68 | A Woman’s Work is Never Done with Dr. Regina Lark

May 15

68 | A Woman’s Work is Never Done with Dr. Regina Lark

Have you ever felt like your work is never truly done? That after a long day, you come home only to face a second shift of chores and emotional labor that no one seems to acknowledge? You're not alone, and it’s up to us to shift the narrative.

Dive into this eye-opening episode where Dr. Regina Lark, a TEDx speaker, author, and founder of a seven-figure organizing company, joins me to dissect the cultural narrative that perpetuates the endless cycle of emotional labor and burnout for women.

With a PhD in women's history, Dr. Lark expertly intertwines her academic background with practical wisdom, offering strategies to identify, mitigate, and redistribute the unseen, unnoticed, and unwaged work that women shoulder at home.

We discuss the importance of acknowledging the value of this labor and how to unleash women's full potential in the paid workforce. Don't miss these invaluable insights that could change the way you perceive and handle your daily tasks.

And join me as I extend an open invitation to you—to be part of the "100 Hours of Listening" initiative. Whether you're a friend, past client, silent listener, or a fellow professional, your voice matters. This isn't a sales pitch or a consultation; it's an opportunity for you to be heard, without cost or obligation, in a non-judgmental space.

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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 68, "A Woman's Work is Never Done with Dr. Regina Lark." In 2008, before founding her seven figure company, Dr. Regina Lark excelled in a career in higher education. But when budget cuts eliminated her position at UCLA, Regina started over at age 50 and created A Clear Path from scratch. Today, Lark and her ninja organizers provide professional physical, emotional, and psychological support to people who wish to clear clutter and chaos from their lives.
Dr. Lark holds a PhD in Women's History from the University of Southern California. Her work in that field informs her third and most recent book, Emotional Labor, Why a Woman's Work is Never Done and What to Do About It. Lark helps women get rid of their, get rid, Lark helps women rid their lives of emotional labor by offering concrete ways to identify and mitigate the costs of women's unseen, unnoticed, and unwaged work at home in order to unleash women into the full potential in the paid workplace.She is a TEDx speaker and delivers keynotes and workshops on women's leadership, emotional labor, time management, productivity, hoarding, and ADHD. Dr. Lark is also the author of Psychic Debris, Crowded Closets, The Relationship Between the Stuff in Your Head and What's Under Your Bed.
Regina: Amelia, I just love speaking with you and I'm so glad that we get to do this again together. This is great.
Amelia: Welcome to the podcast, Regina.
Amelia: It's amazing. So you and I, we matched through the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and quickly discovered that we both share a passion for feminism, the mental load, all things executive functioning and emotional labor. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Regina: In a nutshell. Yeah.
Amelia: So I'd love to just kind of start our conversation. You and I had the pleasure of having dinner a few weeks ago. And you mentioned to me that when you were young, you moved from New York to California. So what did organization look like for you during your childhood years?
Regina: It's a good question because as I started down the path of being an organizer, I didn't have the language for what I did. I wasn't really aware of the world around me when I was a child in terms of organizing. But I do recall… moving when we moved into one of our houses when young, so I was probably 14.
I think back and I don't know if this was purposeful or not, but my bedroom, in order to get to my bedroom, you had to walk through this funky laundry room. I could not go to my bedroom. I could not walk through a funky laundry room unless it was unfunky. So I thought, did my mother do this purposefully? Put me in the bedroom next to the laundry room so that everything would be folded and put.
I would do it on my way to bed. I would just, I would just do stuff. And, and, um, so I just, I knew that I had the, um, I call it a gift of, of, um, now, and I know that I got healthy executive functioning skills. And in fact, when I look at my family of origin, I could point to the fact that of the six of us, three sisters and my parents, of the six of us, four are wired just like me. Four of us are wired similarly and two of us need us. So my mom and my youngest sister, as it turns out, have functioned and it's taken them many years to really recognize that and learn how to manage that. I mean, I've been decluttering and organizing them since I became a business owner, of course, but they have come into their own, my sister in her 50s and my mom in her 80s, on what it takes to keep their space so that they have access to what they need and they can easily put it away.
