I asked what is the basic essential housework that is necessary for life? Level one is the foundation of The Productive Home CEO Theoretical Framework that starts with essential house work. I did my own study and I am sharing my findings. You might be as surprised as I was.

What is Essential Housework?

How is housework defined? Housework is something you do for yourself or you pay for someone to do it. And how much time are you spending on it? On average about 23 hours per week; 3 hours for laundry, 6 hours for cleaning, and 11 hours for food preparation. I know it's hard to believe.

I surveyed a panel of 1000 people, ages 16 - 65. I divided up the panel to closely reflect the US Census ethnicities to account for all different household types. I bet you would think that there would be a stark difference in what men and women determined was housework and taking it one step further, what was essential. Nope, 90% of the panel (men and women of all ethnicities) agreed on 19 of the 78 items as housework and that they were essential. Now, I say essential because I want to point out that not everyone owns a home or a car. And I wanted to ask people from all walks of life because essential housework needed to universally apply to everyone. All19 items fit into either laundry, cleaning, or food preparation.

The Goal

I'm sure this has you curious about how much time you spend on these essential housework. Do a time study. Then review, the calendar does not lie! And information is power. The amount of time each household dedicates to these tasks will vary depending on their caregiving responsibilities, whether looking after children, just themselves, or a loved one. I gave a lot of examples of how your time may be getting used and ways you can manipulate time and tasks to free up your time. And once again, I want to encourage you to outsource if you have the means to or you find yourself in a high demand season.

When we know what the work is, how much time it takes us, and we reduce our expectations, we can set the foundation to put systems in place so you can reach the higher levels of this pyramid. At some point, I want you to get to a done point. The goal is to reduce your expectations and time spent on housework so you can get done for the day or done for the week.

Then comes the fun part where you get to ask yourself what are you uniquely gifted and created to do? Exploring you, through Embrace. It's a 2 day self guided retreat where you think about where your expectations came from. How much housework are you doing? Why? And what do you want to be doing? You'll use critical thinking to dream about what you want to do next. What are you uniquely gifted and created to do? That's the goal!

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