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Right now Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their signature makeup bag with your first order at meritbeauty.com that's merit beauty.com to get your free signature makeup bag with your first order. Merit beauty.com hi there. You're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. This podcast is not about hacking the system to find more time or hacking your energy to get more done hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity. It's exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently on this show. We value contentment, compassion and living in our seat season. We favor small steps over big systems. Here we are lazy geniuses being A genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I'm so glad you're here. Today is episode 454, chores for normals. Make 20 minutes enough. All right? I care a lot about helping people find easier ways to do things that matter. And taking care of our homes is usually on the list. We all have different affairs, approaches to tidying and cleaning and chore management. But foundationally, most of us want to live in homes that function well, that are comfortable and welcoming, and that are not so overwhelmed by tasks and clutter that we just, like, want to burn it all down. Those times are going to come, and there are other episodes for dealing with that energy. But today, I want us to find a simpler path to daily maintenance. And at home, this will not be full of, like, lots of lists of things for you to do or guilt about what you're not doing. We just don't do that here. Instead, we're gonna talk about the normal obstacles that make housekeeping hard and what we can do instead. Then we're gonna talk about what you could do for two to 20 minutes a day that will impact your desired quality of life at home. Because when it comes to normals like us, people who are just trying to live our lives with kindness and contentment, we don't need to get all up in a twist about house cleaning. Let's just be wise about our homes, what matters in them, and find a way to make 20 minutes enough after that for a little extra something. I'm gonna share my favorite convenience food right now. I was actually gonna share several, but it was almost like a whole separate episode. So in a couple of weeks, I am going to share some of my favorite convenience foods in the actual podcast. Today, I will just share my singular favorite. Right now, as always, we will celebrate the lazy genius of the week, which is an all time favorite tip for dusting the house. And then we're gonna close with a mini pep talk for when you're overwhelmed by the world. Before we get into the episode, I wanna remind you that we have a lot of episodes. This is number 454. But there are way more that aren't numbered in the form of bonus episodes and interviews we've done over the almost 10 years of this podcast. In some ways, that's really fun. It's nice to have so many episodes to go to when you need to lazy genius something. However, it's also like, no, that's too many. Oh, it's too many. So a couple of helpful Tools for you to notice to help you find what you need first, we are starting to release reruns every month, sharing an episode from the archive that we think is super relevant to most listeners right now. You don't have to do anything to get those, except subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast listening app. I personally use Overcast, but you use whichever one you like. The nice thing about subscribing to a show, as you know, is that you don't have to remember to download something. It does it for you. It's just there when you open your app. And if you're subscribed, you'll. You'll get those bonus reruns that are probably pretty great choices to listen to right now. A second tool you might want to consider is that we have podcast playlists on Spotify. They are labeled like, fairly accurately, things like guests, which is all the episodes that are interviews with other people. Margin, which is a collection of key episodes that help you find space in your life as you manage your time. There's work and summer sanity and cooking. And while the playlists don't have every single episode in that category ever, which would kind of be overwhelming anyway, it's a collection of essential episodes that can help you with whatever you're struggling with. And finally, if you ever have a problem or are struggling to figure something out and you think, I wonder if there is a lazy genius episode about this. There probably is. Use your preferred search engine and search Lazy Genius and then whatever topic you're curious about and see what pops up. When anyone asks me if I have an episode on something, I usually do a quick search because I don't remember all 454 episodes. And also I'm like, I mean, yeah, probably hang on. So don't hesitate to just search the Internet for what you need. You might get something super helpful right away. But yeah, so many episodes, and it's an honor to keep making them for you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for keeping the show alive for almost 10 years with all your listens. It's just so amazing. All right, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, which makes this show free for you to listen to. But before we do, here is your quick reminder about the podcast recap email that we send out every other Friday. It's called Latest Lazy Listens and it summarizes the episode. It shares the Lazy genius of the week as well as other segments we have on the show. And it has a little extra note for me to help encourage you through the weekend. So if you would like to get that recap you can head to the lazygeniuscollective.com listens this episode is sponsored by Quince. One thing about me When I find something that works, I stick with it. Decide once Baby and Quince, they keep delivering things that work. I've been using their Italian sling bag almost every day for months with which is saying something because I've never really liked sling bags. They usually just sit weird or feel like a hassle. But this one works so well. It's soft, it lays flat, it fits. Just what I need. The same goes for their cashmere sweaters. They are the staple for my travel this winter. I packed three and like nothing else, they're soft, they hold up and they somehow cost $50 instead of 200. Quint does quality really well. Thoughtful materials, ethical factories and perfect prices that just make sense. Really great stuff I keep reaching for. Refresh your wardrobe with Quint. Don't wait. Go to quints.com Genius for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Genius quince.com Genius this episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one platform that helps you stand out and