Amelia: I Appreciate you sharing that because it's really where I kind of wanted to start our conversation, which is first with organization and then we'll shift into talking about the mental load and emotional labor. But I know that you have spent these last couple of decades really noticing how other people operate within their homes. So, right, you're saying that some folks in a family can be wired one way and other folks another way. So I'm curious about the awareness of how we think and how we operate and how we see our spaces and our sense of organization, how that affects how we operate on our day -to -day basis in the household.
Regina: I know we've all heard, knowledge is power. I think that phrase always ought to be followed with, but what you do with the knowledge will empower you. So knowledge is power, but what you do with the knowledge will empower you. And as soon as you asked this question, my first thought was the more knowledge we have about our wiring, it lessens the opportunity to dive into comparison analysis.
What, what so many people do and, and, and you and I see this all the time, people have Pinterest pages, favorite Instagram posts that show loveliness and order and, and calm and no chaos. They've pinned these pictures on their, on their dream board and they compare other people's outsides to their insides. And they don't really know what it took for that image to become the user's idea of perfection. We don't know what it actually took to get to that. We also don't know if that's a true ideal for our talent, skills, and abilities.
We tend to not question what we see. What we do is compare ourselves to that. I can't achieve that. There must be something wrong with me.
So knowing this, having this understanding about why we think and act in particular ways, why it's been part of our life for as long as we can remember. You use the word curious a lot, Amelia, and it's such an underused word because I encourage people to become curious about why you put that item there. Just...
I have a saying in our company. Once the team has cleared the path, over the next 30, 60 or 90 days, watch yourself. See how you're acting in that new space. Become curious about. So if your organizer said, and you agree, the mail's gonna go here.
Every day the mail comes out of the box and we're going to put it here because on Fridays we're going to deal with the mail. Whatever you decide. One day, back up, you may put the mail there for six weeks, but one day you may miss it. One day it may land on the countertop. And rather than you saying, oh, you never follow directions. What's wrong with you? The organizer said to put it here. You said this is a good place, but now look at what you've done.
Like, no, just be curious what brought it to the countertop and not to the office. Don't shake a finger at yourself. It's just like, why'd you do it? You can even.
Amelia: Yes! I love that you say that because it really gets to what I think and why I exist as a business owner, as a clutter coach, these layers deeper because what you're pointing out is how quick we are to jump to judgment, how quickly we are to jump to comparison.
Regina: Right.
Amelia: And those things might not even work for us. This myth of domestic perfection, right? That it should be this Pinterest pretty or Instagram worthy. But as you're talking, right? There's no acknowledgement of the time and energy and attention it took to get to that place.
Regina: Yes.
Amelia: As well as the time, energy, and intention it takes to maintain that space. And then women in particular, because that's our area of focus, we beat ourselves up, we judge, we compare, and say, I failed because I didn't maintain and keep the system the exact way, rather than what is the curiosity, the understanding, and the questioning of even if that made sense in the first place for your home, right?
Regina: Yeah. Right? Well, two things come to mind as you're sharing this. One, we're always quick to negative judgment.
And I think when we put the mail on the countertop, what prevents us from saying, you silly goose. You know, how would, how did your magnificent self forget to do it, put it in the office? I, I, I want us to embrace the language of uplift and elevate because we tend to denigrate ourselves in so many obvious and subtle ways. And it's, it's the word that we use on ourselves that we would never say to our dearest friend, how is it that we're not our own dearest friend?
So like you said, the layers are so multiple and deep and it's that peeling away, you know, one layer after the next. It's silly, I would never walk into a room full of women and say, hey, you guys. And it's because that's not what I see. And it's because I'm listening to every word coming out of my mouth.
So we just listen to the words that we use to describe ourselves.
And then close the chapter on that and start a new chapter on new words to describe ourselves that are filled with love and compassion and oh, you silly goose instead of you idiot.
