Ep. 260: The Real Reason You Keep Falling Behind at Home

I want to tell you something that might surprise you.

I don't think you're falling behind because you're disorganized.

I don't think you're lazy.

And honestly, I don't even think you have a cleaning problem.

I think you have a definition of success that only works when life is easy.

And since life is rarely easy, you're constantly feeling like you're failing.

If you've ever looked around your house and thought, "How did it get this bad… again?"—this episode is for you.

Stick with me. Because by the end of this, I don't want you to have a cleaner house. I want you to have a different definition of what "keeping up" even means. I want you to walk away from this episode with a little more grace for yourself, and a little more clarity about why the same old tricks haven't been sticking.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://substack.com/@jenniferroskamp

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Transcript

Well, I would bet that almost every woman listening to this has lived the cycle that I just described at least once in the past couple of months. Maybe you're in the things piling up stage right now and you're telling yourself that you're gonna handle it tomorrow. Maybe you're deep in the overwhelm stage where you're dreading the Saturday rescue mission that you already know is coming. Wherever you are in this loop, I want you to hear this. The loop itself.

Isn't the problem. It's it's just what happens when a rigid system meets a life that refuses to stay rigid. And here's the thing: most women that I work with, they know how to clean, they know how to do laundry, they know how to load a dishwasher and run a vacuum. This isn't a knowledge problem. So I want to sit with that for just a second because I think it's easy to skip past what I just said.

If this were a knowledge problem, a cleaning hack would fix it. A better labeled bin system would fix it. A color-coded chore chart would fix it. But you've probably already tried some version of those things, probably more, maybe even several versions of those kinds of things. And the rescue cycle, it just kept repeating itself anyway. And that's your clue. If the fix that you have put in place hasn't fixed it,

You're solving the wrong problem. It's a systems problem, and more specifically, it's a belief problem. Which brings me to the part that most women miss entirely. Well, hey, I'm Jennifer Roskamp, and I like having real conversations with real women. I like having the conversations that most people don't like to have because this is where the truth lives. And once we understand the truth.

That's when we can start to solve some of the issues that feel like they're keeping us stuck and trapped and in a constant state of survival and overwhelm in all of the things. So a belief problem, right? And the and the thing that women miss. This is what, this really is where, let me say it this way, this is where I think most women miss what's actually happening underneath all of the stuff that I've just just just described.

We have one single invisible definition of success. We just have the one. And it usually sounds something like this. I will be successful if keeping up means everything gets done. The counters are clean, the laundry is caught up, the floors are vacuumed, the meals are made, everything is handled. That's the bar. That that that's it that's it. That's what success is. It's one version.

And it's essentially all or nothing. And when we can't do all of it, when life throws us any numbers of wrenches, probably in any given day, we often decide that none of the stuff we do has counted. And I hear this constantly from the women that I work with every single day, right? A woman will tell me if I don't have enough time to clean the whole kitchen, I won't even unload the dishwasher.

Or if I can't fold all six loads of laundry, I don't fold one. As if partial progress is somehow worse than no progress at all. And and that really is this all or nothing thinking. And here's the thing: it doesn't stay contained to your kitchen. It it bleeds into everything. It's how we approach exercise. If I can't do a full workout, why bother getting a 20-minute walk?

It's how we approach meal planning. It's how we approach and show up at work and in our relationships and even in our faith sometimes. If we can't do the whole thing right or we can't do the whole thing perfectly, we essentially quietly opt out of doing any of it. So the conversation we're having today, it's not really a conversation about your house. It's a conversation about

The story that you've been telling yourself every single day about what you're allowed to count as enough. I once had a woman that I was working with tell me, and this has really stuck with me, that she'd rather do nothing than do it wrong. She said if she didn't have a full hour to meal plan for the week, she wouldn't even open the fridge to see what she needed to use up. If she couldn't do the whole grocery list.

The whole meal prep, the whole system, the whole kit and cabo and caboodle, she'd rather just order takeout and feel guilty that she did so, rather than do just a small percentage of the job. And I want you to kind of hear how that sounds out loud because I think that you'll probably recognize it. 15% is not nothing. If you do 15% of the job, no matter what it is, right?

