Ep. 87 Instantly Reduce Household Stress & Anxiety and Create Calm with THIS Surprising Chore-Sharing Game!

Are household chores turning into a battleground at your home? Discover the fun and effective game that could bring peace to your chore wars!"

 In this episode of Creating Midlife Calm, we dive into the common struggle of uneven chore distribution in households. If you're tired of feeling frustrated while doing the lion's share of housework or find yourself constantly nagging about chores, this episode offers a fresh approach to creating balance. By introducing a game-based method, we explore how you can foster a more equitable and cooperative environment at home, leading to less stress and better relationships."

In this episode you will:

1. Learn how to turn chore disagreements into a fun and productive game that encourages participation from all family members.

2. Understand the surprising impact that uneven chore distribution can have on relationships and how to address it.

3. Discover practical strategies for sharing household responsibilities that align with everyone's preferences and abilities, including tips on accountability.

 Hit play now to transform chore conflict into chore cooperation and bring harmony back to your household—it's time to say goodbye to the stress of uneven chores!"

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About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support. 

Transcript

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MJ Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

25 years ago when I was picking up glasses all around the house, I was seething, so I created the game, Chore War. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today, we're diving into chore war. You know, the pesky day to day tasks that need to be done, but often lead to irritation and conflict, not calm, in our homes. However, we're going to approach this from a different perspective: what to do when your household chore patterns are already entrenched and you find yourself frustrated because the chores aren't evenly divided. In this episode, I'm introducing a game that I call chore War. the end of this episode, not only will you have a fun new game, for family night, but you'll also have a better understanding of the effects uneven chore distribution can have on your relationships. Let's start with a scenario many of us can relate to. Do you ever find yourself complaining to friends or loading the dishwasher irritated that your kids are watching a movie or your significant other is glued to the computer? Sound familiar? You're not alone. Let me give you a quick overview of what the statistics say. According to a 2023 Pew Research Study, women still take on about 62 percent of the household chores, while men contribute 38%. On an average, women spend two and a half hours a day on housework, compared to one and a half hours for men. Women also tend to handle the bulk of the child care, often spending twice as much time feeding and dressing children. Same sex couples, especially female couples, tend to divide chores more equally. The younger generation is also showing signs of better balance, with men increasingly pitching in. Yes, progress has been made, but there's still a way to go. In heterosexual couples, many men feel they're doing much more than their fathers did, so the 38 percent they contribute may feel like 62 percent to them. Any first generation change can feel huge, much like the experience of being the first in your family to go to college. The real challenge is figuring out how to keep progressing so that families, children included, can share the duties of running a household while feeling good about it. Yes, chores can be done with a bad attitude or a good attitude. So, why not choose the latter? We all know the benefits of peacefully negotiating the chore war. Less conflict, less stress, less stress. Better relationships, increased communication, a better work life balance, kids who learn responsibility, and essential life skills. Research shows that when chores are equitably shared, couples even have more time for sex. Now there's a motivator. But the dilemma remains, how do we update chore distribution to make it fair and reflective of everyone's current situation? Most of us fall into two camps. When we're at our wits end, we either blow up saying things like, I can't believe you're scrolling on your phone while I'm folding clothes right in front of you, or we quietly simmer while picking up glasses and plates, all while seething with irritation. Sound familiar? Alternately, some of us might implement a chore chart, only to find ourselves nagging constantly. A task that becomes Another chore in and of itself. Obviously these methods don't work. So as they say, let's make love, not war. Here is my better way. I want to introduce you to my game that I call chore War. The game I created 25 years ago when I was seething as I was picking up glasses. Yes, necessity is the mother of invention. Since then I have taught this game to college students living together, newlyweds, people in midlife who had a whole system set up and realized that they really didn't have their kids doing enough. And of course empty nesters and people in retirement. It's really fun and it is enlightening. So let's begin. First, invite your household to pizza and game night. Order the pizza and then bring out a set of different colored 3x5 index cards. One color for each family member. After