Amelia: It's intentional thinking, right? It's shifting that dialogue inside which takes effort but reaps so many rewards in terms of learning, self -compassion. And you and I both know because we've studied, we've lived, we've gotten curious.
Right, all of this has roots and ties into the cultural expectations, the socialization, the way that women are really raised generation after generation to believe that all things, life and home and family related are their domain. And if other folks aren't happy, and if the folks aren't satisfied at home and things aren't running optimally or smoothly, that we're at fault.
Right? That that is our responsibility, our burden to create that space of domestic bliss and the space of, you know, everybody being able to find what they need. And that's a heavy weight.
Regina: Yeah. And I think a lot of women.
The weight falls on their shoulders like a giant set of shoulder pads. And shoulder pads are light. They're fluffy. But 40 years of shoulder pads, 10 years of shoulder pads, it's got to weigh you down. It can't help but weigh you down. So we wear it going, no big deal, this is fine. But then the next layer happens and the next layer happens. And I mentioned to you earlier, there was an article on… There was a lot of talk yesterday on one of the morning shows on a new study on burnout. And the conversation was about loneliness, depression, invisibility, anxiety in couples, one person in a relationship is feeling very lonely and isolated because of the burnout. And so we're not talking about isolated incidences. And as you said, multiple generations, say the term men's work, and we think contractor, we think all kinds of things, IT… President, we say women's work, we don't think of the Supreme Court justice. If we say women's work, there is an instant global, global recognition about what this is.
That to me is a narrative that absolutely must change. It's work.
Amelia: And so let's build that bridge to why the work is leading to burnout, right? We can talk about it, people can recognize the signs and symptoms of exhaustion and burnout. Most of the answers that are put forth are to get more organized, be more productive but those don't always address those layers underneath that you and I are talking about, which is this assumption, this cycle of home management, home maintenance that many people don't even recognize is work. It is unpaid, but it is work. So talk to me about burnout women's work and why we need to value all this unpaid labor.
Regina: Well… the volume of work is just enormous. It's an unwritten job description, unless hiring people to do the jobs. So there is a job description for household management. There are manuals that have been designed and developed for household management.
I had a light bulb moment a couple of weeks ago. It might've been when you and I were having dinner. When we hire people to do a job, we hire them based on their talent, skills, abilities. We base it on their resume. We base it on what they told us about what they can do. When we put a person in the task of homemaking or household management,
If a person is a wife, there's this cultural assumption that a female does this body of work. No one talks about the work. No one mentions what the work is. No one is letting her know that this is the longest job description in her story. Is this, is this your skillset? Is this something you can do? We never asked that question.
What we do is assume that the work can be done. We haven't defined the work. And if she is not known to herself in terms of her executive functioning, and a couple of other parts of this, when we have gone to clean our house, we have a particular price point that we won't go over. We know the value of having someone to clean the house but we're probably not gonna pay more than, say, $50. But we have a price in our head that that's what we think this work is worth.
So we have this understanding that the work of the household is probably easy. That's why we don't pay housekeepers that much. And we think, well, there's laundry and there's dishes and there's shopping and there's schoolwork and there's a whole host of things, but really how hard can any of those really be? What we don't think about are the multiple layers that go into each flip, each task.
I gave a talk the other day and I said, there's no such thing as laundry. There's sort, wash, dry, fold, put away. And they have to be done in that order. And each one of those is assigned a particular time value and has the ability to plan and process and sequence something which we call as simple as laundry. And again, I think we need to talk about this work in these terms, because it's work in these terms.
Amelia: We underestimate the amount of time, the amount of thinking, the amount of standards and expectations, right? Two people living in the same household can say, oh, wet laundry can sit in the machine X number of minutes before it goes into the dryer, but someone else may have a different standard.
That in and of itself can lead to tension and disruption and arguments over why didn't the wet clothes go into the dryer and all of the thinking and planning as well as noticing I want to get to that topic in a minute that is necessary to make these systems run.
