive your singular priorities, and then let the rest go. It's a gift, really.

Obstacle number three is distraction. Naturally. This is in our life in in a lot of ways, especially in this technological era that we're in. There are so many things that can distract us from staying locked into the few minutes that we have chosen to tend to our homes. I have been known to put my earbuds in, hit music on my phone.

And then like see a couple of texts, you know, and and then when I went to answer one of them it takes me down a rabbit trail on the internet'cause I have to search out a thing for a th for a question and then I like notice my grocery store app and remember I never placed my order, which we need it's

It's just a pylon of like distraction, right? So obviously you can be distracted by your phone or some kind of technology. You can also be distracted by tasks and chores and messes that don't really matter right now. We have a little room in the back of the house where I keep my books and the boys play video games and we have a baby grand piano in there.

that was an impulse by in the early days of our marriage. And I'm so glad we did it. But yeah, we have it's like a little den and we have a baby grand piano back there. Well everything is crammed in tight into that room. It's you know, but it's it's cozy, it's fine. Well the other day I uh I was like I was playing piano.

And I noticed the piano bench was was struggling. It's one of those benches, I mean, are all piano benches like this where the top lifts and it stores the music and everything? Like probably. We have a classic bench. But the bottom of the bench. Was about to come out. Like, I guess we'd put too many pieces of music in there. I don't know. But the bottom of the bench was buckling.

So I emptied everything out of the of the bench. I grabbed like all the music and the weird guitar paraphernalia that also was in there and I put all of it in a pile on the floor by the piano and I kept playing piano. That was like a week ago and the pile of music is still on the floor. I have walked past it multiple times and I thought, I will get to that. I will tend to that pile.

It has stuff we want to keep, some we probably don't. I I'm gonna get to it, but I don't have to right now. I have learned with much practice, trial and error, that I can pass a mess and not stop. I can ignore the dirty cabinet fronts. I can ignore the pile of music on the floor. I can ignore the shoe chaos by the door. I can ignore plenty of things that would try to distract me because I just know they don't matter as much as the other things I'm trying to do.

And frankly, that includes things like resting and reading and hanging out. I don't have to have, you don't have to have a perfectly clean home in order to stop. If that's the case, you'll never stop. So yes, you're gonna be distracted by your phone. You're gonna be distracted by the innumerable things that you could do to your house to make it even more tidy and clean. But like it doesn't matter. Like not everything can matter. And you can practice walking past an unimportant mess.

And not let it distract you from the task that will actually improve the quality of your So befriend the concept of distraction. It happens. Be kind and patient with your inconsistency in that distraction. Just like we talked about last week in learning to be a better problem solver, you're going to be inconsistent.

Even when we get to the practical part of your twenty minutes, you're not gonna do it the same every time. You're not gonna follow through in the most optimized way every time. I don't say that because I don't believe in you. I say that because it's reality. I recently heard a self help. Guru, who you probably know, talk about how your feelings don't matter. Now she clarified this majorly in the way that we would expect that of like of course your feelings matter and are valid.

But she was making the point that if you commit to something, if you say you're gonna clean your house every day for twenty minutes, you shouldn't go back on your word and let yourself down. That was the phrasing. Not only that You should ignore your feelings because you're never gonna want to do it. You're always going to have something that gets in the way, like kids or hormones. And she listed all those things. The difference is, I think.

You should be kinder about inconsistency and not see it as letting yourself down. I do not think it is a broken promise to yourself. I think it's like And for me, not for everybody, but for me and maybe for you, the minute I start assigning more value to my cleaning routine than to my energy or to my hormones or to the needs of my children. I'm done for, man. Like I am now a robot.

I am no longer paying attention to the humanity of the situation and I just never want to be a person who chooses productivity over a person, even if that person is me. So when I say you're going to be inconsistent, that's not like a slam. I think it's a gift. I think it's a welcome message of knowing you don't have to do it all exactly right now. You're gonna be distracted sometimes. And like, that's okay. Notice it, adjust it, and move on.