succeed online. If you've got something to share, a blog, a small business, or even just an idea you're finally ready to put into the world, Squarespace makes it incredibly simple to build a beautiful, functional website all in one place. You can claim your domain, design your site, grow your audience, and even get paid without needing to piece together a bunch of different tools. If you're offering a service, Squarespace makes it easy to showcase what you do. Book appointments, send invoices, and accept payments all from your site. Everything's streamlined and professional so you can focus on your work, not on managing. Five apps and the design tools are a dream. Their blueprint AI helps you create a custom site in just a few steps. Or you can start with one of their award winning templates and make it your own with simple drag and drop editing. No design degree required, I promise. So if you're ready to bring your thing to Life, head to squarespace.com lazygenius for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code LAZYGENIUS to to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, let's get into chores for normals and how 20 minutes can be enough. One of life's greatest Challenges is managing housework along with all the other things. Like, if you could just take care of a home and like, not also a job and people and mental health and hobbies and rest and all the things, you could totally take care of your house. You could do your chores. You could keep up with them regularly and not stress out about it. The chores are not the only thing you're doing. Plus, entropy is real and things never stay clean or tidy for very long. We are all familiar with this. The problem with chores is that things can quickly, quickly build up. If you don't do a little bit most days, that entropy gets all high and mighty and you will be overwhelmed with more mess than you thought could come for a few days. Like, it's almost exponential. How did it get this bad this fast? It's kind of like brushing your teeth. If you didn't brush your teeth for four days, you would be able to tell. A short time of not doing a daily task has weirdly large consequences. Brushing your teeth for a couple of minutes a couple of times a day is way better for your dental health and overall life experience than brushing your teeth once a week for like 30 minutes. While the comparison with chores is not exactly one to one, you get my point. It makes enough sense. If we treat the maintenance of a home kind of like we do brushing our teeth, I think it might feel a little easier. Like a little bit every day does us way more good than all at once when our, you know, our breath is bad enough to kill a small animal. But before you think I'm gonna zig when I'm really gonna zag, let's lay out what we're really gonna do here. I am not about to say to you, hey, you spend 20 minutes a day cleaning your house and everything will be fine. I. It's not that simple. There are some common challenges to daily home care that we need to acknowledge. Befriend. And then we can make them a little bit easier, a little bit better. There are also different chores that will specifically impact the overall feeling in your home compared to mine. If you have a dog that sheds or a toddler who can't quite figure out the mechanics of a spoon, you will likely want to vacuum more often than I do. So we need to acknowledge the obstacles, the differences, the seasons of life. Create some reframes to give us more compassion in our perspective toward house cleaning, and then choose specific essential chores that fit our lives. That way, our 20 minutes a day, it really can be enough. And to be clear, 20 minutes is like, it's a bit of an arbitrary number here. I chose it because it's reasonable and sustainable for most of us. Like, even people who work out of the home or have harder jobs can probably find 15 to 20 minutes to do intentionally focused work for their own lives and homes. Now, I'm not saying it's easy or that we're going to do it with big smiles on our faces or that it's not at the expense of other things, but it's a reasonably accessible amount of time for most people, most days. General and reasonable is what we're going for here. Adjust as you would like, right? All right, so first, let's talk about the obstacles that can get in the way and keep us from cleaning our homes like normals. Obstacle number one, overwhelm. All right, you have 20 minutes. You want to spend it, as my friend Hannah calls it, blitzing the house. You want to get as much done as you can before the timer is up, because that time is, like, kind of all you have today. So how do you spend it? How many of us have spent the half of the 20 minutes, like, pinballing from room to room, task to task, thing on the floor to thing on the floor, and feel like we got literally nothing done? Or we, like, spent half of the 20 minutes trying to decide where to start at all? Depending on the state of your home, you might have no idea where to start. The bathrooms need cleaning. The breakfast dishes are still out. The Lego bin has been turned upside down and abandoned. And then as you're cleaning, you, like, spot an invitation to a party with an RSVP that's actually today. And something else has become more urgent than your chores. So this episode is called Chores for Normals. And holy moly, is it normal for all of us to get overwhelmed by the scope of our chores, by the urgency of something that we just spotted by not knowing where to begin? Chores are easily overwhelming, so don't feel like you're the only one experiencing that. We all feel that your personality, your season of life, your executive functioning skills, your energy, all of it might shine a light on that overwhelm. Like, from a different angle or more than you might like. But we all feel it. We all feel it. So first, I want you to befriend the overwhelm. It's normal, it's common, and it's gonna happen again. Don't ignore the overwhelm or make it the enemy. Just acknowledge that it's there and learn how to befriend it. In fact, your resistance to being overwhelmed by housework is why you probably make multiple versions of chore charts and buy PDFs of how to clean your house. You have bought the lie that you're supposed to know exactly what to do and not be overwhelmed by your home at all. If you are. If you are overwhelmed, they say it's because you haven't figured out the right system yet. And so here's the one that will work for you. It's false. False. And my best Dwight Schrute voice false. Taking care of a house, even if you're the only one living in it, it will always have periods of feeling like too much. And the more people in your home, the longer those periods usually last. Don't fight it, befriend it. You're not abnormal. You're not missing