What A Bad Boss Taught Me About My Home

Have you ever had a new boss take over for an old one, and the new one wants to micromanage everything?

I worked in a bookstore through college, and about a year before I left that job, we got a new store manager. It… wasn’t great. He was critical, demanding, and had no idea how we got things done. He asked me to do my coworker’s job and her to do mine, even though they were wildly different and we didn’t know how to do each other’s jobs. And he was always telling us things weren’t being done fast enough and we were making too many mistakes.

Well, he eventually turned out okay after many, many confrontations between him and the staff. He learned to let us get things done in the way that made sense to us, and shockingly (can you hear the sarcasm?) mistakes all but stopped being made and the whole store ran quicker and easier.

I was thinking back on that one day and I realized, that was exactly what I had been doing to my own home.

I was pushing myself to keep up with impossible expectations in ways that didn’t make sense for the way my brain worked. I wasn’t giving myself the space to do things my own way. If it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t good enough, and the hard truth is that no matter how much housework you do, it will never be perfect. Even as you’re washing the laundry, you’re wearing the next load of laundry.

So I started giving myself some slack. Instead of doing things the way I had been taught was “the right way,” I started asking myself if I could see a better way, one that made more sense.

In almost every situation, I could see a way that made more sense, felt more authentic, or was more aligned with other tasks I was already doing. When I let myself do things that way, it got easier to get the tasks done. I stopped feeling constantly behind. I had time to rest and actually enjoy the home I had been working so hard to keep up with.

So if you’re feeling like you’re constantly struggling to keep up with the demands in your home, maybe it’s not your home. Maybe it’s the unreasonable boss playing on a loop inside your brain and if you can shut that guy up and do things in a way that feels good for you, you’ll make better progress. And you’ll feel better about it, too.