Why most household management advice doesn’t work

I have read a lot of books about personal development, productivity, organisation, home management, and so on, in my attempts to wade through adult life.

I’ve managed to pick up a lot of good tips over the years.

I think it’s fantastic that there is even more content like this on TV – Queer Eye, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, The Home Edit.

I absolutely love self-help. There is almost always an insight that helps me look at the world or my life in a new way – even when the topic doesn’t feel obviously relevant to my life, or I think the author’s approach is a bit off the wall.

But when it comes to actually seeing improvements or changes that feel like they make my life easier or better… well, let’s just say I quickly find myself looking for the next book to solve my problems.

I’ve wondered why this is. Is there a problem with me? With the system? Well, surely the next title will have the answer.

But as I’ve been reflecting more on how I’m organising my life, I’ve felt that there are some common issues why the systems and techniques that seem so inspired (even foolproof!) in these books don’t seem to solve my problems.

Most household management advice is written by people who are good at it.

The experts are brilliant. But they’re too good at what they do.

People are different – and the kind of person who keeps a spotless house probably can’t understand what it feels like to spend an hour having an internal debate over whether or not to keep a bag full of bags.

Sometimes it is dangerous to take advice from someone who is really good at the thing you are trying to do. Their viewpoint is so different that they can’t understand what it’s like to be struggling

Most self-help books are written for individuals, but the problems belong to families.

It makes complete sense that most of this kind of advice is written for the consumption of an individual reader. But most of us live with other people. (And even folks who live alone can find their relationships affecting the efficacy of this kind of household advice.)

It makes me think of what a revelation family systems therapy must have felt like when it first appeared. It was radical to focus on how people function in relationship rather than just an individual being psychoanalysed in isolation. (I am not a therapist, so please excuse the generalisations!)

I feel like a similar approach is needed for how we run our domestic lives.

It is true that we cannot change other people – but a family home is a shared environment. No system is going to work unless everyone is on the same page.

Epiphany is not the same thing as action.

It’s easy to mistake the lightbulb moment for the moment of change.

These books are packed with wise words, and it’s easy to get excited by new insight and possibility. I know this feeling all too well. Somehow it feels like by reading the book, I have done the the work – but I haven’t really, I’ve just added another title to my reading list.

The real magic isn’t taking in information – it’s actually putting it into action.

So now what? It’s time to be honest with myself.

I think part of why I read so many of these books is chasing the high of the next epiphany.

It starts to feel like if I just find the right expert answer everything will fall into place. But our lives are actually made of the things we can do (and want to do) every day.

Looking outwards for these ideas – rather than engaging in focused introspection about the kind of action that is realistic for my life – is missing the point.

I have no intention of giving up my self-help reading habit. (I love it too much.) But what I’m really looking for now is a way to work around these pitfalls.

Different people need different strategies.

Figuring out how we negotiate change with our loved ones is as important as the changes themselves.

And accepting ourselves and the truth about our own priorities is key to adapting brilliant ideas to our actual lives.

Photo by David Lezcano on Unsplash

Chicken Swimming

Oh yeah, he said, you just
Drop them right in.
Excellent exercise, swimming.
Good for the joints.

The surface of the pond
Was still and clear
Except for a single
Feather floating

But won’t they drown?

He smiled.
That’s what I’ve got
This pole here for,
To fish them out
After a good workout.

You see,
The tricky part isn’t
The swimming.
Those scrawny legs
Have a powerful kick.

The problem for chickens
Is getting wet.
Once those feathers
Start to gather water
It’s only a matter
Of time until
The weight pulls
Them under
For good.

Then why do you do it?

It was the chickens’ idea,
If you can believe it.

A few of them
Came out the coop
One morning and
Saw a duck sitting
Sitting on the pond.

The chickens thought,
I reckon I can
Do that.
Who was I
To tell them
They couldn’t?

They hopped right
In and headed
Straight for that duck.

Well. Wow.

Yeah, it was a
Wild duck.
Sat there watching
This clump of chickens
Coming right at it.

What happened when they met?

Those chickens were
Fast they got probably
About 5, 10 feet
Away

The thing is
Chickens can swim
But they can’t fly.

That duck was
Like a superhero
To those chickens.

I put them back
In the coop to
Dry off.

Some of them were
Feeling pretty sorry
For themselves.
So I reminded them
At least they were
Tucked in with
Their friends.
That duck
Was flying all alone.

That’s a lovely point.

Well I thought so.
I just hope they don’t
Discover geese.