a special cleaning gene. You're very ordinary and human and you need to remember that chores can be difficult and they do not end like that's a little overwhelming. Just be there with it now. One practical way you can meet that feeling of overwhelm and stop it from getting out of hand is to know what you're going to do. You know, you go into your 20 minutes essentially knowing how you'll spend it. That's the second half of this episode. So hang tight. But ultimately, just be kind in feeling overwhelmed, like we all feel it. It doesn't make you bad at this, it just makes you normal. This is just how it goes sometimes. Okay, so that's obstacle number one is overwhelm. Obstacle number two is your season of life. Being at home with tiny kids is an obvious obstacle to keeping a house clean in any reasonable way. Tending a home with toddlers underfoot should come with like prizes at the end. It is so intense. It's so repetitive, so messy. Why are tiny humans so dang messy? As we always say, it's like it's good that they're cute. It's a good thing they're cute. But that's not the only season of life that can make consistent chores difficult even for compassionate normals like us. I have several friends who, like me, have part time to full time jobs that do have flexible hours and can be done at home that they still have to be done every week. We all have kids in multiple things who need driving around. We have workouts and therapy appointments and trips to Costco and errands to the post office to fit into the weirdness of our normal schedules. And then housework gets attention, but like not at the same time of day most days. Right? It's just so much to manage and juggle. And at the end of that kind of day, when you've been juggling all of the things like, who in the actual world wants to be like, okay, time to do my 20 minutes cleaning routine? Like, not many of us. Like, at least not with a smile on our faces. It's just a hard season of life to clean in. And there are a lot of seasons like that. You might be single and have only yourself to clean up after, but man, is it lonely and hard to have everything fall just on your shoulders all the time. It's like Groundhog Day with tidying the same things over and over again. And that can feel really discouraging. We could go on and on. Your season of life is almost certainly an obstacle to your housekeeping rhythms. And that is normal, expected, and okay. Try not to disparage your season of life, but instead live in it, befriend it. Remember that seasons of life change what matters to you. You get the good gifts of having laser focus about what you can do and what you cannot. You can experience the freedom of being a genius about some things and lazy about plenty of others because of your season of life. That clarity is really freeing. And seasons of life help us see it. Just this morning I noticed that the, like, the rims of my kitchen cabinets are super dirty. We have, like, Shaker style cabinets, which was a mistake because it's like a little ledge for dirt and dust. And I cannot remember the last time I cleaned them. Now, the old me before, like, learning to be a compassionate person towards my time and my stuff would be like, man, I need to run the vacuum over every single one of those. Every time I vacuum the floor. That will keep them in better shape. And I get all, like, in a tizzy. But thankfully, I am wise enough now to know I don't have to maintain everything. Like, the cabinet fronts. They can stay dusty. I don't really care. Like you can. I do not. That's not a task I'm gonna concern myself with in this season of life. I seriously looked at them and I was like, kendra, sweet girl, there's no reason to focus on this right now. You're trying to teach a boy how to drive. Like, I just, I just don't care now, sure, if a cabinet ridge is, like, sticky in a truly bothersome way and I have a soapy rag in my hand from washing dishes, I'll wipe it up real quick, whatever, but I'm not going to see an unimportant task that does not deserve the limited time in my season of life and try and do it better. I'm just gonna leave the cabinets. So your season of life might be an obstacle, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Befriend it, accept it, let it drive your singular priorities, and then let the rest go. It's a gift, really. Obstacle number three is distraction. Naturally, this is in our life, in. In a lot of ways, especially in this technological era that we're in. There are so many things that can distract us from staying locked into the few minutes that we have chosen to tend to our homes. I have been known to put my earbuds in, hit music on my phone, and then, like, see a couple of texts, you know, and. And then when I went to answer one of them, it takes me down a rabbit trail on the Internet because I have to search out a thing for a thing for a question. And then I, like, notice my grocery store app. And remember, I never placed my order, which we need it. It's just a pylon of, like, distraction. Right? So obviously you can be distracted by your phone or some kind of technology. You can also be distracted by tasks and chores and messes that don't really matter right now. We have a little room in the back of the house where I keep my books and the boys play video games, and we have a baby grand piano in there. That was an impulse buy in the early days of our marriage, and I'm so glad we did it. But, yeah, we have. It's like a little den, and we have a baby grand piano back there. Well, everything is crammed in tight into that room. It's, you know, but it's. It's cozy. It's fine. Well, the other day I. I was like, I was playing piano, and I noticed the piano bench was. Was struggling. It's one of those benches. I mean, are all piano benches like this, where the top lifts and it stores the music and everything? Like, probably we have a classic bench. But the bottom of the bench was about to come out. Like, I guess we'd put too many pieces of music in there, I don't know. But the bottom of the bench was buckling, so I emptied everything out of the. Of the bench. I grabbed, like, all the music and the weird guitar paraphernalia that also was in there, and I put all of it in a pile on the floor by the piano, and I kept playing piano. That was like, a week ago. And the pile of music is still on the floor. I have walked past it multiple times. And I thought, I will get to that. I will tend to that pile. It has stuff we want to keep. Some we probably don't. I'm going to get to it, but I don't have to right now. I have learned with much practice, trial and error, that I can pass a mess and not stop. I can ignore the dirty cabinet fronts. I can ignore the pile of music on the floor. I can ignore the shoe chaos by the door. I can ignore plenty of things