30 | The Four Rules of Fair Play
30 | The Four Rules of Fair Play
Today’s episode is the second of two introductory episodes about The Fair Play Method. The Fair Play Method is a trading card game designed to rebalance the chore load within the home so that everyone saves time and mental energy. First, I will give an outline of the basics of the game. Then, I share my take on Eve Rodsky’s four rules of Fair Play: All Time is Created Equal, Start Where You are Now, Establish Your Values and Standards, and Reclaim Your Right to be Interesting.
Getting curious about each of these rules will help you understand your inner obstacles, and it will move you one step closer towards more efficient household management and connection with your partner.
The Fair Play Method has proven successful and adaptable to various household structures. Beginning the conversation will help you learn so much about yourself, your partner, and your collective vision for your home life. I’ve been on the Fair Play journey for the last few years and highly recommend it.
MENTIONED:
The Fair Play Website
Episode 29: An Introduction to The Fair Play Method
RESOURCE:
Ready to lighten your mental + emotional load?
Download your Fair Play Cards + Activity Guide + join my email community.
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
Come say hello on Instagram
Follow me on Facebook
See what I’m up to on LinkedIn
Join my workshops.
LIKE THIS EPISODE?
I invite you to share, rate, review and follow my show. Also, join the conversation by connecting with me on Instagram @apleasantsolution.
-
Intro: Welcome to a Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy. I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast, we'll go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to Episode 30, “The Four Rules of Fair Play.” Hey y’all! As a professional organizer, my brain loves to hop to the end goal of any project, puzzle, or game. It automatically wants to know what the finished product will look like, even if I’m not 100% sure of HOW I’ll get there. I think many of us are like that. The objective or purpose behind a task gives our brain a sense of security that there is a destination, and things are no different with The Fair Play Method. Because, right now, you may be feeling a little resentful. Right now, you may be keeping score around how much your partner contributes to the household or parenting tasks. Right now, you may wonder why it’s really worth attempting to rebalance the chore load in your home. I hear you, if that’s the case.
So, I invite you to jump to the end – the place where your home life operates a bit more smoothly, and your mental load isn’t keeping you up at night. What feels different about that lifestyle? Are you doing less? Is your partner or housemate doing more? How do you communicate with one another? How do you feel around one another at the end of the day. Breathe that in for a moment. Sometimes we get so caught up in the discomfort of the way things are that it’s a challenge to even begin to imagine them in a different light. When Eve Rodsky researched and outlined the Fair Play Method, she consciously chose the word “equity” to describe that end place. She found that for most couples, “equity” looked like splitting the chore load either 80/20 or 70/30 at any given time. A more equitable distribution of responsibilities resulted in folks being more present, more focused, and securing more free time each week. I’d offer that my husband and I have settled somewhere around the 70/30 mark, and it’s been a game-changer for me. I’ve let go of any guilt or shame around taking time for myself because the time is simply more available to me now.
So, on today’s episode I’ll touch upon the four rules of Fair Play: All Time is Created Equal, Start Where You are Now, Establish Your Values and Standards, and Reclaim Your Right to be Interesting. Eve shares several excellent and humorous stories in her books around each of these four rules, so I suggest you pick up a copy. When I work with individuals and couples, these rules often bubble to the surface. Each of us comes to our household and partnership with our internalized values around time usage and the standards of care within the home, so know that if you find yourself bristling with any of these rules, it’s understandable.
Before I dive into the rules, let me share a bit about how you play the game. Eve identified 100 commonly performed tasks around the home. These tasks have been divided into suits, just like regular playing cards. There are home tasks, out tasks, caregiving tasks, magic cards, and wild cards – which are basically random or infrequently occurring life transitions. If you don’t currently care for children, there are 40 cards that immediately can be removed. At the start of play, you’ll actually WANT to remove as many cards as possible. Through conversation with your I encourage you to be ruthless in determining which cards are not important or relevant to your home. If you don’t value a particular task, you can set it aside. This helps narrow down all the total number of tasks that are available to share. “Daily grind” cards, or those tasks that are mundane, repetitive, or draining are marked with a coffee cup. There are 30 daily grinds, and working through these tasks give almost immediate relief.