Note: For some unknown reason, in the earliest stages of waking up this morning I was visited by this phrase of chicken swimming, with the image of a farmer standing by a pond holding this large pole. I thought this was doomed to be a rather disturbing tragedy, but I was amazed to discover that chickens can in fact swim!

Photo by Dan Schneemann on Unsplash

January 1 is the wrong day to start new year’s resolutions

Why do we start our resolutions on January 1st?

A far more auspicious time to start new endeavours would be on the first new moon of the new year.

I came across the information this week that most people don’t make it past January 19th with their new year’s resolutions.

I’m not surprised. I’ve been feeling myself how our hopes for ourselves and the practicalities of our lives don’t always align.

I had a long awaited project that I was excited to take on this year: Home Ec for the Modern Human. My approach wasn’t so much a resolution as an intention to finally make room to engage with these ideas and questions.

And yet, when it came time to begin, I felt a kind of inertia.

The calendar said January 1st – that must mean ‘ready to begin’, right?

But this wasn’t a time of beginning in the world around us.

Not yet…

It was only last night that it really clicked why…

We ignore the cycles of nature at our peril.

Last year, my mother got me a beautiful journal (sadly, not available anymore) that showed the cycles of the moon.

I loved seeing the little pictures on design of each month, showing me what was happening in the sky. I often couldn’t see it with my own eyes, due to heavy clouds, bright city lights, or the fact that it’s so easy to fail to look up.

It made me realise how little I thought about the moon, or the energy shifts in the world around me.

We are conditioned to respond to the layouts of calendars created in reference to the sun, with designations and divisions created by humans.

But if the moon affects the tides, the light that reaches our world, and women’s cycles, is it so crazy to think it is affecting us too?

Personally, I adore astrology, even though I am also a total skeptic about using it to forecast one’s future. I love reading my horoscope, but would be reluctant to live my life by it.

But you don’t have to be an astrology buff to think about more about how to work with these natural rhythms.

This year, I decided to embrace my curiosity about the moon, and to be more aware of what is happening in the sky above me. I ordered a diary that shows what is happening with the moon each day. (Sold out now, sorry!)

And it just so happens that right now the moon is waning.

This means that it is a time for reflection, for drawing inwards, for considering things in stillness.

Probably not the best time to launch on action oriented new projects.

No wonder I have been feeling the need to gather my thoughts and resources, and to wait. My anxiety-driven compulsion to push ahead was swimming against the tide – quite literally.

But things are about to change.

The new moon is coming.

This Wednesday (13 January 2021) marks the arrival of a new moon – the Wolf Moon, according to my diary.

I can feel my energy focusing – ready to sent intentions and to begin.

So this is when I’m going to try to begin this project for myself.

This realisation has actually made me reconsider the whole structure of this project.

I was hoping to tackle different categories each month, but it seems so much more appropriate to tie things to lunar flow for an experiment that is about domestic life and things that are traditionally women’s work.

You haven’t missed your chance.

If you’re despairing about failing your new year’s resolution, it is not too late – maybe you were simply starting at the wrong time.

The year truly turns over with the first new moon of January.

I hope I can remember this for next year in 2022 – when the novelty and buzz of the new year feels hot and fresh. To wait, to take a moment, to look at what is happening in the world, as well as my won goals, and see if there is away to try to synchronise these together.

Plus it’s worth remembering, there is a new moon every month.

The cycle of reflection and regneration is ongoing.

It’s never too late to make a resolution.

It’s never too late to try something new.

Photo by Mark Tegethoff on Unsplash

Insomnia companion, part 6: The Hallway

You find yourself
In a a long hallway
You walk and walk
The distant door
Feels like it will never
Draw closer

Then suddenly, your hand
Is on the knob
You turn it and walk through

And find yourself
In another hallway
You can just see the door
On the horizon line
You push forward
With every bit of energy
Making no progress

Until all at once
You feel the cold metal
Under your fingers
You twist

And you find yourself
Yet again
In an endless hallway
Doors upon doors
Leading to more
Empty passages
Dim and eerily blank

There is only one way
Forward
Or so it seems

You keep chasing
The exit
But there is always
Another hallway
Another door

You may not be able
To find your way out

But you don’t
Have to keep
Walking

Sit
If you like
On the smooth
Stone floor
Rest awhile
Lean your back
Against the featureless wall

Watch the shadows
Dance

Sing a song and
Hear your own voice
Echo richly

Draw a picture
With your pinky finger
In the dust
Gathered in the corners

You can walk again
When you’re ready
Or
You can climb the walls
But only if it feels
Like fun

Have you been trying
So hard to get
Through the door
That you have forgotten
To feel the weight
Of your own body?

