66 | Defining Your Minimum Standard of Care
66 | Defining Your Minimum Standard of Care
Do you find yourself re-washing dishes or re-doing laundry because it wasn't done 'your way?’ It's time to redefine your home life. In this episode, we’ll explore the concept of a 'minimum standard of care'. It's something that many of us live by without even realizing it—a baseline set of expectations for how our living spaces should look, feel, and function.
I'll guide you through understanding your own standards, how to communicate them, and how to negotiate with your loved ones. No more silent battles over unfolded laundry or the 'right' way to load the dishwasher. Tune in to learn how to create a shared vision of a tidy, functional home.
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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. And 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 66, “Defining Your Minimum Standard of Care.” Hey y’all! Whether you know it or not (or have admitted it to yourself or not), you have a baseline set of expectations for how your home should look, feel, and run. You have a baseline set of expectations of how much others should participate in the care and keeping of your household. You have a predetermined way that you think things should be done as well. These expectations are unique to you. They’ve been developing since you were small, and over time you’ve absorbed norms that have been communicated to you via your family of origin, the household you grew up in, your larger community, and or the media you consume. Alternatively, the same is true for your partner, your parents, or your housemates. They’ve developed and internalized their sense of the ‘right way’ to keep a house clean, tidy, and functional over time too.
These standards act as guardrails. They help you identify when you’re on track and when you’re off track. For example, let’s take laundry. You have preferences about sorting colors and fabrics (or not). You have preferences on whether items should be washed on cold, warm, or hot. You have preferences on the type of detergent used and how much is enough and how much it too much. (I’m chuckling because my husband thinks a couple of detergent pods make sense. I think one is plenty in most cases.) You also know how long it’s okay to leave wet clothes in the machine before putting them in the dryer. If items have been sitting wet in the machine too long, you may decide to run them through the wash cycle again. Similarly, you may want clothes removed from the dryer within 30 minutes of cycle completion or not care in the least bit how long they sit in the dryer once dry.
Within the category of laundry alone, you may have a set of standards and expectations. You know what you like and what you prefer, yet have you ever considered what’s the bare minimum you could tolerate? In today’s episode I’m going to outline the concept of your minimum standard of care for home-related tasks, encourage you to get curious about any obstacles that may come up (hello perfectionist tendencies!), and invite you to explicitly define and communicate your minimum standard to those you live with.
This topic gets to the core of what’s known to us but often causes confusion and disagreement with others. When doing the research that led to the creation of The Fair Play Method, Eve Rodsky found that couples were “forever arguing and disagreeing over how things ought to be done.” That’s because we’re not taught to talk about or share why we want things a certain way within our home. Nor are we taught to negotiate with others around our standards in a way that normalizes that there is no universal, one ‘right way’ to manage a home. This is important stuff, y’all. It requires you to be both self-reflective and flexible. It requires you to get curious about what your standards are and why they exist. It requires you to acknowledge that your partner and housemates come from a different perspective that is equally valid. Defining your minimum standard of care creates fodder for conversation that can lead to better understanding and connection within the home. It also lays the groundwork for trading tasks more equitably so that both partners can trust that the work of running your household gets done effectively and efficiently because it’s been explicitly discussed.
So, let me start by defining the term “minimum standard of care.” When I’m working with individuals or facilitating between couples using the Fair Play Method, I share that it’s the absolute baseline for completion of a task – like laundry – that when met allows all the adults in the household to go to bed soundly at night. No one’s up worrying whether or not the task got done. No one feels the need to follow up or go back through and re-do the task because they’re thinking it’s not been done well enough. It’s done. It may not be perfect, yet by meeting the explicitly defined baseline, the task gets marked off the list for the day. Moving on.
This definition, by the way, is the collectively defined household minimum standard of care or MSC. It’s where you eventually want to get to with your partner. Yet, before you can get to that space of agreement with your partner, each of you needs to get curious about the internalized standards you may have so that you better understand yourself and your perspective. There are lots of ways to approach this question of home management and care, including considering what you observed in your own home growing up.
For example, I don’t have memories of our house being particularly messy or unclean growing up. That being said, I loved being outside. I loved playing in the dirt, climbing trees, rolling around in the grass, and traversing the woods. Our home had to have been dirty at times. I’m confident I tracked dust, dirt, grass, pollen, and everything that was outside inside. I mean, come on. I grew up in rural West Virginia.
I do remember eating healthy foods, and I remember eating less healthy foods: fried bologna, fried chicken livers, Vienna sausages, hotdogs with baked beans, and probably the occasional can of fried Spam. I can have judgments about that now, as an adult, yet as a kid, I didn’t think twice about it. I remember my dad cooking and I remember my mom cooking. I remember my dad loving things tidier and cleaner, whereas my mom cared a little less. I remember there being dedicated spaces for playing, eating, relaxing, doing homework, etc. When I think back and consider things from that childhood point of view, I generally have positive memories. And I was a child – with a child’s point of view. I didn’t have opinions about what our home should look like, should feel like, or who should be doing what. It just was.
Yet, I can’t dismiss the fact that these elements of my home environment influenced my minimum standards as an adult. Now, I can tolerate a bit of dust, mud, grass, etc. and love being outdoors. I can tolerate a bit of processed food, yet it’s not my preference. I do want there to be dedicated spaces for playing, eating, relaxing, and doing homework. I adopted many of my dad’s preferences around tidiness, cleanliness, and organization, and now having become a coach, am mindful of when I see my standards tip more towards unhelpful perfectionism. I’ve done a lot of internal work of unlearning the tendencies that led me to overwork around the home and settled more in alignment with my minimum standard of care.
