It's Your Home, Stop Doing Low-Value Work Here, Too!

One of the Harvard Business Review's most popular articles, Stop Doing Low-Value Work, got me thinking about how we could apply this principle to our own homes and housework. What tasks do you perform that eat up your precious being home time for little or no actual value to you?

Last week, I wrote about drying dishes by hand, which my sweetheart likes to do but I never do when I'm by myself. I have a dishrack; the dishwasher has a dry setting that works perfectly well. Since we have and use few dishes, I rarely load the dishwasher unless we've had a party or someone's been ill; I just do the few in the sink while I'm waiting for water to boil for tea. So there's one 20 minute task I don't do even though there are people who would say I "should." What other ones can I come up with? Can I spare myself more time for people and things I enjoy more, and not just busying myself with other low-value tasks? Does anyone really care if I don't iron their t-shirts when I do mine?  (The answer is No.)

There's time, which most of us have precious little of, there's money which most of us also have precious little of. When I was younger, I enjoyed hustling dawn until dusk and didn't care if my laundry sat in a heap, and the sink was full of dishes until the weekend; now that I'm middle-aged, this doesn't work for me.  I hustle because I need to do it, but I do it as wisely as I can so I can enjoy my at-home time without spending all of my evenings and weekends making my life bearably tidy and clean. You can, too.