Speaking of doing it like exactly. Um, obstacle number four is perfection. You will certainly struggle to have real value in your twenty minutes of housework or whatever the thing is when you are pushing for perfection. I see those cleaning videos where there's like not a speck of scum on a shower when they're done, like every bit of grout. Is immaculate. It's like deeply satisfying.

Am I gonna spend most of my time trying to achieve that level of perfection in my own shower? Absolutely not. No. You can. Anybody can. I will not, because I don't need the shower to be perfectly clean, like I'm about to sell my house. Like I'm great if it's like, you know, pretty much clean, mostly clean.

And that's just when it's time to clean the bathroom. Not just like tidying it up. Like it doesn't always have to be super clean. It's not going to always be super clean. Perfection is just the worst, y'all. I always say we want perfection in bridges and surgery.

Yes, there are places where perfection is ideal and preferred and even expected, but in the context of being a normal person and a normal life, just like trucking along and taking care of your house, you are wasting your time trying to be perfect. And you're definitely wasting your precious house tending time by trying to make it all perfect.

You want the cleanliness to be perfect, the system to be perfect, the compliance of children and partners to be perfect, your motivation to be perfect, none of them will be. Just let it go. Like it ain't happening. The sooner you befriend your expectation of perfection and just like pat her on the head and say, Girl, you are so dear. And I know you're trying to make things work well so that we can be in control, but hey, we're good. We're good. Like pat perfection on the head and move on.

She doesn't need to be the loudest voice in the room. But befriend her instead of rejecting her. She's just trying like real hard, but she's just trying you can remind her she doesn't have to try so hard. Go for good, not great. Remember that last week? Go for good, not great. Perfection is not a hill we need to die on.

And then finally the last obstacle I want to bring to our collective attention is completion. All right, this one is a bit tricky. This one will this one will get you. This one will sneak up on you. You will absolutely stumble over the obstacle of completion if you don't pay attention to it. It's like a ninja. It snakes up on you so bad. You think That you need to finish, that you need to be done, that you need to complete the chores, complete the list you initially said.

Maybe even complete the cleaning of your entire home. Guys, unless you clean your house naked and decide to not eat that day. Even if you spend an entire day cleaning your house to completion, it's still not gonna be all the way clean. It's just not. You're never gonna be done. You're never gonna be done. I mean, I hate to be a wet blanket here, but this is just not gonna stop. Housework will happen as long as you're breathing. It's just how it is.

And for me, I find it incredibly freeing to befriend that. Don't reject it. Don't drown in the forever of it all. Just befriend that you're never gonna complete your chores. Completion is a bit of a fairy tale. And it will be an obstacle that keeps you from doing enough for today. Or to do some of what you hope to do and then know that you can do some more tomorrow. Like it's okay. Don't let completion get in the way of doing something, even if it's halfway done.

So before you do any sort of like daily cleaning routine. Remember your obstacles and befriend them. Remember that you will sometimes be overwhelmed by all there is to do, by where to even begin, and that that's okay. Don't talk down to yourself because of it or make yourself feel bad because you got yourself into this mess, you know. You don't have to be perfect and optimal and perform well in your own house at the cost of kindness. Just don't do it.

Remember the obstacles of your season of life and be kind in it. Remember that distraction is normal and that you don't have to give yourself a talking to because you were inconsistent in what you wanted to do. Just keep going. Like notice and adjust and keep living.

Same goes for perfection and completion. Both of these are elusive and deceptive and will absolutely get in your way. So just pat them on the head, tell yourself the truth about what's going on, and do what you can without sacrificing yourself for it. Watch out for your obstacles. Almost everybody confronts those five.

And then you might have other more personal ones that have come to mind as I've been talking. The way you approach them is the same though. Befriend them. Be kind to yourself in it. Notice. Adjust. And then keep going. All right. Now that all of that is clear, I guess so feisty about this. Now that all of that is clear.

