Every single day you wake up knowing that certain tasks must be done in your house. There’s laundry to wash, dry and fold; dishes to wash, dry, and put away; supper to plan and protein to defrost for it; a floor that needs to be swept and another that needs to be vacuumed; the bathroom trash; and probably a dozen more that, as a parent, you can probably list mentally before you even open your eyelids.
Statistically speaking, if you’re the wife and mom, you’re probably the one who will do the largest share of this, and the one who will delegate the rest. Also, you’re probably exhausted. If you’re a dad who does this daily juggling, you’re probably feeling the fatigue too.
That’s not to say that there aren’t those among us who thrive on these organizational tasks, and those who have it all own to a science — but lets face it, the mental chore is still work, no matter how amazing you are at it. It’s called ‘mental labor’ or ‘invisible labor’ for a reason, after all.
Maybe one way that you’ve developed to balance this labor with all the other demands on your time is a lovely chore chart, complete with stickers, bright bold print, and sunny reminders. It can be very effective!
One mom who describes herself as a “therapist-turned-coach,” though, is recommending a different way. Sam Kelly uses Threads to share her tips for sharing the labor in a more equitable way, and she’s got some great ideas to pass on.
It starts with a reframing. Kelly says that traditional chore charts can actually reinforce the notion that it’s Mom’s job to do all the mental labor, or invisible labor, in looking around and determining what needs taken care of in a home that the whole family shares.
Instead, she does what she describes as flipping the script on chore charts and teaching her kids about “Notice and Do’s.” Their first step is to look around and notice what needs to be done, and then to take the initiative to do it — something Kelly acknowledges may sound “like a crazy fantasy pipe dream” — at least, until it starts to work. She says:
“The goal is to help them build strong enough “Notice and Do” muscles that they’ll eventually be able to participate in shouldering the mental load (in age-appropriate ways) of knowing what needs to be done around the house without needing me to assign them a job/task.”
She also notes that she’s teaching her daughters that not all of the “noticing,” or invisible labor, should fall to them as girls and women, and teaching her son that he can be equally responsible for the invisible labor involved in running a household.
Kelly has some specific guidelines on how she’s teaching her kids to manage invisible labor. Like teaching a child to tie his shoes or almost any other skill, it’s a larger output of effort initially, but will pay off — both for the kid and the family — in the long run.
First of all, each kid does have their own chores. She says each one has their “big three” that they are responsible for daily, and then one “Notice and Do” of their choice. So, how does she get teach them to see what must be done? She says:
“Walk the house together and talk to your kids about what kinds of things they can notice and how to notice. Point out to them what they’re looking for. Be specific. Model it for them, if necessary, and give them as much support as they need.”
Specifically, Kelly describes helping the kids recognize what a given room looks like when it is “restored” to its correct state, and figuring out what changes need to be made to achieve that state. She’s even published an 8-page guide that takes the process into more detail.
What she’s addressing isn’t exactly new. In fact, it’s something activists have been calling attention to for over three decades. Vogue reported last year:
The term “invisible work” was first coined by the sociologist and writer Arlene Kaplan Daniels back in—wait for it—1987, more than 30 years ago. It refers to the kind of activity, largely undertaken by women, that largely happens in private and is almost always unpaid. The kind of activity that takes planning, skill, experience, knowledge, physical action, or mental agility but somehow isn’t considered work.
In fact, studies show that women tend to take on even more of this invisible labor when they work outside the home!
So, if you’re running a household and you’re finding that you’re constantly exhausted, even before you start the actual physical work, you’re not imagining it and you’re not alone — you’re probably taking on all of the invisible work, or most of it.
If you can start teaching your kids about invisible labor now, you may take some of that load off of your own shoulders, but more importantly, you’ll be setting your adults-to-be up for more success in relationships and home management but preparing them to handle it.
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