A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a local parenting group about how to get healthy, family-friendly meals on the table when you’ve got limited time, money, skills…and, let’s face it, desire.
I told the audience about how, when I was a new mom, we ate “blue box” mac and cheese, ramen noodles, spaghetti and jarred sauce most of the week…and then drive-thru or takeout pizza the rest.
How I had no idea what I was doing in the kitchen, was disorganized and easily overwhelmed by recipes, and lacked the confidence to even try simple recipes like roasts and stews.
How it took several years of small, gradual, incremental changes and improvements and experiments before I got to the point where I felt comfortable in the kitchen (and actually wanted to be there.)
After the talk I thought back to those early years of motherhood and marriage. It wasn’t just the kitchen where I felt like a fish out of water. What a tragic housekeeper I was! I wanted so badly to have a comfy, functional home, but couldn’t seem to get it together.
Eventually I learned the hard way that doing a little bit of cleaning a few times a day is way better for my sanity and surroundings than trying to “save it all up” for a weekend cleaning spree. And that, like anything else, the ability to keep a home functioning is a skill learned with time and effort, not a gene you’re either born with or hopelessly lacking.
Funny thing is, the more efficient I became at keeping the house clean, the more I enjoyed being in my home and the more satisfaction I got from the small cleaning tasks that punctuated my days.
I’m not suggesting that these days I dance with joy when it’s time to sweep the floor, but unlike fifteen years ago, I now want to tackle the job quickly so I can experience the bump of satisfaction of getting it done. The result of tackling tedious tasks quickly means that the house looks better, which makes me enjoy it more. It’s a virtuous cycle that couldn’t be more opposite of the way I used to operate (avoid, panic, spiral into despair.)
Similarly, I’d always thought I disliked cooking, but it turns out, I just didn’t know what I was doing. The more time I spent hanging out in the kitchen experimenting, the more I mastered the process of putting together a meal, the more I’ve learned to enjoy myself.
Now, that moment I pull out the cutting board kicks off my favorite time of the day.
If there’s something you want to be better at, more consistent about, or even enjoy more, the avoidance/panic/despair cycle isn’t going to get you there.
I’ve found that the face it/do it/get better at it/maybe even enjoy it cycle is a much more effective way of getting things done.
There are certain realities of being a grown-up, particularly a grown-up parent. They include things like the reality of feeding people (including yourself) and the realization – sometimes slowly achieved – that life really is calmer and more enjoyable when you have at least a vague sense of where everyone’s shoes are and don’t continuously run out of toilet paper at the worst possible moment.
The discipline to figure it out and stick to it isn’t something you’re born with, it’s a muscle you learn to flex over time.
Coming up with a strategy to get (reasonably, not perfectly) organized, figuring out how to keep the house (reasonably, not perfectly) clean, and learning how to put (reasonable, not fancy/gourmet/perfectly healthy) meals on the table will just make your life better. I promise.
And the better you get at it all, the more fun – or at the very least, the less horrible – it becomes.
That’s true for anything in life, isn’t it? Changing diapers, learning how to use the new operating system on your phone, heading to the grocery store for the first time with two kids in tow…all can be unfamiliar, scary, and even awful at first; not so bad once you get used to it.
Even kind of enjoyable, once you’ve mastered it.
SO true. I think human nature is to seek comfort and familiarity, and sometimes that makes us tend to avoid new things. But the more you do something, the more you LEARN. And the more you learn, the more comfortable you become with it, and the more you will enjoy it.
I’m not sure how I even found this blog but I am SO glad I did. It was a recent subscription. I get at least 5 similarly related blog post emails each morning. I’ve found that I enjoy yours most.
My Mother was always a neat freak. I would always say stuff like “I wish I could be like that. But I just didn’t get her cleaning genes.” This post really made me see this in a whole new light. Maybe she was an unorganized mess when she still had toddlers as well?! Maybe there is hope for me!
Kristin, thanks so much for this sweet comment! I think we all get better at motherhood (and all the things that come along with it) as we go on. It’s like any other thing in life – keeping a house clean/organized is a skill, something you learn and not something you just magically know how to do. Maybe being perfectly clean will never be as important to you as it is to your mom, and that’s fine! But I’m guessing you’ll find it gets easier to keep up with things as you get more and more practice.
Thank you for the (reasonably, not perfectly) clarification. That helps so much. I still really struggle with cleaning. I hire someone to come twice a month, so we aren’t drowning in squalor, but the fact is I never really learned how to clean things well, or really at all. And I really don’t like it. I wonder if it would become less distasteful if I felt more confident about it?
I really enjoyed this article and it is so true. I can’t think of anything that I struggle with along these lines right now, but I have friends who are younger that do. So this article made sense to me. I try to do a little bit every day or I get overwhelmed. But I try to remember that it is all about progress and not perfection.
Hmmmm. Not entirely on board with this theory. I had almost NO cooking skills in my early 20s. Now I am quite a respectable cook, but I still don’t truly enjoy it. (And I know because my husband really DOES enjoy it — too bad he doesn’t get home from work til seven every night!) I cook from scratch almost every night because it’s the right thing to do for my family, and it’s part of my job description right now as the stay-at-home mom, but no, I don’t enjoy it. I have found some work-arounds (like listening to podcasts or streaming Netflix on my iPad) that make it more bearable, at least!
True, there are definitely some things that we’re just not going to love, no matter how good we get at it. For example, I’ve tried running again and again, and while it gets less torturous as I get in better shape, I never get to the point where I actually enjoy it.
Still, though, I think that things are always less awful when you’re confident at them, and even if you can’t make yourself love something, you can approach it with a sort of matter-of-fact acceptance, the way it sounds like you do with cooking. It’s just part of the job, not something you HAVE to love, but something that you’ve gotten better with over time. And that, at least, makes it faster, easier and less of a chore, even if you aren’t exactly having fun.