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Teachers, not only are margins needed in our professional life, but to live peacefully, read to learn what you can do to create margins at home.
Is your home a source of chaos for you? Do you have too many projects and not enough time/money/willingness/energy to complete them? Whatever happened to "Home Sweet Home?" Consider a few of these tips to regain the peaceful productivity you yearn for at home by making sure you have margins*.
- Clean once a week.
If you clean more than once a week, or think about cleaning more than once a week, you'll drive yourself crazy with cleaning. You should set the "standard" for how long this takes (this means you need to actually time yourself) and then block that much time on your calendar every week. *Everyone* who lives in the home should be a participant in the 90-minute or 3-hour or 32-minute cleaning time. Children can be set to complete age-appropriate tasks and can learn that helping means allowance. Even if you hire a cleaning service, there is still a certain amount of cleaning that must be done by the members of the household. Everyone should help with this.
- Hire someone else to clean your house.
All the big jobs can be done by this person and it reduces chaos, strain, stress, and fussing around the house. Everybody who hires a cleaning service believes it to be money well spent. Many will forego some other expense in order to keep their cleaning person or cleaning service. They know that the additional margins of time and energy that this affords them are well worth the financial investment.
- Have a "charity day" at least once or twice a year.
Everyone in the home should find several items to give to charity. Clothing (both outgrown or unworn), books, home decorations, small appliances (in working condition), toys and other such items can be put to good use in someone else's home. Reducing the clutter reduces the chaos.
- Eat together.
No one eats until everyone is seated. Initiate (and maintain) pleasant conversations. Avoid drilling one another with punitive questions, e.g., "Have you finished your homework?" or "Did you clean up your room yet?" or "Have you called about the new phone line, yet?!" Stress surrounding the dinner table (or lunch or breakfast) detracts from the margins that one's home is meant to offer.
- Limit household debt.
Nothing is more stressful than dreading the mailbox and its inevitable bills. Avoid buying anything on time payments.
- Lower your voice.
Do you really want to sound cranky with every word you say? My brother (who has five children) has a rule in his house that the person who is speaking must go to the room of the person he/she wants to talk to. This limits yelling from room to room. It's very nice, actually.
- Get a pet and treat it well.
Then treat your family with the same courtesy. On the other hand, if having a pet would add negative stress, thereby lessening the margins, then don't get a pet--or limit the number of pets. Still treat your family with courtesy, however.
- Set boundaries about your home.
If you are a person who considers your home to be a haven (like I do), then you will want to make it clear that others aren't allowed to just drop by and come in. Just because someone rings the doorbell doesn't mean you have to answer.
- Let your answering machine or voice mail take your calls.
Even with the no-call lists you may have put yourself on, many groups are getting around that rule and are still calling with sales pitches, surveys, recorded calls, and the like. Don't answer the phone unless you are fine with being interrupted from whatever else you were doing.
- Have a space in your home that is YOUR space.
It's not anyone else's. It might be an entire room or floor, or it might be one small area. It's yours and it has only the items in it that you love and that bring you peace. You deserve that and it can be your sanctuary. If others in your home need a special place, see what you can do to support them in that effort as well.
Your home (be it a palatial mansion, apartment, condo, starter home, double-wide, garage apartment, or whatever) is the places where you should have some margins. It's in your home that you can nurture yourself to be able to deal with the rest of life's chaos. Do everything in your power to
deliberately
create home margins.
*Margins are "the space that once existed between ourselves and our limits. It's something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations" (Richard Swenson).
Margins are "the difference between calm and crazed." To receive weekly tips about margins, just go to Pumpernickel Publishing where you can sign up to receive one tip per week in one or more of the following series:
**Tips: Creating Margins in Your Personal Life
**Tips: Creating Margins in Your Professional Life
**Tips: Creating Time, Energy, & Life Margins: Tips for Teachers
Tip: If you are interested in more than one, it's better to sign up for one at a time...or at least only sign up for one today and then a different one tomorrow. That way, you really will only get one tip on a given day and you'll have a chance to implement that before you get the next one.
Find other helpful ideas check out
**From the Desk of Meggin McIntosh
(c) 2008 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., "The Ph. D. of Productivity"(tm)
Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do via seminars, workshops, writing, coaching, & consulting.
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