Household Stress – A quick way to relieve stress at home

by Michelle Howard

 

Stress at home can be the result of many factors, some of which can be managed more effectively.   Stress in the home can be the result of financial troubles, trying to be all things to all people and often the result of a lack of time management skills.  Being a Parent makes home life even more challenging with the added pressures of raising children.  For the purpose of this writing, I will deal with stress as it relates to managing a household and how to obtain some stress relief at home.  A big part of managing a household is ensuring that the children are taken care of, meals are prepared and household chores are done.  For households where this is predominantly one caregiver or adult, accomplishing household chores can be particularly stressful. 

 

A great way to obtain a little stress relief at home is to accomplish household chores in a more effective manner by divvying up the work by the days of the week.  Here’s an example of this technique:

 

Mondays – Do your furniture dusting, sweeping and vacuuming of common areas

 

Tuesdays – Clean the bathroom(s)

 

Wednesdays Organize the household mail – Recycle papers you don’t need (ex: envelopes from the mail you’ve received)

 

Thursdays – Change bed sheets

 

Fridays - Clean bedrooms

 

Saturdays – Do the laundry and plan meals for the week. You can even cook 2 or 3 meals in advance that you can freeze so that all you need to do is reheat and serve

 

Sundays – REST! (Even God rested on the 7^th day.  You are no busier than He is and was)

 

 

Now, if you have pre-teens or teens in the home, you can divide up some of these chores.  This is done to teach responsibility so that when the children grow up, they know how to care for themselves.  Dividing up chores among the kids also gives them an opportunity to contribute to the household.  After all, they eat, sleep, and use electricity among other things for free.  At the very least, they could assist with the household chores.  This also helps prevent household stress in their own lives when they grow up and have to manage their own households.

 

For the situations we can control, we should become good at doing so.  Learning practical skills to reduce the time it takes to accomplish certain tasks is a good start.  This way, when we encounter stressful situations we are better able to manage because we won’t be harried with situations and issues that we can control and effectively manage.

 

**Check out how to beat Holiday Stress