So, I’d love for you to put on your “childhood glasses” and look at your home life through those childhood eyes. When you were little – let’s say before age 10 - do you remember thinking or judging your home to be clean, messy, or somewhere in between? Do you remember thinking that one parent did more around the home than the other? Do you remember it to be chaotic or calm, or somewhere in between? Perhaps there were always piles and it was hard to find things, or perhaps if you couldn’t find something, there was always someone you could rely upon who would be able to find what you were looking for. What did the childhood version of you witness? How might the standards of care in the home or homes you grew up in have affected how you tend to your living environment now?
The goal is to have compassionate understanding for your current self. If things were a bit chaotic growing up, you may be comfortable duplicating that environment now. Or you may feel the impulse to exert more control or more order as an adult. Some of us repeat what we experienced and some of us swing the pendulum to the other end of the spectrum. Neither is right or wrong, getting curious provides you with data around why you may like laundry done one way and dishes done another way, always send thank you notes or make sure that points, miles, and coupons are optimized. Now, because The Fair Play Method requires two or more people, it’s important to pause and recognize that your partner comes to the relationship with their entire backstory too. Their perspective is equally as valuable, and although you may be the default house manager who carries a majority of care tasks in the home, creating space for their backstory is one of the most loving things you can do.
So, takeaway one is to consider – using your “childhood glasses” - what you experienced growing up. I encourage you to get granular. Pull a card from one of the 100 Fair Play Method cards and ask yourself what you observed as a child. Then, takeaway two is to consider what you’re requiring of yourself now, as an adult. And just a side note, the 100 Fair Play Method cards are available as a download from either my website (apleasantsolution.com/fair-play) or via the show notes. Remember, what you’re requiring of yourself now is your current standard of care.
So, I just pulled a card from the deck. It’s the “Parents + In Laws” card. This care card is all about what you define as acceptable levels of interaction with your parents and in-laws. You can go back to childhood and see what takeaways you may have had from observing your parents with their own parents. You can consider whether this has impacted or influenced your own expectations today. Then you can consider what you’ve learned from friends or the larger community around care for parents and in-laws. There’s so much fodder there – about what you’re picking up about being a good daughter or daughter in-law. I know this can be a sticky and uncomfortable place for many, and I think allowing yourself to get curious about what you’ve picked up from others versus being radically honest with yourself around what you possibly have the time, energy, and capacity for when it comes to your parents and in-laws is powerful work. We’re often setting impossibly high standards and expectations for ourselves then judging ourselves or beating ourselves up when we’re unable to meet them.
Which is why defining your minimum standard is tremendously helpful. It can provide the relief or space for grace so many of us need. Once you’ve created awareness on what your current standard is – for example around care for your parents and in-laws – you can define for yourself what your bare minimum of care might be. Remember at the top of the episode I shared that these are the guardrails. You’ve got your highest standard (or ideal), and you’ve got your bare minimum. Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself that you should FaceTime your parents once a week and call your in-laws twice a month. You should create and maintain a shared photo drive of the kids that your parents have access to and upload photos every week or two. You get the point. This is your highest standard. Your bare minimum might be texting your parents 2-3 times a month and calling them at least once. You may text photos of the kids when you remember and invite them to live events at the kids’ school every few months.
The key is to make your bare minimum standard defined and explicit. Get clear for yourself on what you determine is the ideal and what’s the minimum that qualifies – that allows you to sleep at night without wondering if you’re ‘doing enough.’ Most of us have not gone through this exercise for ourselves, let alone as a collective unit or as a family. You assume that you know your partner’s standards around home maintenance, health visits, time with adult friends, and finances. But do you? Have you ever explicitly shared that when the bank account goes below X amount of dollars I can’t sleep at night? Defining your minimum standard allows you to come to a joint discussion about a particular home task from a place of clarity. Again, neither of you has the ‘right’ or ‘best’ standards, you just have your own.
Lastly, the goal is to have a collaborative discussion with your partner around these standards. I always recommend chatting while doing a shared activity: taking a walk, going out on a date, bowling, whatever. The activity helps normalize the conversation and lessen tension. You’re basically comparing lists. You’re sharing what you witnessed growing up and sharing your story. You’re inviting your partner to do the same. You’re sharing what you believe is your current minimum standard now and contrasting that with your ideal standard. You’re inviting your partner to do the same. Then, perhaps in a separate, future conversation, you’re collectively agreeing upon the household minimum standard. You’re more organized than you think, so negotiating the household minimum standard may involve asking the question, “What would a reasonable person, under similar circumstances to ours, do in this situation?” Again, you’re going for done, not perfect. What makes sense given the season of life your household is currently in?
This is valuable work for your own sense of self. It makes explicit the measuring stick you’ve been measuring yourself against. It helps your standards and expectations become more visible. When you’re able to better understand your internalized rubric for grading yourself on home and care tasks, you’re better able to be compassionate with others around how you’re grading them. And vice versa. Take your time with this process as it may bring up or activate a few feelings. Feel free to reach out to me for a conversation or support exploring what comes up or connect with another trusted individual along the way. Give yourself credit for each standard you explore and each minimum standard of care you define for yourself. It’s enlightening, and it’s an excellent way to support yourself as you embrace an organized life. Talk to y’all soon.
Outro : Before you go, I wanted to share with you that I write a weekly Fair Play-themed blog. Head on over to www.apleasantsolution.com/blog to follow along. I'm breaking down each of the 100 cards of Fair Play in totally random order, sharing how we handle the cards in our household. Thanks for reading and of course, thanks for listening.
