The Habit Challenge!-For All Those Like Me Who Can't Catch Up

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It was another typical night for me, or at least as typical as it can get with 14 younger siblings to care for and a stack of dishes reflecting the abnormal size of my immediate family. My parents were gone on date night, I was 18 years old, and it was time for the usual chores after the supper meal.

You might think that 15 plates, 15 pieces of silverware, 4 pots, an assortment of cups and mugs from throughout the day, and a variety of dirty utensils with no dishwasher in sight would daunt any 18-year-old girl. But I rolled up my sleeves, knowing that in less than 30 minutes, all of those dishes would be washed, dried, put away, the counters would be wiped, and the floor swept. No sweat.

Fast Forward 7 years… There I was looking at about the same size stack of dishes, but this time the stack had accumulated not from one meal, but from 2 whole days of me being gone at my part-time job while my husband and 2 small boys had ruled the roost. This time though, it was not my parents kitchen and not my only “chore” to complete. As I confidently started on this stack; a stack that only got this large when I was gone, I looked around the room.

The table, highchairs, and kitchen floor were covered with remnants of chicken nuggets, cereal, and stuck-on PbnJ. The walls, as usual, had traces of dirty fingerprints and stuck on food. I knew without looking that there were crumbs and sticky spots all over the floor, and the kitchen laundry in the corner was overflowing with damp rags that were about 24 hours short of getting mildew.

When I had arrived home 20 minutes before, finding my husband and kids gone visiting my in-laws, I had gone through the living room and up my stairs to use the restroom. Thus, while I now placed silverware in the dishwasher and scrubbed my pots, I also thought through the mountain of toys and crackers and cheerio crumbs in the living room, and realized I didn’t know when I vacuumed last. I knew there was a pile on the bottom of the stairs that was there because I had let it grow. I knew that at the top of the stairs there was another overflowing basket of dirty laundry. And my heart sank…

Not because I was tired, or didn’t want to do the chores. But instead, for the 357^th time, I wondered how it was that I had gotten this far behind. I only worked about 18 hours a week, but I couldn’t keep up with only two children, 850 square feet, and 3 loads of laundry a week. Why could I never seem to get ahead?

As I thought this, starting to once again despair, I realized that I had finished the dishes and wiped down the counters in about 15 minutes. After 2 days of kitchen neglect. Thinking on this, I started to wonder why it was that my dishes were almost always clean, my counters wiped fairly often, and I never let dishes stack the same way my laundry did. Until then I just thought it was messy dishes that bugged me the most. However, this late Friday afternoon, I started to recognize the reality.

From the time I was 7 years old, I washed dishes almost every day. By the time I was 16, I was almost always in charge of cleaning the kitchen in my parent’s home. I had created a system, as I do naturally with anything I do repetitively, and I was also required as a teen to wash the dishes after EVERY meal. Which meant it had become a…Habit! Sure, even 7 years later there were times I didn’t wash the dishes after a meal. But I felt guilty when I didn’t and I always remembered it needed to be done. The laundry often got forgotten, as did wiping the toilet, vacuuming, mopping, etc. I would notice it needed to be done when it got gross or out of control. Or it would get done when I found myself in a productive mood.

So what was the key to both my success with dishes and my lack of success in other homemaking areas? Habit! This was revolutionary for me! And also, honestly, overwhelming. Because habits are hard to create! And I felt so far behind. I had so many habits I needed to form, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it.

This is where you come in! Because I have created an 11 month(starting February 1^st) Habit Challenge, and I want you to join me! It is said that it usually takes at least 30 days to form a new habit. So each month I will have one area of the home to create a habit in, and December will be a month of review and celebration! And I will be doing the challenge right along with you! Follow me on Instagram to see some of my successes and some of my failures, enjoy both free and very affordable printables to help you along the way, and create 10 new habits toward a regular cleaner home.

You may have heard it said that when you do a job with more frequency, it is easier and faster to do each time. I can tell you this is absolutely true! Washing a pot immediately after a meal versus after 3 days of sitting? Scrubbing a toilet with a month’s worth of excrement, versus 2 days worth? Not only do creating this habits make the job easier, but they make your home cleaner, healthier, and more inviting!

I can’t wait to start this challenge, and I am so excited that you are joining me and we can create habit filled, clean homes together!!

Other Posts in This Series:
February Habit! -2020 Habit Challenge
March Habit! -2020 Habit Challenge