15% of a job is still 15% farther than you were an hour ago. But the thing is, all or nothing thinking doesn't calculate math that way. All or nothing thinking only knows two categories: check it off, it's complete, or failure. And there's no room in that framework for partial or

You know what, it was still worth it. And I get it because I've lived in that same trap. There's something in us that wants credit only for the full and the and the tidy and the finished version. Partial progress feels like it doesn't count towards anything. And so why bother starting? But here's the thing: that logic only makes sense if the goal is a perfect outcome. If the goal is actually momentum.

staying in motion or not losing ground entirely, well then 15% will count every single time. And I I think one of the biggest lies that we have believed is that every Tuesday should require the same version of us, right? So so just think about that for a second. Some days you sleep well.

You wake up energized and nothing unexpected happens. And you move through your list and your daily plan with momentum. But other days, someone gets sick, or you're emotionally drained from a hard conversation, or you're grieving something, even something small. Work explodes without warning. Your hormones are doing whatever they're doing that particular week or day. And yet, we expect ourselves to perform exactly the same way.

Every single day, regardless of what's actually the context around us, regardless of what's actually happening in and around us. That doesn't even make sense when you say it out loud. And so here's the epiphany moment that I really want you to sit with. Your capacity, your ability to execute your time, your energy, your focus, your bandwidth, your

patience level, all of those things, they change. They're volatile. They are not the same. And so why on earth then wouldn't your expectations and your systems change with it?

Typically we build one rigid system. It's one version of keeping house. It's one form of acceptable. And then we try to force every single day of our lives into that same mold. They're high capacity days, low capacity days, grieving days, days when three people need you all at once.

They all get measured the same way. They all get measured against the same impossible standard. No wonder you feel like you're constantly falling short. You're not failing the standard. The standard was never built for real life in the first place. So think about how differently we treat this in other areas, right? Once we actually stop and look at it, if a friend told you that she was recovering from the flu.

And only managed to unload the dishwasher that day, you wouldn't tell her she failed. You'd tell her, hey, that's a win, given the circumstances, right? But we rarely extend ourselves that same type of math. We hold our low capacity days to our high capacity standard. And then we wonder why we feel like we're constantly disappointing ourselves. And so today I want to offer you a different framework.

Instead of one fixed bar for keeping house, what if you had three or four versions? A full capacity version, a moderate capacity version, a survival mode version, and you gave yourself permission to identify each morning which version of the day you're actually in. Not which version you wished you were in, but which you're actually in.

Now know that this isn't about lowering your standards forever, right? It's about building a system that is flexible and it's and it's flexible enough to actually survive contact with your real life. A rigid system will always break under pressure because it was never designed to bend and flex. A flexible system with built inversions for your hardest days.

Now, those they can absorb these hard weeks without shattering. That's the difference between a home that recovers quickly and a home that spirals downhill for weeks. So I want to tell you something that I don't necessarily share often because it took me a long time to kind of actually learn this lesson instead of just knowing it. For years, if my plan A for the day didn't go perfectly.

I would crumble. And I mean that. I'm not exaggerating. I'd wake up with this beautiful plan in my head. The errands, the meals, the work tasks, the house projects. And if something knocked that plan sideways, my whole day would then spiral. And I would I would end up feeling like a failure. Not because anything catastrophic happened, but just because.

The plan that I had built in my head didn't survive reality. And my expectations were so rigid that when life inevitably unfolded, because it always does, I had no room to adjust without turning it into this.

judgment or referendum or sentence of my worth. But here's what I had to learn, and I learned this slowly and honestly and a little bit painfully. Life, especially with kids in the house, and I've got nine of them, life does not follow a script. I had to learn to pivot instead of panic.

To reassess instead of spiral, to start again instead of writing the whole day off as a loss by 10 a.m. And this shift that I just described to you, it changed everything for me. Not just how I ran my days, but how I parented, how I showed up in my marriage, how I talked to myself. When things fall up fell apart, I began to understand that success.

was never really about your ability to spic to to stick to plan A. But success was about how quickly I could recalibrate when plan A didn't hold. I started listening to my gut instead of blindly following whatever plan that I'd written the night before. And I noticed something interesting. Some of my very best days, my best

Decisions they came out of plan B or plan C or plan J. Now it's something that I teach every woman that I work with. You can start again at any moment. That's that's the key. That single truth has saved me more times than I can count on harder days when life is messy.

