No More Home Shame
Removing emotion from home management (while remaining pissed off at labor inequality)
This week’s guest contributor is home-management consultant Sara Kelly (Website | Podcast)
Your home is an organization. I don’t think we hear that often enough, so let it really sink in.
Your home is an organization that requires systems, training, and resources. Even though we’re not all equally trained in these skill sets, we’re expected to master them. All of this, plus the underlying context that how your home operates is a reflection of you as a person.
This is my work—both personally (I have a home to run), and professionally (I help others run their homes). After experience working for a variety of organizations, (different sizes, objectives, and operations), I started working with people in their homes, and I saw a similarity and a difference.
Both homes and businesses have the same need for structure to run smoothly. In a business, there were clear expectations of what needed to be done, when it needed to be done, who was to do it, and the training to do the job. Unlike businesses, however, homes are often in a state of chaos, frustration, and highly charged emotions.
Over and over, I witnessed the lead female of the home:
feel ashamed that she couldn’t cook an entire meal every night for her family—even though she worked, her spouse traveled, and their kids all had different activities each night.
feel overwhelmed by the piles of laundry to do or put away—even if they lived with three other people who contributed to the piles, but didn’t participate in the laundry process.
It always boils down to feeling bad about x, because either x was too much to handle alone, or no one ever taught them how to do x.
A lack of training, systems, and resources—needed in every successful business organization— leads to discomfort in people’s homes.
It makes sense how we got here, and no individual is to blame (but our patriarchal systems certainly are).
With any change comes discomfort. And, oh boy, are we in a lot of discomfort when it comes to managing our homes. What is great, however, is that we, (yes, you and I) are on the front edge of changing home management for our generation and the next.
Let’s rewind and examine how we got here.
For much of American history, it was commonplace and expected that:
women only learned enough reading and writing to manage a home.
‘cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ which turned home management into a competition for holiness.
women did not go to college, or if they did it was only long enough to meet a husband.
women were solely expected to manage the home and children—all without complaint.
daughters were taught cooking, laundry, and cleaning, but sons were not.
By the 1970s, however, more women received higher education and started working outside of the home. Instead of being unusual for a woman to seek a career, it has become commonplace. Two-parent working households with children in before- and after-school care became the norm.
And yet:
Women still do the majority of housework, even in heterosexual relationships where both partners earn equally.
Women are expected to give birth, go back to work, and raise a child, all while juggling work and home management without any extra support from society or family.
Women are expected to be more and do more without any more hours in the day, nor more energy or resources to draw from.
What. The. Actual Heck.
I’m summarizing a lot of history in a few sweeping statements, but the sentiment holds true. Women are expected to do more with less, and to be happy about it.
The way I’m showing up in the feminist movement is as a home management consultant. My work is to come into a home, see what is and isn’t working, and find solutions that meet the needs of an individual home.
This work is constantly overlooked and minimized.
It’s just food, who cares.
It’s just cleaning, it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t want to spend my time doing any of that, I work hard all week.
It’s not JUST food. Cleaning DOES matter.
And yes, you worked hard, and YES it still needs to be done. Not because I want to judge your holiness, enter you into a clean home competition, or expect you to be Pinterest-ready for a photo shoot. But because, just like an organization, your home has an important end product. Not a tangible object for sale, nor an experience to be paid for, but the feeling of the people from your home going out into the world (including you).
Scenario time:
You work all day, drive to pick up the kids, get home to start dinner while helping the kids do their homework, then rush to clean up from dinner, get everyone ready for bed, and prep for the next day. Rinse and repeat.
But there’s a hiccup if you don’t have ingredients to make dinner, space on the table for your kids to do their homework, or clean towels for after bath.
One hiccup is a hiccup. Many hiccups means shit hits the fan. However the evening, and the next morning play out (one hiccup or many) is how you and your family enter the world the next day.
Is your kid their best self if they didn’t have breakfast or clean clothes? Are you your best self if your kid was crying because they didn’t have breakfast or clean clothes to put on?
This isn’t judgment (although I understand society has made these scenarios feel like judgements on our worthiness). I don’t speak from on high; my own home is not perfectly curated with glass jars and color-coded closets. I speak from the valley, where the majority of people are, and want you to know that you’re not alone.
This is a completely objective, ‘if this, then that’ situation. If your home is running smoothly, then you go out into the world as your best self. If your home is not running smoothly, then you go out into the world with less-than-ideal energy.
If you’ve read this far, and are feeling emotionally charged, I get it.
“You don’t know how much I have going on, don’t judge me.”
“It’s too much. I’ve tried.”
“I’m tired of doing it all. Why is it my problem?”
I have felt it, and have clients who feel this.
Our home organization is tied up with feelings of value and worth. We don’t want to be judged for how it is—or isn’t—done.
Instead, view your home as you would a bread factory. It requires ingredients, tools, space, and packaging. The bread can’t be made if an ingredient is out of stock. That’s a fact, not a judgment.
Set aside the emotional baggage around home management given to you by patriarchy (and don’t stop advocating for labor equality in your relationship if you’re in one). Without self-judgment, ask what needs to be done, and what’s keeping it from happening? What part of the “bread factory" organization is missing? A supply, tool, worker, training, time? Isolate the what without the emotion.
As a home-management consultant, it’s much easier for me to assess without emotion. But only when we can set aside judgment, shame, guilt, comparison—all the ick—can we get down to problem solving.
I can’t turn a blind eye to the gender inequality around home management, nor can I change it in the blink of an eye.
What I can do is help home managers (whether that’s a woman, a man, or both) run their home as an organization and teach their children to do the same. And I hope to see the next generation equally take on household duties as an essential component of life, rather than allowing gender to dictate who does what.
For now, I believe there are two things we can all do right now to begin to create the change we want to see in home management:
Stop judging your own home and others’ homes. No one knows what’s going on in your own life, nor do you know what’s going on in theirs. If we stop the comparison game, we can ease the pressure many of us feel.
View your home as an organization (or like you view your vehicle). If something isn’t working well, determine what’s causing the problem and address it. By removing strongly charged emotions, you can start to reduce the personal weight of your home.
I invite you to get curious around the expectations you carry about your home, and how your home is or isn’t supporting you. The changes you make today will affect how you feel now, and how the next generation behaves.
Remember, it’s not about how your home looks, what matters is how it feels.
Sara Kelly is CEO of her home in upstate NY and runs Your Aligned Home, a home-management consulting business. She is also the co-founder of the Joyful Support Movement and co-host of No Shame in the Home Game podcast. Her passion for home management, reducing stress, and most of all, helping others, is what led her to this work.