August 13, 2025

If You Don’t

My husband believes that you should have every bit of your work done before you rest. I am more of an alternate between work and breaks kind of person. This post is not about which is better, though my husband is hard-working, efficient and has always been successful and would argue all day that he knows the best way to complete many tasks.

So from his perspective, if you don’t have your work done, if you don’t have your living space cleaned up and organized, if you don’t have your laundry done, etc, you should not make plans to go do something fun and you should not relax. He will allow himself exceptions and would agree with others doing so. One exception is that if you know you’ve truly worked hard for a full day and got most of what must be done accomplished, there can be a quitting time. Another exception when he is not super busy is to take a day off on the weekend, usually Sunday. All of this has a lot to do with the way he was raised, but there are specific personality traits involved as well.

I am much more of a free spirit these days. I tended to keep up with household tasks to a T when we were first married because I was an adoring wife with stars in my eyes and I was in graduate school without working outside of the home and we did not yet have children so I invested a significant amount of time cleaning, organizing, and cooking in our little condo where there wasn’t much to clean or organize and usually only two to cook for.

These days the house is turned upside down with 8 of us plus the dog and while the kids are messy, I am the one who has the most piles to be dealt with because I am assigned the most different categories to manage and I like to bring a lot of extra fun and celebrating to life even though it’s not a need. Sometimes, though, as I get older and busier and my parents” health and aging related needs grow, it feels and IS more difficult to move all of the mountains I used to move and there are just plain more of those mountains to move in many ways. Other mountains (diapers, feedings, keeping toddlers from the edge) have disappeared. But the point is that I just don’t and Won’t wait for my life to pass me by while cleaning and tidying up or doing laundry until I drop.

Just doing what’s absolutely necessary to meet our needs plus our main goals takes most of the available time. And it’s not in my nature to simplify for the sake of simplification. It’s possible that there are ways to better compromise for some extra time to breathe and regroup, but I’ll admit I have some FOMO and I am going to throw the big birthday parties and deck the halls on many of the holidays and leave the big clutter mess and full laundry baskets and get some sleep before I leave for our big family trip.

And now we have another big birthday party this weekend and the house is still a clutter mess and the laundry will always be there waiting for me and I want to plan a little Fall getaway for us and the kids and we are truly at a deadlocked impasse on this because my husband claims he has wanted a tidy organized house for the last decade and hasn’t gotten it and wants us (mostly me) to stay home and get it all done (there are a number of issues with this that could fill multiple posts) and I feel like it would be a whole lot more motivating and a whole lot less suffocating to put this little getaway on the calendar and book the place so that I have it to look forward to.

We’ll see how it turns out. Hoping to convince him to seize the moment and take the little trip. Hoping the desire for order over any other doesn’t win.