What do we do with our twenty minutes a day? I am so glad you asked. The answer is you don't start with twenty. You start with two. If you do not currently have any sort of like daily tidying or cleaning rhythm in your home, please do not start with twenty minutes. It'll be way too long. Start with two.

Now you might be like, Kendra, um, what do you mean? Two minutes is nothing. Well, zero minutes is actually nothing. Zero guilt-ridden, perfection seeking, completionist minutes is nothing. Two minutes is actually something. Twenty minutes is like so many somethings.

But if you do not currently have any sort of daily maintenance rhythm where you're just like tending to the day's detritus, to the trash and the dishes and the mail and the shoes and whatever else, do not begin big. Twenty minutes is big. Two minutes is small, said Start with two minutes and then you can slowly add more time. That's how it goes that's just how it goes.

And by slowly adding time, I don't mean like in two days you're at twenty minutes. Make sure two intentional minutes a day happens every day for a while until you don't really think about it anymore. And make sure you value those two minutes and you don't diminish their smallness and the power of their smallness. If you do, you're gonna put way too much pressure on the twenty.

So just start with two. Slowly build to twenty or whatever the number, but smaller than you think, especially if if you have not started small at all yet. Okay, so that's the amount of time. Now let's talk about the time of day.

As you create the A little daily maintenance rhythm. When do you want that to happen? Now that is up to you. If you struggle to implement any sort of daily rhythm, is it because you don't want to and your motivation is low? If that's the case, just befriend your lack of motivation and set yourself a timer, just do it. But you could also pick up time that time of day where your energy is like a little higher, right? Now if you're in an office at your highest point of energy, obviously

You know, that can't be when you tend to your home because you're not at home. But when you are at home At what point of the day, when you are at home, are you the most energetic about your responsibilities, at least as as energetic as you can muster? Like it doesn't have to be high energy. Just see like what's the highest you got when you're home. Now, if motivation or energy is not really the issue here, it could be more about the mess rhythm of your home.

If you're home all day with little kids or even just working from home on your own, doing a daily maintenance routine in the middle of the day. might not feel as good because you know it's not gonna last very long. It's gonna be messy in, you know, within the hour. So if that's the case, maybe pick a time where the tending will visually last the longest and like allow you to enjoy it for longer.

That's probably at the end of the day, like after dinner ish, maybe when kids have gone to bed or work is over or whatever. So if you spend your twenty minutes at like seven or eight o'clock Even if you go to bed at ten, you still get a couple of good hours to enjoy a little bit more like warmth and coziness in your home than if you didn't do anything at all.

Remember, don't let completion and perfection get in the way here. Like just do what you can with the time you have. Enjoy the space and whatever tidiness it offers if that helps you and just live your life. It's like it's fine. But the time of day, choose a time of day that makes sense either based on your energy or how long you can enjoy the maintenance that you have done.

Okay. So that's we've talked about the length of time. We've talked about the time of day you can choose. Those are those are likely easier for you to choose because it's just like one main decision. You can set an alarm that goes off every day or every weekday or every other day at the same time to remind you of your twenty minute little maintenance routine. Um, once you choose it and see if it works and then you can adjust if it doesn't. You know, so okay, so those two things.

The amount of time you spend and the time of day might not be terribly hard. You can start and change your mind. If it doesn't work, you can adjust as you go. What's a bit harder? is knowing what to do during that time. It's choosing the chores. Because there are just So many. There are so many that you could do. So here's what I'm encouraging you to do. Okay. Let's specifically name what those two to 20 minutes are for.