that would try to distract me because I just know they don't matter as much as the other things I'm trying to do. And frankly, that includes things like resting and reading and hanging out. I don't have to have. You don't have to have a perfectly clean home in order to stop. If that's the case, you'll never stop. So yes, you're gonna be distracted by your phone. You're gonna be distracted by the innumerable things that you could do to your house to make it even more tidy and clean. But, like, it doesn't matter. Like, not everything can matter. And you can practice walking past an unimportant mess and not let it distract you from the task that will actually improve the quality of your day. So befriend the concept of distraction. It happens. Be kind and patient with your inconsistency in that distraction. Just like we talked about last week in learning to be a better problem solver, you're going to be inconsistent. Even when we get to the practical part of your 20 minutes. You're not gonna do it the same every time. You're not gonna follow through in the most optimized way every time. I don't say that because I don't believe in you. I say that because it's reality. I recently heard a self help guru who you probably know talk about how your feelings don't matter. Now, she clarified this majorly in the way that we would expect that, like, of course your feelings matter and are valid. But she was making the point that if you commit to something, if you say you're going to clean your house every day for 20 minutes, you shouldn't go back on your word and let yourself down. That was the phrasing. Not only that you should ignore your feelings because you're never going to want to do it. You're always going to have something that gets in the way, like kids or hormones. And she listed all those things. The difference is I think you should be kinder about inconsistency and not see it as letting yourself down I do not think it is a broken promise to yourself. I think it's life. And for me, not for everybody, but for me and maybe for you. The minute I start assigning more value to my cleaning routine than to my energy or to my hormones or to the needs of my children or to. I'm done for, man. Like, I am now a robot. I am no longer paying attention to the humanity of the situation. And I just never want to be a person who chooses productivity over a person, even if that person is me. So when I say you're going to be inconsistent, that's not like a slam. I think it's a gift. I think it's a welcome message of knowing you don't have to do it all. Exactly. Right now you're gonna be distracted sometimes, and, like, that's okay. Notice it, adjust it, and move on. Speaking of doing it like, exactly, obstacle number four is perfection. You will certainly struggle to have real value in your 20 minutes of housework or whatever. The thing is when you are pushing for perfection. I see those cleaning videos where there's, like, not a speck of scum on a shower when they're done, like, every bit of grout is immaculate. It's, like, deeply satisfying. Am I gonna spend most of my time trying to achieve that level of perfection in my own shower? Absolutely not. No, you can. Anybody can. I will not. Because I don't need the shower to be perfectly clean. Like, I'm about to sell my house. Like, I'm great if it's, like, you know, pretty much clean. Mostly clean. And that's just when it's time to clean the bathroom. Not just, like, tidying it up. Like, it doesn't always have to be super clean. It's not going to always be super clean. Perfection is just the worst, y'. All. I always say we want perfection and bridges and surgery. Yes, there are places where perfection is ideal and preferred and even expected. But in the context of being a normal person in a normal life, just like, trucking along and taking care of your house, you are wasting your time trying to be perfect. And you're definitely wasting your precious house tending time by trying to make it all perfect. You want the cleanliness to be perfect, the system to be perfect, the compliance of children and partners to be perfect, your motivation to be perfect, none of them will be. Just let it go like it ain't happening. The sooner you befriend your expectation of perfection and just, like, pat her on the hat and say, girl, you are so dear, and I know you're trying to make things work well so that we can be in control. But, hey, we're good. We're good. Like, pat perfection on the head and move on. She doesn't need to be the loudest voice in the room, but befriend her instead of rejecting her. She's just trying, like, real hard, but she's just trying. You can remind her she doesn't have to try so hard. Go for good, not great. Remember that last week? Go for good, not great. Perfection is not a hill we need to die on. And then finally, the last obstacle I want to bring to our collective attention is completion. All right, this one is a bit tricky. This one will. This one will get you. This one will sneak up on you. You will absolutely stumble over the obstacle of completion if you don't pay attention to it. It's like a ninja. It sneaks up on you so bad you think that you need to finish, that you need to be done, that you need to complete the chores, complete the list you initially set, maybe even complete the cleaning of your entire home. Guys, unless you clean your house naked and decide to not eat that day, even if you spend an entire day cleaning your house to completion, it's still not going to be all the way clean. It's just not. You're never going to be done. You're never going to be done. I mean, I hate to be a wet blanket here, but this is just not going to stop. Housework will happen as long as you're breathing. It's just how it is. And for me, I find it incredibly freeing to befriend that. Don't reject it. Don't drown in the forever of it all. Just befriend that. You're never gonna complete your chores. Completion is a bit of a fairytale, and it will be an obstacle that keeps you from doing enough for today or to do some of what you hope to do and then know that you can do some more tomorrow. Like, it's okay. Don't let completion get in the way of doing something, even if it's halfway done. So before you do any sort of, like, daily cleaning routine, remember your obstacles and befriend them. Remember that you will sometimes be overwhelmed by all there is to do, by where to even begin, and that that's okay. Don't talk down to yourself because of it or make yourself feel bad because you got yourself into this mess. You know, you don't have to be perfect and optimal and perform well in your own house at the cost of kindness. Just don't do it. Remember the obstacles of your season of life and be kind in it. Remember that distraction is normal and that you don't have to give yourself