When you begin Fair Play, it’s important to understand that no one task or set of cards is held by one person infinitely. They’re traded. This approach is revolutionary because it shakes up the default within your home. Sure, each of you can have preferences – I don’t mind doing laundry – but that doesn’t mean I’m responsible for it always and forever. In our house we each hold the laundry card. I walked my kids through the laundry process week in and week out when they were young, so now it happens with ease. Now, each of us is responsible for our own clean clothes each week. They now know that laundry doesn’t just invisibly “happen.” If my family members want and value clean clothes, then they better make sure to wash them AND put them away.
My time is valuable. Your time is valuable. Everyone’s time is valuable. There’s no price that can be put on someone’s time because no one knows exactly how many minutes they’ll have over the course of their precious life. Which brings me to Fair Play rule number one, All Time is Created Equal. This is my absolute favorite rule because it requires each of us to stretch in new ways. Unlearning of past beliefs, like the adage “time is money,” is required. This is a huge mindset shift AND it comes with plenty of rewards. Historically, women’s time wasn’t valued in the same way as men’s. Women weren’t allowed to work outside the home, paid jobs were reserved for men. Women were encouraged to care for children and to see the home as their realm of influence. Generation after generation women were kept from earning money in exchange for their time, or they were underpaid for their services. This wage gap persists to this day.
My husband, for example, wouldn’t have been able to advance in his career without my dozen years of unpaid labor given at home. The minutes I spent maintaining our home, our budget, and raising our children moved our collective household forward. Again, your time is measured in minutes (not dollars) and your partner’s time is too. Sure, one of you may work for pay; one of you may not. One of you may be paid more than the other. Yet Eve’s point is that unpaid labor still counts as work because it takes time. Time is the common currency we all share, and the more we make visible the unpaid, unseen tasks, the more that we can value them for the overall impact they make in our society. Think about it for a moment, what would our societies look and feel like without the unpaid labor of every single woman and caregiver? Their time, YOUR time, and contributions are equal. Many of us are time-starved and what we seek is more time for ourselves and our loved ones.
So, I invite you to consider IF you believe that All Time is Equal. It’s a great conversation topic to have with your friends, partners, and kids. You can make comparisons about your own types of time too: your free time versus your work time… do you consider them equal? Your free time versus time in service of your household or others. Your time dedicated to your kids versus time dedicated to your partner. I encourage you to reflect and see what comes up for you. The Fair Play Method invites you to step into a framework where all time – no matter its type – is equal.
The second rule of Fair Play is Start Where You are Now. If you’re listening to this particular episode, give yourself credit and claim that you’ve already started. You’re becoming aware of your inner obstacles and you’re becoming aware of the possibilities of sharing the load. You’re more organized than you think, therefore you’re ready to start! The best tools for initiating the conversation with your partner or housemates are curiosity and compassion. Ask open-ended questions around the dynamic in their childhood home. Talk about the mood or vibe you want for your home. Select one card or home task where everyone already feels successful and break down WHY that task seems to be working. Discover where you’re already on the same page and notice where you aren’t.
One place we started getting on the same page was around calendar keeping. My husband and I check in each week about who’s driving, where we’ll be working, and if one of us has an essential commitment that can’t be missed. Talking frequently – even every couple of days – cuts down on frustration because we’re not assuming that the other person is driving or free. We always ask. Being aware of the assumptions that you’re making as a partner is super helpful. If your goal is to be less available on demand, then consider your partner’s time in the same light. Chat about whether the default between you all should be “always available” or “most likely busy.” This is a great example of where we’re moving forward without intentional conversation then going back to repair the relationship when the incorrect assumption has been made. What’s one less assumption you can make about household responsibilities this week?
Rule number three of The Fair Play Method is Establish Your Values and Standards. This topic deserves an entire episode on its own because we rarely take a pause to review our values and standards. You’ve internalized your current values and standards throughout your lifetime. They’ve come from family members, your community, your culture, your religion, and from the media. Many are simply an assumed default of what is “right” or the “proper way” it is to raise children, be a good partner or professional, or what it means to care for your home. If you find yourself occasionally rolling your eyes or gritting your teeth at your partner’s standards, this might be the perfect rule for you to start with.