Those minutes are meant to keep your home in a reasonable flow. It's to keep the metaphorical pipes from getting. Twenty minutes a day is not where you scrub a toilet, at least I'm probably not. Because a normal dirty toilet. is not going to keep life from moving along. Now you might make a little face when you when you sit on it'cause you're like, I need to clean this. But ultimately it's like kind of fine. But things like dirty dishes, dirty clothes.

trash and maybe even piles of stuff that keep growing, those things will keep your home from feeling like it is in a flow. If your trash can is overflowing. If your dishwasher is full of clean dishes and the dirty ones are overflowing on the sink or countercause there's nowhere for them to go. If the laundry has piled up And is overflowing out of the baskets or whatever. And now three or four family members do not have underwear. That's what I'm talking about.

That's when things feel stuck and incredibly overwhelming because everything is literally overflowing. So your daily maintenance. 20 minute routine that you're gonna build up to is to keep those things moving. If you tend to trash, dishes, and clothes for twenty minutes every day. Your house will feel completely different.

If you intentionally mark off two to twenty minutes every day to just throw away trash, to just move dirty dishes into the kitchen, away from, you know, from all the other rooms that they're in, to empty the dishwasher, to move the load of dirty clothes. to sit in front of the washing machine so that you can do them later. Like you don't even wash them yet. You just move'em to the spot. I just cannot explain to you the deep breath that that creates in your home.

You think it doesn't matter. You may think that a few minutes every day doing those things is just not gonna cut it. Now, if you're expecting a perfectly, completely clean home in twenty minutes a day, you're right. That time is not gonna come. that that's not the goal here. The goal here is maintenance. It's keeping things in a flow. It's tending to the things that quickly pile up and clog up and make life suddenly feel really difficult.

My guess is you have not experienced this because you're so focused on perfection and completion and the actual cleaning rather than keeping things in a daily maintained flow.

Now, let's talk about my house, just for an example. Since everyone does their own laundry now, the laundry is a little bit less of an issue. It wasn't always like that, obviously. Uh you can listen to old laundry episodes to hear how it used to be different. Um, but because everybody sort of does their own laundry, my daily maintenance is mostly trash and dishes and then stuff that's just like out of place. So I'm picking up hair ties and string cheese wrappers and

warmly yelling down the hall, like, Hey Annie, your slime is out on the table. Are you done playing with it? Sometimes she's not. And it's just like using the bathroom or something. And other times she is done. So I'll be like, Hey, can you come put it away real quick? And she does. Sometimes grumpily, but like so do I.

Chores are not always a good time, right? But that kind of just like quick maintenance every day, of just like picking the trash up off the floor, moving the dishes into the dirty dishes zone in the kitchen, those kinds of things. will change your home. And then here's the thing. When you do have a couple of hours on a weekend or whenever to to actually clean, to actually tend to the dirt and grime in your house. It will be so much easier because you're already in a rhythm of tending.

to those regular daily things that get in the way of cleaning. It's so much easier to run a vacuum over a floor that does not have stuff on it, right? Now, one thing I want us to pay attention to is the difference between this daily maintenance routine that I'm talking about and then general housekeeping that already happens. naturally. Like you might already clean up the kitchen after dinner or somebody in your house does.

But pretty naturally. That's fine. That doesn't necessarily count in your twenty minutes. Or maybe you have a good rhythm of like washing a load of clothes every day. and you fold them while you watch TV at night, you know, you're already in that rhythm. That doesn't need to be part of your twenty minutes or your two minutes or whatever. Some chores just happen naturally and throughout the day. So don't look at this daily maintenance twenty minutes.

As the only time that you will tend to your home. There will be other times where singular chores will need to happen and you will do them.

Or they're just already part of your rhythm. But for the overall, like care and flow of your home, a daily, at least as daily as you're able, right? A daily intentional Short burst of time where you honor the smallness of that time, where you take care of trash, dishes and clothes, and maybe one other thing that's like essential to your own household flow, like dog hair. That's gonna change your home. It really, really will. You might not think it will.

