Are you suspicious that your kids’ HSP tendencies are actually coming from YOU? When they come to you complaining about the bathroom smell (or the burned food) or that nasty-smelling store in the mall, are you nodding your head right alongside them?
Now, let’s apply this to the household chores: are your highly sensitive tendencies actually contributing to cleaning-chore-avoidance on your part?
Let’s break down the why, the what, and the fix for sensory struggles with everyday chores – when it’s you, the mom, who’s affected.
Do chores trigger your 5 senses?
First off, I want you to look for sensory triggers. In yourself.
Can’t handle the vacuum’s noise? Ask a kid to do it (or wear headphones).
Can’t stand the smell of your basic, everyday Walmart cleaners? Admit it and buy something with essential oils you actually enjoy – and chalk it up to your health. (Literally!)
Can’t stand the feel of working with cold, slimy, raw meat? Wear those disposable gloves. Give yourself permission to buy a whole box, and throw them away after each use, every time.
Are you getting the idea? It’s not a matter of telling yourself you’re bad and you have to retrain yourself.
It’s a matter of working around what you CAN do, and choosing to find another way to do (or delegate!) the couple things that give you a really hard time.
Anything coming to mind that hits one of those trigger points for you?
If you’ve got a particularly nasty bathroom cleaner, and the fumes are really getting to you, I’d encourage you to look into making your own at home (or buying a natural-based cleaner online), just to get away from the scents that either trigger you or send you straight into headache mode.
I get it – there are some toilet or tub stains that just won’t come out with your run-of-the-mill Walmart cleaners. But if your nose can’t handle the bleach, why keep doing it to yourself?
Go try out those popular essential-oil-scented cleaners, or mix up your own recipe with vinegar or rubbing alcohol – you’ll be surprised at how less stinky those strong-smelling solutions are, compared to man-made chemicals!
The point is, you do what you need to do. Not just to keep your house clean, but to ensure you don’t get a headache along with it.
And if you have to spend more on cleaners to achieve that “don’t mind cleaning day anymore” effect, it’s completely worth it.
I can tell you, based on my own experience, when I switched most of our daily-use cleaning solutions to homemade ones, I handled the smells a lot better. (And so did all of my kids who were old enough to scrub bathrooms at that point!)
In fact, they complain if we ever run out and have to resort to a store cleaner – they can’t stand the fumes!
So part of how I’d coach you through the daily chores, if I were talking to you, is to look at what YOU need. Personalize all those cleaning routines and Pinterest printables and essential-oil-scented cleaners to YOU.
Because that’s what the foundation of coaching is – seeing what supports you. And sometimes it takes an outsider to find it.
It’s not a matter of retraining yourself. It’s a matter of working around the couple of things that give you a hard time.
Are you out of energy by now?
Second, I want you to look for time-of-day mismatches.
Maybe you’re *capable* of shaping the rolls, but by that late in the afternoon you’re all tired out and just don’t want to do it. What you really need then is 40 minutes with your tea and your journal.
You know what? It’s perfectly okay to ask your 10-year-old to make 12 “anything he wants” bread shapes while you go off and recharge – it’s well within his capability, and he doesn’t have to know you’re asking because you’re at the end of your rope!
He’ll just think it’s another “life skills chore” (worst case) or love the chance to create whatever *he* wants (if he’s big on sensory activities himself!). Win-win!
It really, truly, doesn’t all have to be done by YOU.
You ARE allowed to run out of steam sometimes.
So either move the chore to a different time of day – do the rolls *have* to be fresh from the oven? – or get a kid to do it.
It’s that simple.
Can you swap with someone else?
Finally, look for chore adjustments between or among family members.
Maybe *you* don’t mind running to the local grocery store – you know the layout – but you hate driving to an unfamiliar part of town and rummaging for deals.
Well, have you asked your husband if he minds doing that once-in-a-while errand for you, while you deal with something else for him?
Maybe there’s something he’s been doing around the house (or the car, or the yard, or the computer research) that he’d really rather get rid of, that *you* don’t mind doing.
There’s no shame in making adjustments – even if they’re unusual-household-role adjustments – to get the final result of a smoothly running, functional family!
Here’s how we do this in our family: if it’s a part of town my husband usually goes to, I let him handle it – and if it’s going to require a clothing store trip, I take care of it.
(He doesn’t really like clothes shopping, for some reason!)
One of my daughters hates scrubbing yucky, grimy things – like, ahem, toilets – but her brother doesn’t seem to mind doing it.
Guess who’s doing the bathroom cleaning? Not the high-maintenance one!
She’s off sweeping – something the toilet-scrubber can’t seem to get a handle on.
Do I care? No, not really. Time enough to make them learn each other’s chores in high school. For now, they’re contributing to the family (and doing a darn good job of it).
All because I let them stay in their own lane.
Didn’t frustrate them by forcing them to do something they really had a block about. (Hey, that’s exactly what you’re trying to UN-learn for yourself!)
So what about you – what are you thinking of delegating today? Which chore just grates on your mind whenever you put it on the to-do list, and you spend the rest of the day thinking up ways to get out of it “just this once”?
Yeah, that one. You need to permanently hand it off to someone else in the family, or move it to a different time of day.
Don’t let “shoulds” distract you.
Don’t let bathroom cleaning ruin your life any longer.
Take action, make a change, and fix it.
You’ve got this.
