When You Give a Kristen a Dust Pan
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Does anyone else out there do chores around the house like the mouse who was given a cookie? I’ll start with a simple task, like deciding to go to the grocery store, but then I’ll realize I need to check the fridge to see what we need which leads to cleaning out the fridge and washing the fruit drawers which I can’t lay out to dry because the counter is dirty so I clean that first and there was a hat there so when I go downstairs to hang up the hat I notice the mud room is dirty so I straighten that too and since the mud room is by the laundry I remember I wanted to put in a load so I go get that and see the bed is unmade… an hour later I have a semi-clean house and no groceries.
What’s frustrating for me is that things are getting done but I still somehow am disappointed in myself because I was supposed to be grocery shopping. As I loaded the laundry I compared the disappointing feeling I had to the satisfied feeling I get when I do the same type of chaotic cleaning at work. The difference, I realized, is how I frame it.
At work I carve out specific time to do project work and specific time to do that type of maintenance work. Instead of cleaning counters and picking up socks I'm answering emails and checking off my to do list, but the method is the same. It’s not strategic, it’s not thoughtful, it’s just doing the next thing that needs to be done, whatever that may be. I don’t treat it like a project. I just do it.
Project work is thoughtful. It requires higher thinking and doing the best thing first.
Maintenance work is just keeping the lights on. It’s not doing the best thing, but the next thing.
Project work challenges the status quo. Maintenance work maintains it. We need both to be successful.
For some reason at home I have blurred the lines between project work and maintenance work and I think it’s time I try to separate them. Cleaning the house is not a project, it’s just life, and the inbox will never be fully clear so I should cut myself some slack. Next time I grab the dust pan I’ll just see where the chaos takes me and be proud of each thing I accomplish.
