It was recently pointed out to me by someone, who may have been a bit defensive about the subject matter of this blog, that Martha Stewart’s quite smart.  I agree with this statement, wholeheartedly in fact.  I think Stewart is an amazing business woman and entrepreneur.  I have at least one of her cookbooks and receive (and read) one of her magazines.  I am also addicted to her Halloween issues.  I have on more than one occasion turned to her recipes to make a family event special.  I respect her immensely for having made her fortune and her livelihood out of domestic and household arts.  Martha is a cultural icon and, therefore, an easy target when anyone starts to talk about or criticize domesticity these days.

What I hope is that we begin to question together our bombardment of cultural images that make us believe that we can have a perfectly organized, color coded, neatly indexed life.  Pick up any women’s magazine and you will see articles on how to better organize a closet, an office, and a pantry.  And then when our life, inevitably, resists easy classification for faster filing, we believe that we have failed somehow, that we were not as disciplined or as organized as we needed to be.  Reading Real Simple even makes me feel guilty when I look up from the pages and see the piles of mail or cloth diapers.

The key is to be aware of these cultural influences and of course resist them!

Yesterday, I flipped to the back pages of April MS Living and was enticed by her cookie of the month, Cheesecake Brownies.  Now, my son loves all our appliances, screeches in delight at the prospect of using them.  So while many toddler parents may look wistfully at such a recipe and think maybe in a few years, I thought that maybe we could have fun while using the mixer.  But, it was definitely a bit fussier than I like, requiring the brownie base to be cooked and cooled before the cheesecake topping could be baked on it.  I forged ahead, reminding myself aloud that we need to have fun while making it.  My son helped by adding ingredients into the mixer and turning it on, even if his preference is to keep the mixer on high and for several minutes.  We managed to avoid over-beating the brownie base, and I let him have his fill of beating the cream cheese mixture as fast and as long as he wanted.  We had fun watching it bake in the oven.  And my husband and I enjoyed the brownies that night with a glass of Layer Cake Primitivo.

But when our backs were turned, our 75 lb. weim/lab mix, surfed the counter and licked off all of the cream cheese frosting, that same night.  And while I had a great time making it and believe in seeing the value of the process, I still really really like the result of getting to eat the brownies!  For me, striking a balance between the fun of the process (definitely high priority) with the result (high yield) is important.  This time, the dog got the yield!

Isn’t this often the way when we put a lot of effort into some organizing projects?  We buy all these supplies, spend a weekend re-organizing, labelling, and de-cluttering and then life happens, and pretty soon it’s back to the piles again.  Was it the organizational system that failed?  Did you not buy the right products or enough of them?  Were you too busy to put stuff back right?  Or did the “dog” get the yield?  How many times did someone else get the yield from your expenditure of time and resources?  How many times have you put in 25 hours of work on a 15-page report only to find out 10 hours and a report of half its length would have sufficed? What do you think you could do to stop the dog from getting the yield?  Share your ideas!  Share your own stories of the “dog” eating your results!

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One pressure that many of us feel is regarding the orderliness of the our homes.  I remember as a child doing chores on the weekend and having to disinfect the insides of cabinets on a weekly basis.  Maybe some of you do this now.  I will say, without reservation, that I don’t.  I reserve this level of cleaning on an as needed basis.  And I also admit that as a child I cut corners because I couldn’t imagine that the insides of cabinets could get that dirty on a weekly basis.  You know what I learned?  No one was the wiser; no one recognized the difference as to when I cleaned it or not (at least not until my mom reads this post).  I will write more on the invisibility of household labor in other post.  Ultimately, I learned I could finish chores sooner and got to what I really wanted to do, play outside.

While my son was younger, dishes and housework lost some ground in my hierarchy of things that had to be done.  However, now one of his favorite activities is to stand on a chair and play in the sink.  Watching him playing in the water, washing dishes, pouring it from one container to another, and splashing makes me want to keep the sink free from dishes–now that is intrinsic motivation.  And I know some who get a bit itchy at the “mess” that this creates, the joy that he takes away from the experience, how much his senses and coordination are involved, makes it a high priority for me.  As an added benefit, he is often so engrossed in the activity that I can usually prepare dinner beside him without one whine or request for my attention–a true gift from an 18 month old.

14 months old and busy playing at the sink

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I see too many people over-committing themselves to events, work, people, and activities that do not bring them satisfaction.  A few years back, my own iCal (my mac’s calendar and scheduling software) would not accommodate the number of to-dos that I had to accomplish, and my first reaction was annoyance at the program’s limitation.  But then I stopped and I thought to myself, how did I get to a place where I had so much going on that my own software did not think my to-do list was within reason.  It was that day that I began to see the harmfulness of this myth in our culture, to ourselves, to our families, and to our work places.

Instead, I decided that I wanted to prioritize what is truly important to me; and for me, that meant being both committed to my family and to my professional life, but that also meant that other things needed to slide.  Obviously, putting our commitments into practice is where this prioritization gets sticky.  After all, it is hard to say no to someone asking for help.

I try to keep 4 simple words in mind when I am faced with any decision, be it responding to an email from a student or making travel plans:  high priority-high yield.  Essentially, high priority-high yield means that you put your effort, time, and resources into activities, people, and work that will yield a lot for you, be it emotional support, professional recognition, personal development, connection with others and so on.

One of my close friends has a sticky note with those words written on it above her telephone; that visual cue helps to remind her that she has the option to let the call go to voicemail or to keep the call to a minimum.  I keep it more as an inner mantra, reminding myself to try to let the small stuff go and spend time and effort on that which makes me happy or will help me accomplish other goals.

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We have all fallen prey to this myth.  We believe that if we could just be disciplined enough to structure out our day, to use our planner and home organizers, we could make time for grocery shopping, working out, cleaning the house, getting our work done, helping with homework, getting the kids to practice on time and not rushed, vacuuming, going on a date with our spouse, and maybe even having sex.

But I’m here to tell you, it’s just not true.  I’m not sure when or where this idea originated, perhaps it has always been apart of our culture.  Anyone remember Benjamin Franklin’s schedule and improvement lists in his autobiography?

There simply is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything, no matter how organized or discliplined we are.  And at a certain point, we need to ask ourselves should we want to and what is the cost to that organization and disclipline?

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