That has saved me. And I think about how many hours I used to lose to that spiral. Not just the practical hours of cleaning up the house and and and it's the emotional toll. It's the emotional hours. It's the hours that I spent beating myself up, replaying what I should have done differently. Feeling like the day was already ruined before it was even close to lunchtime.

Once I learned to pivot instead of spiral, I got so much of that time and energy back. Not because the circumstances, my external circumstances, they didn't change. But my responses to those external circumstances, that's what changed. And friend, your home deserves that same grace for you.

If plan A for your household falls apart on a Tuesday, that doesn't mean that you have failed at keeping a home. It means that you are a human running a household in the context of real life, not a magazine or Instagram sort of life. Plan B, it is so important for you to know that plan B is not a consolation prize. Plan B is just

It is as j it is just as valid a way to get through your day as plan A ever was.

And now we're about to step into a really important section of this. And and I need to get really honest with you because I think this next reframe is the one that actually changes behavior. Here's what I want you to consider. What if success wasn't having a perfectly clean home? What if success was simply preventing tomorrow from becoming harder?

So let me give you an example of what this means. Instead of cleaning the entire kitchen from top to bottom, what if the goal was just to put away the food? To contain the dishes, doesn't matter if they've been washed yet, just to corral them in the sink, maybe, instead of spread across every surface? What if your goal and the expectation was to just clear one surface and consider that done?

Not perfect, but it would at least make the kitchen functional. That is what the bar needs to look like some days. That's my argument. So let me give you a couple more examples because I think that the specifics matter here. Instead of folding and putting away all six loads of laundry that I mentioned earlier, what if the goal was just this? Get tomorrow's outfits and the towels put away, right?

And let the rest sit in the basket for one more day? Or instead of scrubbing every bathroom in the house, what if the goal was just wiping down one bathroom, the bathroom that your family uses the most? What if instead of a full grocery run and meal prep session, what if the goal was simply figuring out what's for dinner tonight and letting the rest of the week stay unplanned for a little bit longer?

None of these are the ideal. I I I know that. I get that. But none of them are nothing either. And here's what I have found both in my own home and in the homes of the women that I work with. The small, unglamorous version that is consistently keeping the wheels from ever fully coming off the bus, those are powerful.

And it's really the difference between a manageable Thursday and a Thursday that we see that all is lost. And so I want you to really hear this because I think it might be the most important line in the conversation that we're having here today. The goal isn't perfection, the goal is protecting tomorrow. When you protect tomorrow, instead of chasing a perfect today.

You break this rescue cycle before it even starts. You're not waiting for the Saturday collapse. You're doing the small, unglamorous maintenance instead of this heroic rescue. And small maintenance done consistently will always beat heroic rescue done occasionally. Every single time it's gonna be better. The woman who actually succeeds on her easiest.

Most well-rested days isn't actually succeeding at a sustainable life. She's succeeding at probably what's a fluke. The woman who has a plan, even a small one, for her hardest days. Now she's the one who is building something that will actually become useful to her. And I want to be honest with you, and this took me a long time to actually believe.

I used to think that lowering the bar on a hard day meant that I was letting myself off the hook. That if I gave myself permission to just clear one counter instead of the whole kitchen, I was somehow being lazy or making excuses. But I've evolved. I've come to see it completely differently now. Lowering the bar on purpose on the days that call for it isn't letting yourself off the hook.

It's staying in the game instead of quitting entirely. And staying in the game, even in a small, unglamorous way, is what actually adds up over the course of a month and a year and an entire life. Okay. So we've covered a lot of ground today. I want to make sure that you walk away with four practical takeaways, right? Things to carry.

with you into your week. Takeaway one. Stop asking how do I finish everything? And start asking what would make tomorrow easier?