dinner, introduce the game. Welcome to Chore War, a game which has three objectives and one winner. The first objective is for everyone to recognize how much they're contributing to the household. The second to update how chores are distributed so people are doing more of the tasks they actually enjoy. The third, to brainstorm solutions for those chores no one wants to do and to establish accountability. Trust me, this is not what the members of your household expected. Start by giving each player a set of index cards and ask them to write down. everything they do. One chore or task per card. This includes work, school, cooking, cleaning, lawn mowing, snow shoveling, pet walking, church, activities, sports, exercise, clubs, caring for a family member, anything that someone does on a very regular basis. Young children might need some help with this. but it's important to include them. Once everyone has written down their tasks, lay all the cards out on the floor. Each person should arrange their cards in a group, a row, so it's easy to see what each person is doing. This part of the game often surprises people. Many people don't realize just how much is going on in the household until they see it laid out in front of them. I've done this game hundreds of times in my office and sometimes we've had to move to a bigger room just to accommodate all the cards. Take a second and have people look at each other's cards to see if there's anything left off, such as carpool, bill paying, weekly religious education classes. Take a few minutes to celebrate how much is going on in your household, as well as to validate. No wonder you're all so tired and maybe even feel grumpy. The next part of the game I call sharing and surprises. Have each person go through their cards and share which tasks they enjoy and which they don't. The responses can be eye opening. A child might admit, I don't like gymnastics, but I know you want me to do it. A mom might confess, I don't like cooking at all,, To the surprise of her children, who had no idea. Many times, I've had teens say something like, Oh. I didn't know you paid the bills in the household. I hope you can see how this is building a sense of connection as families become more aware of each person's situation. In this part, all you're doing is listening and learning. You're not getting into a conversation about the value of gymnastics or what a good cook this person is. The next part of the game I call the Great Re Org, as each person is asked to pick up the cards for the chores and activities that they enjoy. Then everyone looks at what is left and shares their reaction. I am surprised at how often a parent does not pick up their work card only to have a child say, wow, I didn't realize you didn't like your job. Sometimes a beautiful discussion follows that really creates connection. What a life lesson. A parent shares, yep, there are periods that I don't like my job. But I always like taking care of you, and that's why I make the sacrifice. What a relief it is for a parent to be given room to say the truth in a way that does not burden the child. Next step is for people to look at the cards on the floor and see if there are any chores that they like to do that family members have discarded. This happened when I initially created the game for my own family 25 years ago. In those days, I was doing the wash and my husband the grocery shopping. I had no idea he didn't like going to the grocery, nor did I have any idea that he really liked to do wash. So we swapped. Let me tell you, he does the wash a million times better than I ever could. Next, the whole gang looks at the cards that are left and does what I call an update. Is this chore or activity something we still want to do, given that no one has picked it up? For example, when our kids were teens we did this game and one of the cards that nobody picked up was a service activity we had committed to at our church when our children were four and six. As teenagers, this activity popped up once a month and threw our entire household into chaos. Easy choice. Time to resign. I did this game with a client of mine, a single woman in her 40s who felt that her life was out of balance. When she laid out the cards, she quickly realized that those three book clubs she joined in the pandemic were part of the problem. You will be amazed at how often household members shift tasks when they have a better idea. of the bigger picture and they have choice. The next step is to look at the cards left on the floor. These are the chores nobody wants to do. Discuss as a group how these remaining chores can be handled. Some families can afford to hire help for certain tasks like lawn care or house cleaning. If that's an option for you, go for it. One family I worked with, the dad hated paying the bills, but his teenage son offered to help, wanting to feel more adult and learn about this valuable life skill. This led to the two of them setting up automatic bill pay, which the dad had been intending to do for years. In the next session, the son shared with me that with the time saved, Dad was now teaching him about budgeting. Probably the most common card left is meal planning and cooking. The discussions that I have heard around this are priceless. It usually starts out with, why don't we just order in? And then there's a discussion about money and health. Then the ideas start. And what is happening, without anyone realizing it, is the job is becoming a family task, not