a talking to because you were inconsistent in what you wanted to do. Just keep going. Like notice and adjust and keep living. Same goes for perfection and completion. Both of these are elusive and deceptive and will absolutely get in your way. So just pat them on the head, tell yourself the truth about what's going on, and do what you can without sacrificing yourself for it. Watch out for your obstacles. Almost everybody confronts those five. And then you might have other more personal ones that have come to mind as I've been talking. The way you approach them is the same though. Befriend them. Be kind to yourself in it. Notice, adjust, and then keep going. All right, now that all of that is clear, I get so feisty about this. Now that all of that is clear, what do we do with our 20 minutes a day? I am so glad you asked. The answer is you don't start with 20. You start with two. If you do not currently have any sort of like, daily tidying or cleaning rhythm in your home, please do not start with 20 minutes. It'll be way too long. Start with two. Now you might be like, kendra, what do you mean two minutes is nothing? Well, zero minutes is actually nothing. Zero, guilt ridden, perfection seeking, completionist minutes is nothing. Two minutes is actually something. 20 minutes is like so many somethings. But if you do not currently have any sort of daily maintenance rhythm where you're just like tending to the day's detritus, to the trash and the dishes and the mail and the shoes and whatever else. Do not begin big. 20 minutes is big. 2 minutes is small. Start with 2 minutes and then you can slowly add more time. That's how it goes. That's just how it goes. And by slowly adding time, I don't mean like in two days you're at 20 minutes. Make sure two intentional minutes a day happens every day for a while until you don't really think about it anymore. And make sure you value those two minutes and you don't diminish their smallness and the power of their smallness. If you do, you're gonna put way too much pressure on the 20. So just start with 2. Slowly build to 20 or whatever the number, but smaller than you think, especially if you have not started small at all yet. Okay, so that's the amount of time. Now let's talk about the time of day as you create a Little daily maintenance rhythm. When do you want that to happen? Now, that is up to you. If you struggle to implement any sort of daily rhythm, is it because you don't want to and your motivation is low? If that's the case, just befriend your lack of motivation and set yourself a timer. Just do it. That you could also pick up that time of day where your energy is like a little higher. Right now, if you're in an office at your highest point of energy, obviously that can't be when you tend to your home because you're not at home, but when you are at home. At what point of the day when you are at home, are you the most energetic about your responsibilities? At least as energetic as you can muster. Like, it doesn't have to be high energy, just see, like what's the highest you got when you're home. Now, if motivation or energy is not really the issue here, it could be more about the mess rhythm of your home. If you're home all day with little kids, or even just working from home on your own, doing a daily maintenance routine in the middle of the day might not feel as good because you know it's not gonna last very long. It's gonna be messy in, you know, within the hour. So if that's the case, maybe pick a time where the tending will visually last the longest and like allow you to enjoy it for longer. That's probably at the end of the day, like after dinner. Ish. Maybe when kids have gone to bed or work is over or whatever. So if you spend your 20 minutes at like 7 or 8 o', clock, even if you go to bed at 10, you still get a couple of good hours to enjoy a little bit more like warmth and coziness in your home than if you didn't do anything at all. Remember, don't let completion and perfection get in the way here. Like, just do what you can with the time you have. Enjoy the space and whatever tidiness it offers if that helps you and just live your life. It's like, it's fine. But the time of day. Choose a time of day that makes sense either based on your energy or how long you can enjoy the maintenance that you have done. Okay, so that's. We've talked about the length of time, we've talked about the time of day you can choose. Those are, Those are likely easier for you to choose because it's just like one main decision. You can set an alarm that goes off every day or every weekday or every other day at the same time to remind you of your 20 minute little maintenance routine once you choose it and see if it works. And then you can adjust if it doesn't, you know. So, okay, so those two things, the amount of time you spend and the time of day might not be terribly hard. You can start and change your mind if it doesn't work. You can adjust as you go. What's a bit harder is knowing what to do during that time. It's choosing the chores because there are just so many. There are so many that you could do. So here's what I'm encouraging you to do. Okay, let's specifically name what those two to 20 minutes are for. Those minutes are meant to keep your home in a reasonable flow. It's to keep the metaphorical pipes from getting clogged. 20 minutes a day is not where you scrub a toilet. At least, I mean, probably not, because a normal dirty toilet is not going to keep life from moving along. Now you might make a little face when you, when you sit on it. Cause you're like, I need to clean this. But ultimately it's like kind of fine. But things like dirty dishes, dirty clothes, trash, and maybe even piles of stuff that keep growing, those things will keep your home from feeling like it is in a flow. If your trash can is overflowing, if your dishwasher is full of clean dishes and the dirty ones are overflowing on the sink or counter. Cause there's nowhere for them to go. If the laundry has piled up and is overflowing out of the baskets or whatever. And now three or four family members do not have underwear. That's what I'm talking about. That's when things feel stuck and incredibly overwhelming because everything is literally overflowing. So your daily maintenance 20 minute routine that you're going to build up to is to keep those things moving. If you tend to trash dishes and clothes for 20 minutes every day, your house will feel completely different. If you intentionally mark off two to 20 minutes every day to just throw away trash, to just move dirty dishes into the kitchen away from, you know, from all the other rooms that they're in. To empty the dishwasher, to move the load of dirty clothes, to sit in front of the washing machine so that you can do them later. Like you don't