Regina: Right. There's value in the work and there's value in knowing what it takes to get that work done. And you and I both know that a big chunk of the work is invisible. And...that has to be also acknowledged, recognized and taught, not quite sure by whom.
Amelia: So there's value in the work and it's not as simple and straightforward as we make it out to be.
Right, it's, you know, so the term that is being created around this is cognitive labor, mental load, right? It is the invisible, unseen work of noticing, anticipating, gauging other people's feelings and what they need. And all of that you outline in your amazing book, Emotional Labor: Why a Woman's Work is Never Done and what to do about it. And it's happening unseen, which is why there's so much confusion and discontent between partners, as well as exhaustion on the part of women folks out there who are doing this thinking, noticing and planning. So what are some of the things that we can do about this never ending job description that we have to run a household?
Regina: Right. Well. Some of it will require that we stop comparing ourselves to other people. No one else is walking in our shoes. We've all been socialized and nurtured or not in any way possible. The other part is to acknowledge the body of the work. I think women have been sold a bill of goods. We've been taught that the work of the household is a labor of love and the focus has always been on the love, ever a labor.
Regina: One of the things I so enjoy and appreciate about Eve Rodsky's work and her playing cards, you can hold up my book, I'll hold up her playing cards, is that the deck of fair play cards.
The deck is filled with seen, the visible and the invisible. And it's, it's one way to get the, the other adult or the growing children in on what the heck we're talking about.
So making the work visible by laying out the cards, laying your cards on the table, that makes the invisible work visible, because it includes self -care. It includes picking, you know, calendaring stuff with the kids. I mean, you have to think about it, so it includes the visible and the invisible. And then the other part of this, so it's letting go of, of comparisons. It's getting an understanding of what the work entails without filters. It's just, this is what the work is, someone's got to wipe the top of the fan blades. Someone's going to clean the top of that. I mean, this is just work. It's just a lot of work. So making the work visible. And then I think for a lot of women and I want to talk more about this on some level, but.
Um, I was talking to him and, uh, we were talking about, is there only one way to load a dishwasher? And she said that, yes, there is only one way. And she was very insistent on it. We kept drilling down and drilling down. And this is what it was about. She said one day she was teaching her five -year -old to unload the dishwasher and dishes, maybe seven -year -old put the dishes in the, in the back in the cupboard. And that happened and it was great. But then my friend's mother -in -law came over and was setting the table for dinner and noticed a little speck of food on the plate. And my friend remembers giving her the stink eye.
Like, “What is this?” And she took back the dishwasher. And so for her, it wasn't something she needed to want to be criticized about. So to avoid criticism, she took it back. So it made me think about women's sense of control in the household.
If she needed a sense of control, maybe that's where she found it because other parts feel very out of control. I don't know because my friend is a highly intelligent, successful estate planning attorney. She's got a team, she's got a staff, she's got people that work side by side with her. She's in control of that narrative at the office, but I think she feels very out of control with the narrative of the household.
Amelia: Which is true for so many women, right? We're spending our cognitive energy, our thinking, our brain capacity in our paid work, and then we're coming home and doing hours of unpaid work that might be past our limit of cognitive capacity for the day. And then again, as we were talking about, beating ourselves up for not doing it.
But I think when you talk about avoiding, for example, the criticism from another person, that's where we get into the layers of unlearning our habits and expectations that might be unfairly, that we're putting unfairly on ourselves, teaching others to step up and contribute and allowing them to make mistakes and allowing there to be a speck of food on a dish, which is no one's fault. And then the relearning of a lighter, more easier way to navigate home life, which is what we want. But I love that you're pointing out that there's more than simply the final result of that Pinterest pretty image of a perfect kitchen and home.
Regina: Yeah, that's right. Well, and for any last courage to move away from this idea of perfect to good enough some of the time. You know, I mean, it's like the expectation, it's good enough some of the time. Let's let that be good enough.