just a individual task. By this time, all the cards have been picked up and they need to be laid out in rows, showing the updates for each family member. Because of chore swapping, the cards won't all be color coded, so make sure each person writes their name on those cards. I hope that each family member has a card that represents scheduled family time. Could be Friday night pizza, Sunday morning brunch. When families are so busy, it's really helpful to have this time scheduled in. Next, each person looks at their cards and shares individually if they feel like each person is doing an equitable share given their age and skill sets. Again, no comments are made and when everyone is done sharing their opinion, Appropriate adjustments are agreed to and made. What often happens in this part of the game is a conversation about family members who lean toward over commitment when it comes to work and activities. Doesn't need to be all figured out in the first time that you play the game, but it is a healthy conversation to begin. Each person has a unique ability to how much they can do. So it's not easy to have a one size fits all criteria when it comes to finding healthy balance. The same is true for a family, and in this part of the game, we do some fine tuning to balance individual wants and needs with what the family unit can do and remain rested and calm. Currently, there seems to be an assumption that family life is Can be nothing but hectic and stressed with every second pushed to the edge. I'm not advocating we turn households into Buddhist temples, but I do think we should lean a bit more into the shared spirit of responsibility that fosters calm and predictability for all. The criteria I use in figuring out balance is sleep and attitude. First, individually, can a family member keep up with all the activities on their cards, get enough sleep, and have a good attitude while they're doing their work, school, and all their activities? Second, can the family provide the needed support for all the activities going on in the household and get enough sleep and have a good attitude? An example that comes to mind here is high school swimming. I've had parents who love those 5 30 in the morning drives with their teens and others that just admit those early morning wake ups wrecked their whole day. Problem solved by carpooling or negotiating doing afternoon practices a few days a week. What's viable here is each person gets to state what their needs are and together each person finds a way to make some adjustments. The final stage in chore wars is accountability. This starts by each person taking a picture of their cards with their phone and creating a schedule for when they're going to complete their chores. They also decide how they're going to hold themselves accountable and write that next to their schedule. For example, I'll clean the bathroom on Saturday before noon. If I don't, I can't use any devices until it's clean. The schedules are processed and shared with everybody, and final feedback and approval are given. Then each person takes a picture, of their schedule, and it's posted in a communal place. In this episode, I've shared with you the current stats when it comes to the division of labor and households, as well as the advantages of having chores shared more equitably with all family members. I've also taught you the game Chore Wars as a practical and fun interactive way for your household to move from war to peace and balance. As I said in the beginning, there is one winner to the game of Chore Wars, and that is everyone who lives in the household Here are my Inner Challenge insights. Insight number one. Chore Wars is great for family mental health because it shifts us from being child centric to family centric. Yes, what I am suggesting is a cultural shift. Everyone shares a responsibility of running the household, not just the parents. Involving children empowers them, teaches them valuable life skills like laundry, budgeting, and cleaning. By the time they leave home, they'll be prepared for adulthood, which is a parent's primary goal. This, in and of itself, really helps children feel important, useful, and helps their own sense of well being far more than we sometimes realize. Insight number two. You might be thinking, hey MJ, this works in grade school, but once the kids get involved in travel, sports, or high school activity, no way. I can guarantee that everyone in the house has time to increase their capacity to help the household run more smoothly. How do I know? Because every day in my office, people share their cell phone usage with me, so I know the time is there. Insight number three, I encourage families to commit to three I GOT IT'S per day. What is an I GOT IT? Do three things that aren't on anyone's list, but need to be done, like turning off lights, bringing in the mail, letting the dog out, or putting away shoes. Imagine this: in a family of four, 12 extra tasks would get done each day, 84 week, 4, 368 per year. That is a game changer. And when the family member does it, I encourage them to shout it out. I got it. That's the real spirit of shared responsibility. Yes, I'm suggesting a cultural shift, and sometimes the natives aren't too keen on changing the culture. Join me on Thursday for my Inner Challenge follow up to today's episode, where I'll share practical strategies for when your loved ones resist change. But in the meantime, go ahead and schedule game night. This is your Inner Challenge.