even wash them yet. You just move them to the spot. I just cannot explain to you the deep breath that that creates in your home. You think it doesn't matter. You might think that a few minutes every day doing those things is just not Gonna cut it. Now, if you're expecting a perfectly, completely clean home in 20 minutes a day, you're right. That time is not gonna cut it. That. That's not the goal here. The goal here is maintenance. It's keeping things in a flow. It's tending to the things that quickly pile up and clog up and make life suddenly feel really difficult. My guess is you have not experienced this because you're so focused on perfection and completion and the actual cleaning rather than keeping things in a daily maintained flow. Now, let's talk about my house, just for an example. Since everyone does their own laundry now, the laundry is a little bit less of an issue. It wasn't always like that. Obviously, you can listen to old laundry episodes to hear how it used to be different. But because everybody sort of does their own laundry, my daily maintenance is mostly trash and dishes and then stuff that's just, like, out of place. So I'm picking up hair ties and string cheese wrappers and warmly yelling down the hall like, hey, Annie, your slime is out on the table. Are you done playing with it? Sometimes she's not, and it's just like, using the bathroom or something. And other times she is done. So I'll be like, hey, can you come put it away real quick? And she does sometimes grumpily, but, like, so do I. Chores are not always a good time, right? But that kind of just like quick maintenance every day of just like, picking the trash up off the floor, moving the dishes into the dirty dishes zone in the kitchen. Those kinds of things will change your home. And then here's the thing. When you do have a couple of hours on a weekend or whenever to actually clean, to actually tend to the dirt and grime in your house, it will be so much easier because you're already in a rhythm of tending to those regular daily things that get in the way of cleaning. It's so much easier to run a vacuum over a floor that does not have stuff on it right now. One thing I want us to pay attention to is the difference between this daily maintenance routine that I'm talking about and then general housekeeping that already happens naturally. Like, you might already clean up the kitchen after dinner, or somebody in your house does pretty naturally. That's fine. That doesn't necessarily count in your 20 minutes. Or maybe you have a good rhythm of, like, washing a load of clothes every day and you fold them while you watch TV at night. You know, you're already in that rhythm. That doesn't need to be part of your 20 minutes or your two minutes or whatever. Some chores just happen naturally and throughout the day. So don't look at this daily maintenance 20 minutes as the only time that you will tend to your home. There will be other times where singular chores will need to happen and you will do them, or they're just already part of your rhythm. But for the overall, like, care and flow of your home, a daily, at least as daily as you're able, right? A daily, intentional, short burst of time where you honor the smallness of that time where you take care of trash, dishes and clothes and maybe one other thing that's like, essential to your own household flow, like dog hair. That's gonna change your home. It really, really will. You might not think it will because you don't think that general tidying or tending to things that never end is gonna do very much. But it honestly does the most. Like, don't knock it till you try it. It's not all about complicated cleaning routines and like, doing bathrooms on Thursdays. Just, like, tend to the mess in your home for a few minutes and then be done, even if there's still some out, it's okay. Get used to the rhythm of this small amount of time and honor yourself in that. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to try this in the smallest form possible. I want you to consider your home, your current daily rhythms, and make a couple of simple decisions. First, just pick your amount of time. Start with two minutes. If you don't have any minutes yet, even if you think that's too small, I want you to do what you can for two minutes and then stop. But remember, completion is not a thing, so just be done. Especially if you really wanna be. You'll get another two minutes tomorrow. Or like in the second half of the day. You could do this a couple times a day if you wanted to. Like, just. You can slowly build up to more minutes, or you can stay at two. Some seasons only you get two. That's okay. So that's the first thing is pick your amount of time. Next, pick a time of day and pick a time that gives you the most bang. For your maintenance buck, I would encourage you to set an alarm on your phone to begin and set it so that it goes off every single day at the same time. You could make the label and the sound of the alarm something that energizes you or makes you laugh rather than makes you sad. My daughter, oh my gosh, she hates to read so much. And when she sets her alarm to Read for school. The end sound is this, like, awful blaring siren thing. She picked the worst sound because she thinks the task is the worst thing. So, I mean, like, you do you girl. But I am here to tell the rest of you listening that maybe another tactic, it could be more beneficial, at least the one that, like, gets you into the thing. Like, pick an alarm sound that gets you into it. And then if you. When you set your timer, maybe if you want to set a crazy alarm, siren alarm at the end like Annie does, then you can pick your Blair and go for it. Now, as far as what you do within the amount of time that you have decided at the time of day that you have chosen, start small. Please start small. I think there are just a handful of essential tasks that would work in most homes, and you can pick which one. Like, start with just one of these that feels like it works the best for you and your home. And then as you slowly add time, you can slowly add tasks. Okay, you're gonna be doing this a long time. You can take your time figuring out what works for you. Let it build naturally. Okay. Let it grow. So the first one is trash. Like, go around the house with, like, a little grocery bag or an actual big trash bag and just pick up all the trash. You can empty, you know, the little bathroom and bedroom trash cans into your big trash bag if you want. But really, you're just picking up trash around the house and keeping that moving pretty much every day. That's hugely helpful. Another essential task is gathering all the dirty dishes. They could be all over the kitchen. They could be all over the actual house. Just gather them up, put