That one shift in the question, it changes everything about how you spend the next 20 minutes of your day. Finishing everything is rarely possible, but making tomorrow 10% easier, that's almost always possible. Takeaway too. Give yourself more than one definition of success. Some days you'll have a lot to give. You'll have energy, you'll have

Focus and on those days go for it. Tackle the deep clean. Catch up on the laundry. Capitalize on what you have available to you. But other days you will not have that. You will not have that amount of capacity. And that version of you is still important. That version of you still counts. Both versions of you are valid. Neither one makes you more.

Or less capable as a woman who is running a home. Takeaway three. Interrupt accumulation before it becomes overwhelm. You don't need a four-hour, four-hour block to make a difference. You need five minutes. Clear one section of one counter. Put away one load of laundry. Sort one pile. Small, consistent.

Interruption beats waiting for the day that you'll supposedly have enough time and energy to do it right or do it all or fix it all at once. That day rarely comes up on its own. And waiting for it is usually what turns a manageable situation or a manageable pile into an overwhelming one. Takeaway four.

Plan, build, let me say this, build a plan B for your house, not just your calendar. Just like you learn to pivot when your daily life falls apart, build a lighter, minimum viable version of your home routine for the days and maybe the weeks and maybe even the months that get messy and that get loud.

Decide ahead of time what the bare minimum maintenance looks like so that you're not making that decision from a place of exhaustion in the moment. Maybe your plan B for the kitchen is to just do this. Get the dishes rinsed and stacked, even if they don't get washed until the morning. Maybe your plan B for laundry is is whatever gets clean, whatever gets worn, we're gonna worry about that. Whatever's dirty, right?

Whatever is is dirty, we're just gonna kinda pick one section of it to worry about, right?

Decide ahead of time. Decide these things on a ahead of time so that it's it's a good day. It's when you have the mental space to think clearly. What does acceptable home care look like for you on those low capacity days? And then when the hard day or the hard week or the hard month hits.

You're not left having to invent a whole new system under pressure and with very little bandwidth to do it with. You're just pulling out the one that you already built.

Friend, I don't want you spending another Saturday trying to rescue your house. My hope for you is that you build a system and that you really set up a home that supports your real life, not your ideal life, your actual life. The one with the kids or maybe the grandkids underfoot, the ones with the late meetings and the weeks that fall apart before it's even Wednesday. That's what we need to build for.

The woman who only succeeds on her best days isn't actually succeeding. Not really. The woman who has a plan for her bad days, now she's the one who is building something sustainable. Something that holds up when life gets loud and hard, not just when everything goes according to plan. You don't need a system that only works in perfect conditions. You need one that bends.

With you. One that still counts on the 12 hour my home is an entire tornado days. Not just the peaceful my home is awesome at 7 a.m. days, right? And once you build something for the messy hard days, something interesting happens. The shame that used to show up the second that you walked into a messy kitchen, it starts to quiet down.

Because you're no longer measuring your performance or your worth by the kitchen counter. You're measuring it by whether you kept showing up, even in these smaller, less impressive ways. So know that if today's conversation hit home for you, I want to invite you to come over to follow me on Substack. Every single Tuesday, I'm there.

And I'm writing about a different aspect of clutter. And I don't just mean the pile on your counter. I'm talking about the out-of-the-box kind of clutter that you probably haven't even thought about as clutter before. The mental clutter, the calendar clutter, the clutter of obligations that you said yes to three years ago and you never revisited them since. The clutter of relationships that quietly drains you every time you interact with them.

If today's conversation resonated, I promise you'll find even more to chew on over on Substack. You can find me there. They're always short. It's always honest though. And it's designed to help you notice the things that are weighing you down that you've maybe never seen before. Come and find me there, and let's start untangling this together, just one ordinary Tuesday at a time.

You'll find a link to come find me over on Substack in the comments down below. It's midlife clutter explained and solved. That's where you can find me on Substack. So I want to leave you with one question to just kind of marinate on.

What if you aren't falling behind because you're failing? What if you're falling behind because you've only ever given yourself one version of what success looks like? Remember, progress is always progress. Hard things are not the same as wrong things. And you can start again at any single moment. So, friend, I'll have another conversation with you about.

Some aspect of clutter next week. So I'll see you then.