Stretch out your legs
Let those muscles recover

And the next time
You reach the threshold
Pause
Squeak the door open
The tiniest crack
And linger in that
Place of possibility

Maybe on the other side
Of this door
There will be
Something different?

What does your
Imagination
Create
In that liminal space?

Note: Last night, I found myself standing in this hallway, curious to see where it would lead. But I think I know why this happened.

Of all the poems in Caroline Bird’s ‘The Air Year’, the one I find myself turning over in my mind when I cannot sleep is Dive Bar. I feel like its echoes are still working their way through my mind and my body? It is sheer brilliance. What does it mean to have reality fold in on itself, over and over again? Where do we get trapped in our own minds – and is there any escape?

Photo by Hugues de BUYER-MIMEURE on Unsplash

Insomnia companion, part 5: The Sponge

You might think
That the thing
Underneath your head
Is a pillow

But maybe
It is a sponge

It slowly soaks up
The worries
Of the day

Feel
Your anxieties trickle
Down the back
Of your neck
Out of the base
Of your skull
While you stare
At the ceiling
In the watchful darkness

Or perhaps
Everyday stresses
Dribble slowly
Out of your ear
Drip, drip, drip
Every so slowly
Wetting your spongepillow
As they are released

For some folks
The flow is fast
Their head
Hits the pillow
And at once there is
A quick let-down
Of easy, effortless flow

Some of us
Take a little bit longer
Some worries
Need time
To weep
Their way out

It would be easier
If things would go quickly
But feelings flow
At their own rate

There is no rush
To make the waters
Of your brain
(Which looks curiously
Like a sponge, doesn’t it?)
Run clear and free
Remember that
The most beautiful
Stalactites are formed
One droplet at a time

For now
Just lie back
And feel the support
Of the sponge
Wicking away
Your disquiet

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash




The fog

Today, I am tired.

I slept – but in strange, broken fragments.

Some of it feels like my fault. Some of it feels beyond my power to control.

Like much of the world, stayed up past my bedtime, watching in shock as right wing terrorists stormed the Capitol building.

I burned off the anxiety stirred up by this newsfeed by plunging down the rabbit hole of trying to think about my family’s future. While I know it is a pipe dream, there is part of me that still believes that with enough research I can find the perfect circumstances that give us everything we want in our lives without compromises. I stayed up much too late looking at flats, schools, commute times for offices we no longer go to.

When I finally turned over to sleep, is when the hot flashes came. I thought I was managing the symptoms of chemical menopause pretty well, but this week has gotten the better of me.

I am either freezing or sweating. My internal thermostat is so confused, to the point where it wakes me up at night. If I need to wake up to use the bathroom or check on Rosie, I am guaranteed to feel on fire as soon as I pull the warmth of the duvet back over me.

I try to wait it out by just lying there without any covers on, watching the shadows. It’s a strange sensation of feeling the cold, but not having it really affect me – until of course I am freezing again.

Then it was my turn to get up with Rose, giving Zach a (much deserved) morning off.

All day long, it has felt like I am peering at the world through a strange sort of fog.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about the difference between tiredness and fatigue.

Today, the particular vintage of tiredness I experienced was not fatigue – it was more like a slow-motion delirium.

I had enough energy to go through all the motions of my life – but I found myself struggling to keep hold of my mind’s processing. It was a whole day spent clouded by the feeling you get when you walk into a room and can’t remember the reason that brought you there.

Exhausted but alert. Tired but not sleepy.

I’m still struggling to find the words. Perhaps this would be better as a poem.

Today, my spirits were excellent in spite of the fog – but I am under no illusions. This is due to the reserve of sleep I had built up over the past few mornings.

If I continue, more things will start to slip – my functioning, my health, my happiness…

I spent so many years of my life trading sleep for activity – thinking it was best to just push through, thinking I could handle the side effects.

I’m not sure I ever really could – I certainly can’t cope with it now.

But how to cope with a lack of sleep when the heart is willing but the mind is restless?

Over the past few years, I have spent so many nights is exhausted wakefulness. I have made so many ‘sleep plans’, trying to organise my life to enable sleep. (Which I rarely follow through as well as I should.)

I think it’s time for another one.

But first, I need the fog to lift just a little bit. Then I’ll be able to see my way out of the trees.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Unfinished business

As the new year begins, I’ve found myself energised for new endeavours and projects – pandemic and lockdown notwithstanding.

There has been a powerful urge telling me: it is time for something new.

