Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Get a Cleaner House and a Stronger Relationship | Clutterbug Podcast # 29

Episode Date: December 8, 2017

Want to know the secret to getting your husband to do more housework and take on more responsibility with the kids? Praise.  I've tried so many different ways to get my husband to do more around the house and the one thing that I've found that works the very best is positive reinforcement! Give the 7 day spouse challenge a try today! You can order my new book here: http://clutterbug.me/books/clutteredmess Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today's podcast is actually brought to you by my new book, Cluttered Mess to Organized Success. And this book is totally different than any other organizing book that I've personally found on the market. And I've done a lot of research and I couldn't find anything like it before. It's basically like a household management binder on steroids. So it offers you a meal planner, a household management planner, you know, a travel planner. daily planners, monthly planners, everything you could, medical sheets. It's a workbook that can really help you organize every different aspect of your life. It includes a financial planner. And it also gives you over 100 of the printables in the book as a free instant download. So you don't have to write in the book. You can write in the book if you want. Of course you can. But you could also print the ones that you really like and the ones that you think will work for you. your household and your family to try them at home with the free printable that comes with the book. So I give it a try today. It's called Cluttered Mess to Organize Success. You can pre-order it and it

comes out January 2nd, 2018. So let's get started today. I wanted to talk about your spouse. And I wanted to talk about this because this is probably one of the number one questions that I get people are always asking, you know, how to organize toys, how to organize paper, and how to get your family to help you clean the house or pick up after themselves. So I wanted to talk about a couple of techniques, but specifically one that really works for my spouse, my husband and my kids, to help them get involved in cleaning. And it's probably not what you think. So my husband doesn't do a lot of housework. He didn't do a lot of housework. And when I met him, he lived with his parents. He had always lived with his parents. We got married. We bought our first home together. And he went

directly from his parents' house into living with me. And I just took on the role, I guess. I don't know what was what I was thinking, but I took on the role of housewife, despite the fact that I was working full time and then we had our first baby and I was you know stay at home mom for that first year and housewife and I did all the cooking and the cleaning and I bought all the presents and took all the you know our daughter to all the medical appointments and then I started working full time again and kept doing everything else so really it was me it was me never really asking him for help in the beginning I was excited to do it all by myself and I really wanted to prove to him and myself that I could be this role of, you know, that perfect housewife

or whatever, the mother. And I tried really, really hard. Fast forward a few years and a few children later, and it got old fast. I mean, picking up after other people, being the one to do all the laundry, all the housework, all the medical appointments, all the, you know, everything that comes along with children, soon was getting to be a little bit annoying. And I was getting to be a little bit annoying and I was getting resentful and I was certainly getting resentful of my husband and I started you know complaining nagging asking him to do more and I think looking at it from his perspective years of having his mom do everything for him and then years of having me do everything for him with a smile on my face and suddenly you know I wasn't happy and I was angry and I wanted him to do more

and I expected him to do more and I wanted him to do it the way that I had done it but the truth is that it had taken me a lot of practice to learn to do things and I slowly had to learn to do the role of housework and taking care of the kids and doing all of those things and I never gave him the opportunity to learn those and he I mean he didn't learn those as a child either even as a kid I cleaned the house for my mom and it's unfortunate that that is a traditionally woman's role and I think as we raise children, it's important that we have our sons do chores like vacuum the house, do the laundry, do the dishes, so they can learn that it is also a man's job. And I don't think my husband's like misogynistic thinking it's a woman's role. I think that he's never learned.

He, I mean, he asked me about a year and a half ago how to work the washing machine. He wanted to do a load of laundry. I was like, well, you know, he's like, I'm out of sleep. socks. I'm like, well, you know where the washing machine is. It's in the basement. He honestly didn't know how to work it. And we have had it for 10 years. So that's my fault, not his. I've been enabling him this whole time. So instead of going cold turkey and just like screaming a whole lot, like some kind of crazy banshee, trying to insist that he do more, I need to realize that the way to get him to do more is a slow learn, just like I had to.

I had to slowly learn the skills of how to clean a toilet, how to, you know, mop a floor, how to do the dishes, all these things, you know, were learned slowly over time. And every time I added a new child, it was a whole new learning experience. And so to just sort of dump three children and housework and everything on him and like, why can't you handle it out of the blue? Of course, it's going to seem really overwhelming for him. And he's going to get defensive and resentful. And the only thing that my nagging and demanding is going to do is create a lot of fighting in a relationship.

And that is the last thing I want to do. So I did go through a time in my life where I just did it all. And it was easier to just do it than sort of rock our marriage boat. I didn't want to rock the boat anymore. And then I decided to sort of, you know, let him take on a little bit more responsibility at a time. and the best way to get him to do that I've found personally is through praise and I know I know you guys I know it's crazy but just like you you know would praise a child if they decided one day to mop the floor for you your husband your spouse um needs that same sort of encouragement in the beginning now I know

nobody thanks me for mopping the floor I mean once the last time anyone's thanked me for doing anything. The answer is probably never. You know, I do the laundry and make the lunches and make dinners and do grocery shopping and do everything and without thanks. But to build up to my husband doing 50-50 of all of those things, I have found personally the best way to do that is through praise when he does do something. Yes, I know. We're all collectively rolling our eyes as women, but let me tell you that it works. He will feel, you know, appreciated. And that makes him want to do more, to feel more appreciated. And slowly, I just let the rains go more and more and do a little less and less and really thank him for all the things that he does do. And lo and behold, before you know it, he's the one in charge of,

you know, doing the cleaning the kitchen every night, putting the kids to bed, doing the grocery shopping most of the time. And now he's doing most of the Christmas shopping this year. And it is the way we've gotten there is through me doing less and praising him more. And it works. So I wanted to talk about that because I think every relationship is different. And I think you have to sort of test different things to see what really works for you and your family when it comes to getting people involved. But I can promise you that nagging doesn't help anyone.

And nagging isn't the solution in any relationship. and I found, especially in my relationship with my husband, that it backfired. The more I acted like his boss giving him orders, telling him what to do, the more he would do nothing. And he would act really, you know, he'd put up this wall, like, you can't tell me what to do. We're equal in this relationship. And what I really wanted to say to him was, I feel like the servant here. I feel like the employee here.

But that's not what he was hearing. and even when I have put it that way to him, it hasn't really sunk in or had the same effect that positive reinforcement and praise has done. So we're going to train our spices like puppies. I know. It's ridiculous. We train our children the exact same way. You know, I really praise my kids when they make their bed in the morning. I praise my kids when they clean up the room. I praise them when they clear the table and scrape their dishes, even though half of it goes on the floor. and then I'm like, oh, I've got to clean the floor now, but you scraped your plate, here's a cookie. And that keeps them doing it all the time. And so, so yeah, I know. Listen, I know. It's very

unfeminist of us, but it works. And I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to start a challenge with you just so you can see that this works. And we're going to just do a seven-day challenge. And I'm calling it the seven-day spouse challenge. So let's start this weekend. Let's start on Saturday. And we'll do a seven-day spouse challenge. And every day for seven days, starting this Saturday, I want you to do one kind thing for your spouse. I know we already do a million kind of things for our spouse. We already probably, well, in this house, I do a lot of things I do as laundry and and make dinners and pick up his socks off the floor and scrub his toothpaste and clean the toilets and just take care of everything. But I mean something specifically for him. Just one kind

small gesture just for him. And maybe it's just, you know, telling him, you know what, I'm so lucky and you are an amazing husband. Thank you. Maybe that's what you do one day. And maybe the next day. You, you know, stop on your way home from work and pick him up a pair of his, I don't know, new socks or his favorite coffee in the morning. Sometimes in the morning I'd go out for Joe and I'll pick him up his favorite Tim Horton's coffee and bring it home for him before he has to leave for work, even though I don't have to leave the house. It's a small gesture that definitely goes a long way to not only strengthen your relationship, but to see some change, to see some change in him with him reciprocating.

Is that the word? That's the word I'm going with to see him doing things back for you. So I know when we first were married, I did this stuff all the time. You know, I'd go to the mall to pick myself up something and I'd get a little something extra for him

or I'd bake his favorite pie for dessert or, you know, I'd give him a back rub or I'd make sure at night that he had a glass of ice water beside his bed while he was getting ready for bed. I'd go get his glass of ice water and put it beside his bed. Small kind, kind.

gestures. And we're constantly doing this in the outside world this time of year. You know, we're maybe, you know, tipping people a little extra or we're paying for someone's coffee behind us or, you know, we're paying it forward to a stranger. But I'm really going to suggest that we're doing those kind gestures just one a day for our spouse. You can write them down. You can make yourself a list of all the different little things that you can do, make their favorite dinner maybe, tell them after dinner that they can go relax and put their feet up and you'll bring them hot chocolate, little things, just compliments even. But let me make an effort. And we're going to do this for seven days. You are going to see a huge, huge change in your husband, in yourself, and in your

relationship, and hopefully in your house too. So that's what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. I want to challenge you to do this best challenge along with me. I am going to start this weekend. I'll let you know how my challenge goes in this house. I definitely need to make my relationship with my husband more of a priority. And we're in a great place. We get along great. Everything's perfect. We rarely fight. So I'm not saying, like I'm not looking for a bandaid to fix something. I'm looking to make a great relationship even better. And I've really found that praise for us is, is, is, has had a huge impact on our relationship. and it has drastically increased the number of household chores that he does.

So I wanted to share that with you guys. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you next time.