them on one spot on your counter, and then leave it. Now, you can, of course, keep going and put them in a dishwasher or wash some things if you want to, but you can also just leave them. You can leave them there, but by bringing the dirty dishes to one spot, you are still keeping things in a flow. You're still keeping things moving. They still have to get to the kitchen, right? Another essential task is just putting things away. So you grab stuff off the floor, hang coats back on the hook, move the mail from the kitchen counter to the designated place for the mail. Just put things away. That is hugely helpful because the rhythm of putting things in their place will, number one, illuminate what doesn't actually have a place, which is going to make your tidying, like, extra hard if things don't all have a place. And then two, it will clear the deck for things like vacuuming or Dusting on days when you do have time for those tasks. Okay, so trash, dirty dishes, just putting things away. And then finally, the essential task that's true for most homes is tending to dirty clothes. So you can literally do the smallest thing to move the laundry along. Remember, we're just keeping it in a flow. We're just keeping it moving. It's like our lazy genius of the week a couple weeks ago. Do you remember? It was our first voice memo, lazy genius of the week, where she shared. She checks on the laundry every other day. She doesn't necessarily do a load, but she's checking on what needs to move along. You can be that small in it. Just check. Just look and know. So you can bring a full hamper to sit in front of the washer and leave it. You can put your dirty clothes that are on the floor in the hamper. Be done. You can drag the basket of clean, folded laundry in front of your kid's dresser so they'll put it away when they get home from school and be done. All you're doing in your small amount of time, in your two to 20 minutes, is the most essential maintenance to keep your home in a flow. You're not cleaning, you're not organizing. You're just tidying and moving things along. If you spend two to 20 minutes doing this kind of thing every day, not to completion, but to when the timer stops, your home will start to change. Your attitude toward your chores will start to change honestly, because of how much easier they might be to do once daily maintenance becomes part of your rhythm. Now, is this fail safe? No. If you have toddlers, nothing is. But even with toddlers, you can still value two minutes. Like, every bit helps. It really does. Every bit helps. I cannot emphasize the power of smallness in this. Stop trying to think that you need to clean everything to completion and perfection all the time and that anything less than that is some sort of failure. It is not. It is absolutely not. So pay attention to your obstacles. Don't get downtrodden by being overwhelmed. Don't disparage your season of life or expect unreasonable routines that don't fit in that season of life right now. Befriend distraction and inconsistency. Don't let them be the bee in your bonnet that the productivity gurus want them to be. Notice, adjust and move on. And stop letting perfection and completion, stop letting those keep you from doing tiny things that make a difference. Do a tiny thing. Do two minutes and stop. Stop thinking that that's not enough. Stop thinking that that means that you're not doing a good job at this. It's just not true. And it's keeping you stuck. Okay, so once you are thinking about those things, choose your length of time. Start small. If you haven't done it at all, start with two minutes. Choose your time of day, set an alarm on your phone, and then maintain. Of the four essential tasks trash dishes, putting things away, and dirty clothes, choose the one to begin that will make the most difference in your home as you start. And then over days and even weeks, you can add the next most helpful one to the mix. Keep adding slowly over time, not doing too much too fast as you let this daily maintenance routine grow. If you go too fast, it's not going to stick. If you add too much, you're going to run out of steam. So remember, you're going to do this forever, so don't rush it. It's okay to take your time, and that's chores for normals. How 20 minutes can be Enough this episode is sponsored by Wayfair. There is something about the start of a new year that makes me want to cozy up my space. Not overhaul it. Just make it feel a little more like home again after the holidays. And Wayfair is perfect for that. They've got everything in one place, from cozy bedding and kitchen essentials to storage solutions and decor that feels like you. Over the years, I found some great pieces on Wayfair. Mirrors, furniture, a few pieces of art, and every time the process has been easy and genuinely enjoyable. It's one of the few sites where I don't get overwhelmed, and I almost always find something that fits both my style and my budget. Wayfair makes it easy to find just what you need, whether it's a small refresh or something more. Every style, every budget, every room in your house. Get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, Every Home this episode is sponsored by Square. There's this coffee shop downtown that I love. It's called Northern Roots and they use square. The checkout is so seamless, I get a receipt emailed to me like before. I even grab a napkin and the whole thing just feels put together. That's what Square does. It helps businesses feel like they've got it together. It's a full business platform that keeps things moving without a dozen different tools from payments and inventory to staffing and all online orders, Square simplifies the everyday so business owners can focus on what matters. Square helps you run your business more smoothly, bringing payments, operations and insights together in one place so you're ready for whatever's next. Right now, listeners can get up to $200 off square hardware when you sign up at square.com Go lazygenius. That's sq U-A-R-E.com Go get started with Square and build a setup that works the way you do. All right, let's get into today's a little extra something. Like I said, I originally was gonna share my five favorite convenience food items and then three convenient things that I don't really buy at all that a lot of other people do. Y', all, it was so long, it was like an episode. So instead, I'm gonna share my absolute favorite convenience food right now and then I will share the longer list in a couple of weeks because do you know what is not convenient? Listening to an entire lazy genius episode and then getting another one. Because I'm like weirdly obsessed with convenience foods right now. So my favorite convenience food, at least right now, is the pre pulled rotisserie chicken