But it’s interesting – every time I try to take a step forward (like with this Home Ec project I’m so excited about), I feel a pull backwards.

I’m realising I still have a great deal of unfinished business from my cancer journey.

There is so much I haven’t processed for myself. Moments I didn’t acknowledge, and hard-won insights I didn’t write down.

Most of this was due to the intensity of the experience. It was as much as I could do to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

There was undoubtedly a part of me that was scared to look at these things full on.

There was also a feeling of ‘I’ll do it later’ – because it didn’t seem that these moments would ever end, or that I could ever forget how they felt.

And now I’m realising I need to return to some of these experiences, and process them by writing them down, turning them over, and telling the story.

Partly, it feels like an insurance policy – reminding myself how I coped so if, heaven forbid – I should need to make use of this knowledge again.

Some of these lingering thoughts purely practical – others are more metaphysical.

It’s going to be interesting to discover whether I can move backwards and forwards at the same time, in a sense, stretching myself in two directions. Part of me suspects I may need to hit pause on new endeavours, approaching this processing more like a slingshot, needing to pull backwards more aggressively to be able to launch into whatever awaits in the future.

Looking back on my cancer journey, I think I was most reluctant to engage with the practical stuff.

I didn’t want this to become a cancer blog, even though my experience with this disease is threaded into its very marrow.

I didn’t want to feel like my life story was primarily about cancer.

But from today’s vantage point, that feels like less of a threat. I feel myself getting stronger and recovering more every day, both physically and emotionally.

So maybe it’s time to log some of these things before the slip away entirely. And to be less afraid of what happened, or what might lie ahead.

Today, I am creating a new category for this – making space in a very real way.

It’s time to deal with the unfinished business.

Photo by Kyler Boone on Unsplash

Purple Lion

A purple lion
Guards the gate
To my dreams

I bring him hunks
Of my raw and ready flesh
And an ice cream
Sandwich just in case
Purple lions prefer
That sort of thing

He gives me a milky grin
Flecks of chocolate
Dangling from his chin 

And I slip through the bars 
Which have somehow
Become elastic and yielding
Stretching to accommodate
All of me
Even the self-made steaks

I carry them in plastic
Grocery bags wrapped in
Sheets of unfinished poems

The lion doesn’t seem so
Scary after all but
I cling to my butchered bits
I can’t help worrying 
I might need them 
On the way back

Photo and drawing by A.C. Smith

Insomnia companion, part 4: the sacred spider

Imagine an agile arachnid
Gently spinning a gossamer web
Over your eyelids
Feel the subtle weight 
Of her silken net

The little being
Dances and soars
Creating an imaginary eye pillow
A growing, welcome pressure
Weaving waking dreams

You could open your eyes
But why not wait
Just a bit
Let the spider
Do their work

All you have to do
Is lie here
And feel the soft sensation
Of this small creature’s acrobatics
And delicate art

If the waiting is too much
And you do open your eyes
Destroying the fragile fabric
Don’t worry
The tiny spinner will simply start again

You are not alone in this dark night 
A sacred spider is watching over you
As soon as your lids close
She is back at work
Finding connections and rest

For now
There is nothing to see
Just feel the web 
Growing keeping sticky shut
Shutters to the soul

Note: I wrote most of this very early when I could not get back to sleep – sketching the shape of two other poems as well.

It started to devolve into a kind of nonsense language at the end – I didn’t keep all of this but tried to work a bit of that strange sequencing in, because it captured the feelings, and the effect on mental processing when we are drunk with lack of sleep.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Bicycle seat

Your father shows me
A toddler seat
For his bicycle
And my breath stops

How can I send you both
Out into the world
Riding at speed
On these tiny scraps of metal
Among the menacing hordes
Of automotive monsters?

I joke that I would like 
To wrap the two of you
In bubble wrap
But am I joking really?

The thing is
Wrapping someone 
In bubble wrap
Is not such a great idea

When I wake in the early hours
Fresh from strange dreams
Of pandemics and post-structuralism
I have a terrifying image
Of you encased tightly in plastic
Slowly suffocating under the layers
Of insulation that I have tenderly
Wound around you to keep you safe

It is something people say
All the time, ‘I want to wrap
You up in bubble wrap’
It means I love you
I thought I was just doing
What mothers do

I never dreamed that
I was more dangerous
Than the things
I fear

So instead I offer to wrap you
In a silky-soft down comforter
Hoping you don’t have
Your father’s allergy to feathers

But I suppose
You would rather
Take your chances 
On the toddler seat

Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash