Forming a New Habit: Learning to Give Up Control 5 Day Check-In

Five days ago I chose to make a major personal change in my life (catch up here). Now that a few days have gone by, I am sure you are wondering what the heck I am doing to work towards making my change to give up more control in my life.

My first focus is at home. My biggest control issue is that I want (MUST HAVE) a clean house. To obtain this, I am cleaning constantly.

To paint you an image, my mother called me a few weekends ago after leaving my house and asked, "Do you know how to be still?" Shocked by this question, I quickly reassured her that I, of course, did indeed know how to slow down.

My mother told me that she noticed over our weekend together that I never stopped. She explained that after a long day shopping with me, I put my little one to bed and we sat down together in the peace and quiet. Instead of taking a moment to relax and breathe like my mother was, I instead proceeded to fold a load of laundry, load the dishwasher, and sweep the floor. I cringed as I thought about how I would have vacuumed, too, if I didn't run the risk of waking my little one up. "Do I know how to sit still?" I can tell you how I can sit still and relax, but the reality is, I am not sitting still EVER anymore.

My first plan of action with making a change is to focus on giving up control with household duties. Since I don’t think I can live in a dirty house (yes, I am a little OCD, I will own up to that), I decided what may need to happen is my hubby needs to take on more roles around the house.

Instead of just talking about it (been there, done that with no change) I wanted to create a visual for us to really see who is doing what. I started looking for a list of home chores but Google searches yielded children's chore cards/charts. Not entirely applicable. So I made my own list:
 

·       Vacuum	·       Dust
·       Wash Laundry	·       Fold Laundry
·       Wash Cloth Diapers	·       Fold Cloth Diapers
·       Feed Dogs	·       Give Dogs Water
·       Load/Unload Dishwasher	·       Pick up items in the main rooms daily
·       Budget	·       Cook Dinner
·       Pack Meals for the next day	·       Feed Child
·       Bathe Child	·       Nighttime routine with Child
·       Sweep floors	·       Clean Bathrooms
·       Maintain food menu for each month	·       Grocery shop
·       Prepare guest bedroom for guests	·       Yard Maintenance (mow, shovel, clean gutters, etc.)
·       Prepare bottles for the next day	·       Maintain vehicles (gas, wash cars, oil, etc.)
·       Prepare diaper bag for the next day (ensure enough diapers/wipes, etc.)

I took that list and cut each duty into its own square. I then asked if my hubby wanted to play a game. He agreed. We laid out each item and placed each into the following categories:

1) I do

2) Hubby does OR

3) We evenly split.

Here are our results (prepare to be shocked!):
 

I do:	Hubby does:	Evenly Split:
·       Vacuum	·         Give Dogs Water	·         Clean Bathrooms
·       Wash Laundry	·       Grocery shop	·       Prepare guest bedroom for guests
·       Wash Cloth Diapers	·       Yard Maintenance (mow, shovel, clean gutters, etc.)	·         Cook Dinner
·       Feed Dogs	·       Maintain vehicles (gas, wash cars, oil, etc.)	·         Nighttime routine with Child
·       Budget		·       Load/Unload Dishwasher
·       Pack Meals for the next day
·       Bathe Child
·       Sweep floors
·       Maintain food menu for each month
·       Prepare bottles for the next day
·       Prepare diaper bag for the next day (ensure enough diapers/wipes, etc.)
·       Dust
·       Fold Laundry
·       Fold Cloth Diapers
·       Pick up items in the main rooms daily
·       Feed Child

We were blown away by how much I was doing. We both knew I was doin the majority, but when the facts are sitting right in front of you, it totally rocked our world!

The conversation then turned to how to reassign roles to each other (so that we both felt more balanced and equal). As we changed/rotated roles, we discussed how this would be done. Here are our new roles:

I do:	Hubby does:	Evenly Split:
·       Wash Cloth Diapers	·       Dust	·       Prepare guest bedroom for guests
·       Grocery shop	·       Yard Maintenance (mow, shovel, clean gutters, etc.)	·         Cook Dinner
·       Budget	·       Maintain vehicles (gas, wash cars, oil, etc.)	·         Nighttime routine with Child
·       Prepare diaper bag for the next day (ensure enough diapers/wipes, etc.)	·       Pack Meals for the next day	·       Load/Unload Dishwasher
·       Feed Child	·         Clean Bathrooms	·         Pick up items in the main rooms daily
	·         Give Dogs Water	·       Vacuum
	·       Sweep floors	·       Feed Dogs
		·       Prepare bottles for the next day
		·       Maintain food menu for each month
		·       Bathe Child
		·       Wash Laundry
		·         Fold Laundry
		·         Fold Cloth Diapers

I must say, it was actually a really good talk. Our talk was not confrontational and we actually laughed about some of the roles and how well they do/don’t work out for our household (for instance, the dogs unfortunately never have enough water and suffice to drinking out of the toilets occasionally). Cut us some slack, we are first-time parents balancing a child, dogs, full-time jobs, family, friends… LIFE. Bring on the Growing Pains!

Again, it is easy to say what we will do and how we will change, but what really matters is what we actually do!  I took our new roles and taped to some poster board. I then posted our new roles on our kitchen fridge so we can see them every single day.

I will let you know how this is going in my next check-in!

What progress have you made with forming your new habit?