I’ve learned that my husband has his own set of standards when it comes to housekeeping and tidiness. Although I’ve always gotten the sense that our standards were relatively similar, now that we’re engaged in long distance parenting and marriage, it’s really shining through. For years, I was the default housekeeper. Fortunately, he never complained if the shower got a little grimy or dust was visible on surfaces. Now that we maintain multiple households, he hires a housekeeper to maintain the apartments. Even though he doesn’t cook as frequently as I do, he values a clean kitchen. He reminds the kiddos to change their linens. He supervises the trash removal on a consistent basis.
You may assume that your housemates’ standards are somehow different than yours, however when you begin to share the load, you all have the opportunity to REDEFINE what the words clean, tidy, or done mean in your home. You may discover that other folks value clean floors, they’ve just never spoken about it. I discovered that my perfectionism – my staying on top of the cleaning – communicated to my husband that his input wasn’t needed. Of course that wasn’t true, but sometimes our behaviors inadvertently communicate that our standards and values should be the dominant standards and values. This pushes out or diminishes the contributions of others. Talking about these topics when cognition is high and emotional energy is low in the household gives everyone a chance to learn what the absolute bare minimum standard is when it comes to any specific task. So, I’d love to challenge you to pick one task, like screen time for kiddos or household budgeting, and to define your own standards around this area. Investigate what you’ve been taught, then for a bonus, ask your partner.
The last of the four rules is Reclaim Your Right to Be Interesting. If you follow me on Instagram, you’d know that I love visual art. Before I was home for a dozen years, I was on the path to becoming an art curator. Let me be clear, I am not a maker of art, but I do know what I like, and I try to capture interesting images as much as possible. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve consciously sought out art museums, bought tickets to the ballet, and found creative spaces and moments when traveling. Reclaiming your right to be interesting is about having one or more interests beyond your role as a parent, professional, or partner. It’s about carving out time to be uniquely you.
Human beings are naturally inquisitive and creative. Each of us has a set of things that lights us up or sparks our interest inside. I adore learning. I adore nature. What do you adore? Deep breath. It’s totally okay if you’ve forgotten. Parenthood and midlife have a way of distancing us from our inner landscape. If you’re bogged down by your to-do list or find yourself in a season of treading water, this rule may seem distant. However, I’d offer that it’s one of the most direct ways to stop treading water. When you’re in a cycle of overworking, taking a break to do something creative can re-energize you. The more you create mini-moments where you’re reenergized and your deeper self is nurtured, the more your brain will seek those moments.
The next time you’re in the shower, taking a walk, or are habitually urged to check social media, ask yourself what you USED to like doing. Think back to a time where you used to have something to talk about other than logistics. And remember, quiet your inner critic if they pop up with any type of self-judgment. These rules of Fair Play are meant to give you pause and help you connect with your partner around the current inequitable chore load in your home. When you take time to fill your cup, pursue a past interest, or start a new hobby, you have more to share with others. Being present with another type of pursuit lightens your mental load, and it feels amazing.
So, to recap, the four rules are: All Time is Created Equal, Start Where You are Now, Establish Your Values and Standards, and Reclaim Your Right to be Interesting. Taking time with each of these rules is the “how” I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. They’re what move you and your household step-by-step towards a lighter mental load and shared responsibilities. I’ve been on this journey for the last handful of years, and I’d highly recommend it. The Fair Play Method has proven successful and adaptable to a variety of household structures. You’ll learn so much about yourself, your partner, and your collective vision for your homelife. I’d love to know your obstacles and wins, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. Talk to y’all soon.
Outro: Thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you liked this episode and know of just one other person who'd get value from it too, I invite you to share it with them. I'd be more than grateful. I'd love to stay connected with you too. Make sure to follow this podcast to connect with me on Instagram @apleasantsolution and join my community at apleasantsolution.com. Talk to y'all soon and remember, you are more organized than you think.