Because you don't think that general tidying or tending to things that never end is gonna do very much. But it honestly does the most. Like don't knock it till you try it. It's not all about complicated cleaning routines and like doing bathrooms on Thursday. Just like tend to the mess in your home for a few minutes and then be done. Even if there's still some out, it's okay. Get used to the rhythm of this small amount of time and honor yourself in that.

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to try this. in the smallest form possible. I want you to consider your home, your current daily rhythm. And make a couple of simple decisions. First, just pick your amount of time. Start with two minutes, if you don't have any minutes yet, even if you think that's too small. I want you to do what you can for two minutes and then stop.

But remember, completion is not a thing. So just be done. Especially if you really want to be. You'll get another two minutes tomorrow. Or like in the second half of the day. You could do this a couple times a day if you wanted to. Like just you can slowly build up to more minutes or you can stay at two. Some seasons only you get two. That's okay. So that's the first thing is pick your amount of time.

Next, pick a time a day and pick a time that gives you the most bang for your maintenance button. I would encourage you to set an alarm on your phone to begin. Um and and set it so that it goes off every single day at the same time. you could make the label and the sound of the alarm something that energizes you or makes you laugh rather than makes you sad. Um

My daughter, oh my gosh, she hates to read so much. And when she sets her alarm to read for school the end sound is this like awful blaring siren thing. She picked the worst sound because she thinks the task is the worst thing. So I mean like you do you girl. But I am here to tell the rest of you listening that maybe another tactic. It could be more beneficial. At least the one that like gets you into the thing. Like pick an alarm sound that gets you into it.

And then if you when you set your timer, maybe if you wanna set a crazy so uh alarm, siren alarm at the end like Amy does, then you can pick your Blair and go. Now, as far as what you do within the amount of time that you have decided at the time of day that you have chosen. Start small. Please start small. I think there are just a handful of essential texts.

that would work in most homes. And you can pick which one, like start with just one of these that feels like it works the best for you in your home. And then as you slowly add time, you can slowly add tasks. Okay. You're going to be doing this a long time. You can take your time figuring out what works for you. Let it build naturally. Okay. Let it grow. So the first one is trash. Like go around the house with like a little grocery bag or an actual big trash bag and just pick up all the trash.

You can empty, you know, the little bathroom and bedroom trash cans into your big trash bag if you want. Um, but really you're just picking up trash around the house and keeping that moving pretty much every day. That's hugely helpful. Another essential task is gathering all the dirty dishes. They could be all over the kitchen. They could be all over the actual house. Just gather them up, put them on one spot on your counter, and then leave it.

Now you can of course keep going and put them in a dishwasher or wash some things if you want to, but you can also just leave them. You can leave them there. But by bringing the dirty dishes to one spot, you are still keeping things in a flow. You're still keeping things moving. They still have to get to the kitchen, right?

Another essential task is just putting things away. So you grab stuff off the floor, hang coats back on the hook, move the mail from the kitchen counter to the designated place for the mail, just put things away. That is hugely helpful because the rhythm of putting things in their place will, number one, illuminate what doesn't actually have a place.

Which is gonna make your tidying like extra hard if things don't all have a place. And then two, it will clear the deck for things like vacuuming or dusting on days when you do have time for those tasks. Okay, so trash, dirty dishes, just putting things away. And then finally the essential task that's true for most homes is tending to dirty clothes. So you can literally do the smallest thing to move the laundry along. Remember, we're just keeping it in a flow. We're just keeping it moving.

It's like our Lazy Genius of the Week a couple weeks ago. Do you remember our it was our first voice memo, Lazy Genius of the Week, where she shared she checks on the laundry. Every other day. She doesn't necessarily do a load, but she's checking on what needs to move along. You can be that small in it. Just check. Just look and know. So you can bring a full hamper to sit in front of the washer and leave.

You can put your dirty clothes that are on the floor in the hamper, be done. You can drag the basket of clean folded laundry in front of your kids' dresser so they'll put it away when they get home from school and be done. All you're doing in your small amount of time, in your two to twenty minutes, is the most essential maintenance to keep your home in a flow. You're not cleaning, you're not organizing, you're just tidying and moving things along.