This idea of, you know, I hear so many people, they'll respond to a quick, perfect all the time. And, and, and, um, even, even if I'm leaving the grocery store, uh, and I'll bag my own groceries, they go perfect. I hear the word perfect almost chronically. And it's like, what the hell does that really mean? Is that the ultimate goal? Perfect?
I'm an advocate of good enough some of the time.
Amelia: Yes, it feels so much better and it gives us the time and space for what we're truly after, which is connection with our family and friends, time to be someone else with our own interests and pleasure and joy, you know, outside of being a parent, being a professional, being a partner, just being me, Amelia, being Regina, right? It gives space for that.
Regina: Yeah. Yeah. Amelia being Amelia and Regina. Good enough. We're good enough. It is what we want to get done. And I want to address, um, and this is something I think a lot of us aren't really talking about is what I think of them. I think of the professional woman whose executive function skills are highly developed. She's learned delegation at the job, I mean, her role at the job, she's just great. She comes home and she still has those highly developed cognitive skills. She's got the house management thing down.
She's also going to experience burnout because everything lands on her shoulders. Everybody says you do it better. That's hardly fair, hardly equitable. So there's another, there's another through line here for even those without executive function challenges. And they're tasked with that body of work.
Amelia: My goodness. Yes, and the thing that you address and say so explicitly in your TEDx talk is the same could be true for men. That gender does not predispose you to be able to do this work. He can go to work, uses executive functioning capabilities in that space. All of those same skills apply to housework and home management if they're discussed and outlined and explicitly identified and just handed over to them. So it's not gender.
Regina: Yeah. Right. It is so not gender. We continue, when you say women's work, we are actually looking at the work through the lens of the womb. Because she's one and it's such an interesting narrative. And while I do one, I do know and wholly acknowledge and accept that there are women that feel that they were born to the work of the household, that this is a passion and a love, and they wouldn't want their lives any other way. And I acknowledge and respect that. So I'm not talking about those women. I'm talking about women.
Amelia: I appreciate that you say that because I was at home for over a dozen years and I think what you're speaking to is the power of choice.
Regina: Yes. Yes. The power of choice versus the power of the patriarchy, the power of sexism, the power of inequity. Those are also very powerful narratives, and they take the airspace of the power of choice. All we have to do is look at the reproductive rights landscape today.
The power of choice has become subdued, has become buried by the power of sexism, patriarchy, control. But the choice is for how we come to understand the work of household management.
Amelia: And unfortunately won't solve it today.
Regina: Yeah.
Amelia: Oh my goodness Regina, it has been an absolute pleasure to chat with you and bring some of these deeper topics to my listeners and out into the light. So thank you so much for this opportunity. And before we go, I wanna close the conversation by asking you, “What's one creative way that you use organization now in your life as an adult, as a business owner, as a speaker, as an educator?”
Regina: I am hell bent on teaching the art and practice of radical delegation. Delegating to get done, who cares who's good at it? Just get her done. That's why, we got to embrace radical delegation.
Yeah. Oh yeah. We got to share the work and even, and even, um, I think a lot about, uh, single parents full -time single parents, mostly women, we've got to start talking to each other about our workload. Maybe one of you can go to Costco. Maybe you can automatically delegate to your girls who are similarly situated to get the work done.
Amelia: That is so amazing and such a powerful takeaway to really just consider ways in which listeners, which ways in which we can all radically delegate what needs to be done simply to get it done to those around us. We got to share this work.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me, Regina. I want you to tell the folks how they can get access to your tremendous TEDx talk, your book, emotional labor, why a woman's work is never done, and what to do about it, and of course, how to connect with you. And we'll link it all in the show notes as well.
Regina: That'd be great. I'm proof positive. Nothing ever looks okay. It's all there. I have a company here in Los Angeles called A Clear Path. The TEDx talk can be found on YouTube, YouTube TEDx, and Emotional Labor is on Amazon as well. Thank you for asking.
Amelia: You have an amazing rest of your day.
Regina: Well, it started out well. I adore you.
Amelia: Thank you.
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.