Some time in February 2020, I said to my husband “I need a weekend where you take our daughter away for the weekend. The whole weekend. I don’t care where you go, as long as you’re not here. I need a weekend to clean, top to bottom, uninterrupted.”
Well, that was in the before times, now wasn’t it.
I didn’t get that weekend and, as a result, our home is in the most chaotic and messy state it’s ever been in. To the point that there is no one spot where I can start and move along in an orderly and effective fashion. Because every time I do, each spot I just tidied is a mess all over again. (Thats why I need them outta here!)
I get it. This is life. And our home is well-lived in. But good GOD, I need to feel peace when I walk through the house and not great balls of anxiety.
Don’t get me wrong. We aren’t hoarders. I think we have a reasonable amount of bath towels and candles and toys. Ok, maybe too many toys. But where to put them is the problem. I am lucky we have a house. But there’s something about these houses built in the 1980s in Colorado and their complete lack of normal storage space that is beyond my comprehension.
[That reminds me of our master bath shower that is so freakin’ small that I’m always bumping my elbows on the walls. We decided that we were going to see what to do about that other than put an extension on the back of the house. Turns out that the builder left 8″ of perfectly good space to be walled up instead of making the shower bigger. WTAF. So we’re getting that fixed. But that’s a story for another day.]
I love going to visit friends who have beautiful, large homes with pantries and mud rooms and two-car garages. And laundry rooms that don’t share their space with a toilet. (Seriously, I can’t tell you how many times I have done laundry while sitting on the toilet. ew.) I’m happy for them, but man, I get sad for me. That square footage is something I truly covet.
But I digress; here’s the point:
A lot of time could be going into cleaning and tidying except for one more thing. The Invisible Work.
Invisible work is all of that stuff that (generally) women do: Make doctor appointments and pay bills and return library books and figure out why insurance won’t pay for our therapy. (haha) I’ve gotten better over the years at handing some of it over to my husband, but he doesn’t always notice when the carpet needs to be vacuumed or that our daughter has a rip in her leggings so we need to buy new ones.
And it’s a LOT of invisible work.
Right now, I have a stack of invisible work on the floor by my desk. It’s bills that are probably late now, thank you notes that need to be written, and a packet of raffle tickets I need to sell for my kid’s school. There’s a lot more in that stack, but I don’t have time to look right now because I’m writing a blog post. (Yes, I know I could ditch the blog, but then wouldn’t you miss me?)
If I had one day. Just one day. Maybe even just once a month. I’d use it to catch up on my invisible work. My friend may have the right idea when she hired a household manager to help her with this stuff.
What do you do with your invisible work? How do you handle it, especially if you have a day job?
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Day 682: I Need a Day For All Of the Invisible Work
Some time in February 2020, I said to my husband “I need a weekend where you take our daughter away for the weekend. The whole weekend. I don’t care where you go, as long as you’re not here. I need a weekend to clean, top to bottom, uninterrupted.”
Well, that was in the before times, now wasn’t it.
I didn’t get that weekend and, as a result, our home is in the most chaotic and messy state it’s ever been in. To the point that there is no one spot where I can start and move along in an orderly and effective fashion. Because every time I do, each spot I just tidied is a mess all over again. (Thats why I need them outta here!)
I get it. This is life. And our home is well-lived in. But good GOD, I need to feel peace when I walk through the house and not great balls of anxiety.
Don’t get me wrong. We aren’t hoarders. I think we have a reasonable amount of bath towels and candles and toys. Ok, maybe too many toys. But where to put them is the problem. I am lucky we have a house. But there’s something about these houses built in the 1980s in Colorado and their complete lack of normal storage space that is beyond my comprehension.
[That reminds me of our master bath shower that is so freakin’ small that I’m always bumping my elbows on the walls. We decided that we were going to see what to do about that other than put an extension on the back of the house. Turns out that the builder left 8″ of perfectly good space to be walled up instead of making the shower bigger. WTAF. So we’re getting that fixed. But that’s a story for another day.]
I love going to visit friends who have beautiful, large homes with pantries and mud rooms and two-car garages. And laundry rooms that don’t share their space with a toilet. (Seriously, I can’t tell you how many times I have done laundry while sitting on the toilet. ew.) I’m happy for them, but man, I get sad for me. That square footage is something I truly covet.
But I digress; here’s the point:
A lot of time could be going into cleaning and tidying except for one more thing. The Invisible Work.
Invisible work is all of that stuff that (generally) women do: Make doctor appointments and pay bills and return library books and figure out why insurance won’t pay for our therapy. (haha) I’ve gotten better over the years at handing some of it over to my husband, but he doesn’t always notice when the carpet needs to be vacuumed or that our daughter has a rip in her leggings so we need to buy new ones.
And it’s a LOT of invisible work.
Right now, I have a stack of invisible work on the floor by my desk. It’s bills that are probably late now, thank you notes that need to be written, and a packet of raffle tickets I need to sell for my kid’s school. There’s a lot more in that stack, but I don’t have time to look right now because I’m writing a blog post. (Yes, I know I could ditch the blog, but then wouldn’t you miss me?)
If I had one day. Just one day. Maybe even just once a month. I’d use it to catch up on my invisible work. My friend may have the right idea when she hired a household manager to help her with this stuff.
What do you do with your invisible work? How do you handle it, especially if you have a day job?
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