If you spend two to twenty minutes doing this kind of thing every day, not to completion, but to when the timer stops. Your home will start to change. Your attitude toward your chores will start to change. But honestly, because of how much easier they might be to do once daily maintenance becomes part of your rhythm. Now, is this fail-safe? No. If you have toddlers, nothing is. But even with toddlers, you can still value two minutes.

Like every bit helps. It really does. Every bit helps. I cannot emphasize the power of smallness in this. Stop trying to think that you need to clean everything to completion and perfection all the time. And that anything less than that is some sort of failure. It is not. It is absolutely not. So pay attention to your operations.

Don't get downtrodden by being overwhelmed. Don't disparage your season of life or expect unreasonable routines that don't fit in that season of life right now. Befriend distraction and inconsistency. Don't let them be the bee in your bonnet that the productivity gurus want them to be. Notice, adjust, and move on. And stop letting perfection and completion. Stop letting those keep you from doing tiny things that make a difference. Do a tiny thing. Do two minutes and stop.

Stop thinking that that's not enough. Stop thinking that that means that you're not doing a good job at this. It's just not true, and it's keeping you stuck. Okay. So once you are thinking about those things. Choose your length of time. Start small. If you haven't done it at all, start with two minutes. Choose your time of day. Set an alarm on your phone. And then maintain. Of the four essential tasks, trash, dishes, putting things away, and dirty clothes, choose the one

To begin, that will make the most difference in your home as you start. And then over days and even weeks, you can add the next most helpful one to the mix. Keep adding slowly over time, not doing too much too fast. as you let this daily maintenance routine grow. If you go too fast, it's not gonna stick. If you add too much, you're gonna run out of steam. So remember, you're gonna do this forever, so don't rush it. It's okay to take your

And that's chores for normals. How twenty minutes can be enough.

All right, let's get into today's a little extra scent thing. Like I said, I originally was gonna share my five favorite convenience food items and then three. uh convenient things that I don't really buy at all that a lot of other people do. Y'all it was so long. It was like uh an episode. So instead I'm gonna share my absolute favorite convenience food right now and then I will share the longer list in a couple of weeks.

Because do you know what is not convenient listening to an entire Lazy Genius episode and then getting another one? Because I'm like weirdly obsessed with convenience foods right now. So my favorite convenience food, at least right now, is the pre-pulled rotisserie chicken from Costco. Listen, getting a rotisserie chicken is already convenient. I mean, you didn't have to cook a chicken. It's just it's there you go. But I hate taking A like so.

And I don't like the rotisserie chicken skin either. Like it smells weird to me. For some reason my hands break out when I break down the chicken. Like I just don't have time for that. I mean I mean technically I do, but I would rather spend my time in other ways. So I love getting the pre pulled rotisserie chicken in like the little vacuum sealed pack that usually has an expiration date, like two months from when I buy it. It is magical.

I use rotisserie chicken for a family favorite dinner of chicken soup. I mostly love it for my own lunch. I'll make chicken salad. Barbecue chicken wraps, if I have pickled red cabbage around, I'll toss it in a salad or with like pesto and pasta. My daughter Amy actually really loves rotisserie chicken as a snack, which cracks me up. We'll go with it though. Um I just love those packs of chicken that require zero work from me. I the convenience is definitely worth the worth the extra cost.

And I love it so much. Now it does not have to be worth the cost to you, and I bless you in your chicken endeavors, whatever they may or may not be. But as for me and my house, we will purchase the most convenient delicious version of cooked and ready to eat chicken. Uh so we have a What's Saving My Life episode coming up in a couple of weeks and spoiler one of the things saving my life right now are um my particular selection of convenience foods.