from Costco. Listen, getting a rotisserie chicken is already convenient. I mean, you didn't have to cook a chicken. It's just, there you go. But I hate taking the meat off a chicken like so much. And I don't like the rotisserie chicken skin either. Like, it smells weird to me for some reason. My hands break out when I break down the chicken. Like I just don't have time for that. I mean, I mean, technically I do, but I would rather spend my time in other ways. So I love getting the pre pulled rotisserie chicken in like the little vacuum sealed pack that usually has an expiration date like two months from when I buy it. It is magical. I use rotisserie chicken for a family favorite dinner of chicken soup. I mostly love it. For my own lunches, I'll make chicken salad barbecue chicken wraps. If I have pickled red cabbage around, I'll toss it in a salad or with like pesto and pasta. My daughter Annie actually really loves rotisserie chicken as a snack, which cracks me up. We'll go with it though. I just love those packs of chicken that require zero work from me. The convenience is definitely worth the extra cost and I love it so much now. It does not have to be worth the cost to you. And I bless you in your chicken endeavors, whatever they may or may not be. But as for me and my house, we will purchase the most convenient, delicious version of cooked and ready to eat chicken possible. So we have a what's Saving my Life? Episode coming up in a couple of weeks. And spoiler, one of the things saving me a life right now are my particular selection of convenience foods. So I will share my whole list then, so you have that to look forward to. And now for our lazy Genius of the week. This week we have Natalie. Natalie says dusting is a rarity in our home, but we do have a fair amount of surfaces that show dust really badly. And I do love a clean, dark wood end table with a shiny lamp when I sit down at the end of the day and notice dusty surfaces. And it does bother me a little. So lately when I take off socks that have not gotten much wear or never went into any shoes, I use them to dust a surface nearby and throw them in a laundry basket. They're as good as any microfiber cloth. And there's no need to put that task on a list anywhere. There's no need to put that task on a list anywhere. Do you hear that? You just do it when you think about it. Do it when you notice it. Do it with the sort of clean sock on your foot. I love this. I also just love a sock puppet dusting moment. This was a savior for our family. When my kids were little and like, we were always home, I would give my boys socks on their hands and be like, okay, go put like magic spells on all the furniture. Now, they would not do a very great job, but perfection is not the goal here, right? It was better than nothing and it got rid of more dust than not dusting wood. Plus, I had fun. They were part of things and it was small enough to do. Natalie is doing the same thing. Just notice what you appreciate, tend to it in a small, easy, sustainable way, and then be done. And then just be done. I love it, Natalie. It's so good. Thank you for sharing and congratulations on being the lazy Genius of the week. All right, let's close with a mini pep talk for when you feel overwhelmed by the world. I do not need to tell you that there's a lot happening right now. There is fear and heartbreak, and frankly, it is hard to know what to do with all of it. If you need more robust encouragement in this area than a mini pep talk can ever give, you can go to episode 427 when you're overwhelmed by the world. I apply the 13 lazy genius principles to figuring out how to navigate the world and all that we're processing. And I hope that episode helps you. But for today, for right now, I think my encouragement to you is to do what you can to control the timing of what you hear. You can't control what you hear, but you can control the timing of it. You know, the news is overwhelming on its own, but for me, when it arrives on my mental doorstep in the form of like news alerts and an Instagram algorithm that does not have my mental health or capacity in mind, I can spiral really quickly. So I wonder what it would mean for you to do what you can to control the timing of what you hear. For me, it's keeping Instagram off my phone for the majority of the week. It means getting my news from reputable sources that are not trying to activate my rage and from turning any sort of news alert off on my phone. I still learn what's going on in the world and I do what I can with what I hear, but I also do as much as possible on my own timing, with my own capacity in mind. It's so easy to become overwhelmed by the world simply with what is happening in it. But the pile on of the Internet on top of that, it can be untenable. At least it is for me. So. So if you're feeling that way, you might wanna listen to the episode on being overwhelmed by the world for, you know, like I said, for kind of a longer, more robust set of help. But for today, I would just be proud that you're human and you're hurt over things that are happening. That's beautiful and we should be. And also remember that you're human and you need to be wise in how often you emotionally engage in what's happening. So make decisions that allow you to be informed and to maintain the energy that you want to give to the issues and the needs that matter to you, while also trying to pay attention to the timing of those things, do what you can to control the timing of them, and that can allow you to more wisely invest in the involvement in them. And it's also really hard. I just want to say that it's a really hard time right now. One day at a time, one decision at a time, one deep breath at a time. And as our friend Shannon Martin says, to find the counterweights, don't just like dive into all that is hard, but you have to balance it with things that are beautiful in your life. So find what those are. Those can have any timing. You don't have to control the timing on those. Enjoy those whenever you can, and that is a mini pep talk for when you're overwhelmed by the world. If this episode was helpful to you, or if you have been looking for a way to support the show, I would be so grateful. If you would share this episode with a friend. Or if all your friends are already lazy geniuses, you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Every mention matters. So thank you so much for supporting the show. This podcast is part of the Odyssey Family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest Lazy Listens email that goes out every other Friday. Head to thelazygeniuscollective.com listens to get it. Thanks y' all for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter, lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week.