Spending Too Much Time on Housework? Here’s How to Find Out. (And How Minimalism Can Help).

I stood in the kitchen last week scrubbing food remnants off small ceramic plates. How long have I been standing here doing this? I asked myself. 

The question sounded too familiar. Two years ago I had thoughts like this often. The kind that made me wonder if I was missing out on my kids’ childhood because of the amount of stuff in our house I had to maintain. 

The dishes, laundry, toy pick-up, paper piles – managing it all was never ending. In a word, I felt trapped.

You see, believe it or not, navigating piles of dishes and laundry aren’t what fill me up. But they were getting more time and energy than connection with my husband and children, exercise, prayer, and creative projects. No wonder I felt so exhausted.

In his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown talks about trade offs. You can’t do it all, nor were you meant to. We are given only so much time and energy in a day and if we choose to spend those resources on one thing, then less are left for other things. 

If housework dominated my time, energy, and attention, then I wouldn’t have much left to pour into what mattered most: the people in the home, not the stuff in it.

The amount of stuff in our house had control, and I was merely attempting to keep up. I’d heard about minimalism (living with less stuff so to have more space for what matters) and wondered if it could help. 

What did I have to lose? It was time to give living with less a try and get rid of stuff. Lots of stuff.

Through the process, I realized less stuff gave us space to align our actions with our values. So we went “all in,” donated over 1,000 items over the last two years, and downsized from a house to a 1,000-square-foot apartment.

Family time and connection increased as we spent our free time together instead of on housework and maintaining our possessions.

And my life satisfaction levels went up. Way up.

If you can relate to any of my past housework frustrations, then you might be spending an unbalanced amount of time maintaining your home.

Here are four steps to assess if you are spending too much time on housework. I used this process to decide to minimize, and I continue to use it to keep housework in check:

1. Take inventory of how you are really spending your time (vs. how you wish you were).

What are you spending your time doing? List what you do daily on the left-hand side of a piece of paper. Now, list what you wish you were doing daily on the right-hand side. Do your lists line up? If not, then it’s time to make space for an adjustment. 

Maybe you wish you spent 20 minutes in prayer, exercise, or meditation each morning. Maybe you wish you spent 30 minutes of floor time playing with your children each day. Or maybe you want to start a blog or pursue another creative project. Whatever these things are that would fill you up and make you a better person for those around you, identify them. 

While you might not be able to erase unloved activities on the left-hand side of the list (like housework – every home requires upkeep), you will be able to drastically reduce how long they take. 

2. Find out how long household chores take you to complete.

Now that you’ve identified what you do all day, it’s time to realize how long things take you to do. Time yourself on tasks around the house (really, set your timer from start to finish to build awareness). 

How long does each task take you? Record the number next to the task on your list from step one. Now, decide how long you want each chore to take you. Write your desired number next to your actual number.

I began timing myself while cleaning up the kitchen, folding and putting away laundry, resetting the house, and cleaning the bathroom – any chores that I wanted to spend less time and energy on. 

Then I made a list of how long I wished they took. I was spending 10-15 minutes cleaning in the kitchen three times a day. I wanted to only spend five minutes cleaning in the kitchen three times a day. 

I wanted laundry to take 10 minutes three-four times a week. Resetting the house, five minutes twice a day. Cleaning the bathroom, 10 minutes once a week. 

At first my numbers seemed bold and maybe unrealistic, but after experimenting with the amount of stuff in our house, I’ve reached those numbers. By having just “enough” in our home, I’ve set boundaries on the amount of time housework takes from me.

3. Minimize your living space to reach your goals.

Make a plan to minimize areas of your home so you spend the amount of time you want maintaining them. Last week I reduced the number of items in the kitchen by half (check out this post for a quick decluttering strategy). The result? Five minutes of clean up after meals instead of 10-15. 

Say your goal is to spend less time folding and putting away laundry. The answer: fewer clothes (check out this post on how to minimize laundry). If you want to spend less time picking up children’s toys, then the answer is… you guessed it, fewer toys (check out this post on how to declutter toys). 

Minimizing isn’t usually an overnight project. It takes some trial and error, but remember, less is more. Less stuff equals more time doing what fills you up and makes you feel like you. 

4. Observe how much time household chores require after minimizing.

Once you’ve minimized, grab the timer again and see how long a task now takes you. Are you closer to your goal? Are you happy with the time you now spend on housework? How much time have you saved throughout the day? 

Use this extra time to do the things you said you wished you were doing. If laundry now takes 10 minutes instead of 25, use that extra 15 minutes to take a nap, play with your children, or call a friend.

Ultimately, only you can know if you’re spending too much time on housework. 

If you feel like you are, I challenge you to think outside the box. Many people accept how things are without experimenting with change.

I used to be one of those people. Household chores took me one-to-two hours daily to complete (and they rarely were ever completed). Now daily housework takes me 30 minutes max (and everything gets finished and our home is sufficiently tidy). I will also spend an extra 20-30 minutes on the weekends vacuuming and dusting thoroughly. 

So many moms, especially in this time of “sheltering-in-place,” believe that dishes constantly piled on the counter and never-caught-up laundry is the norm. If your home is like this and it bothers you (science says clutter does increase our cortisol levels), then it doesn’t have to be that way! 

Don’t continue to do things “just because that’s how you’ve always done them.” Be bold and try living with less.

You’ve got nothing to lose and only time and energy to gain.