So I will share my whole list then, uh, so you have that to look forward to. And now for our lazy genius of the week. This week we have Natalie. Natalie says Dusting is a rarity in our home, but we do have a fair amount of surfaces that show dust really badly, and I do love a clean dark wood end table with a shiny lamp. When I sit down at the end of the day and notice dusty surfaces, it does bother me a little.

So lately when I take off socks that have not gotten much wear or never went into any shoes, I use them to dust a surface nearby and throw them in the laundry basket. They're as good as any microfiber cloth and there's no need to put that task on a list anywhere. There's no need to put that task on a list anywhere. Do you hear that? You just do it when you think about it, do it when you notice it. Do it with the sorta clean sock on your foot.

I love this. I also just love a sock puppet dusting moment. This was a savior for our family when my kids were little and like we were always home. I would give my boys socks on their hands and be like, Okay The go put like magic spells on all the furniture. Now they would not do a very great job, but perfection is not the goal here, right? It was better than nothing, and it got rid of more dust than not dusting wood.

Plus they had fun. They were part of things and it was small enough to do. Natalie's doing the same thing. Just notice what you appreciate, tend to it in a small, easy, sustainable way, and then be done. And then just be done. I love it, Natalie. It's so good. Thank you for sharing and congratulations on being the lazy genius.

All right, let's close with a mini pep talk. For when you feel overwhelmed by the world. I do not need to tell you that there's a lot happening right now. There is fear and heartbreak and frankly it is hard to know what to do with it. If you need more robust encouragement in this area, then a mini Pup Talk can ever get. You can go to episode four hundred and twenty-seven when you're overwhelmed by the world. I apply the thirteen lazy genius principles to

figuring out how to navigate the world and all that we're processing. And I hope that episode helps you. But for today, for right now, I think my encouragement to you is to do what you can. To control the timing of what you hear. You can't control what you hear, but you can control the timing of it.

You know, the news is overwhelming on its own. But for me, when it arrives on my mental doorstep in the form of like news alerts, And an Instagram algorithm that does not have my mental health or capacity in mind, I can spiral really quickly. So I wonder what it would mean for you to do what you can to control the timing of what you hear. For me, it's keeping Instagram off my phone for the majority of the week.

It means getting my news from reputable sources that are not trying to activate my rage. And from turning any sort of news alert off on my phone. I still learn what's going on in the world. And I do uh what I can with what I hear. But I also do as much as possible on my own timing with my own capacity in mind. It's so easy to become overwhelmed by the world simply with what is happening in it. But the pylon of the internet on top of that, it can be untenable. At least it is for me.

So if you're feeling that way, you might want to listen to the episode on being overwhelmed by the world for, you know, like I said, for kind of a longer, more robust set of help. But for today, I would just be proud that you're human and you're hurt over things that are happening. That's beautiful, and we should be. And also remember that you're human and you need to be wise in how often you emotionally engage in what's happening. So make decisions that allow you to be informed.

and to maintain the energy that you want to give to the issues and the needs that matter to you. while also trying to pay attention to the timing of those things. Do what you can to control the timing of them and that can allow you to more wisely Invest in the involvement in them. And it's also really hard. I just wanna say It's a really hard time right now. One day at a time, one decision at a time, one deep breath at a time.

And as our friend Shannon Martin says, to find the counterweights. Don't just like dive into all that is hard, but you have to balance it with things that are beautiful in your life. So find what those are. Those can have any timing. You don't have to control the timing on those. Enjoy those whenever you can. And that is a mini pep talk for when you're overwhelmed by the world.

If this episode was helpful to you or if you have been looking for a way to support the show, I would be so grateful if you would share this episode with a friend. Or if all your friends are already lazy geniuses, you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Every mention matters, so thank you so much for supporting the show. This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network.

This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production.

If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest lazy listens email that goes out every other Friday. Head to thelazygenies collective.com slash listens to get it. Thanks y'all for listening, and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter. And lazy I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week.