Do your bit

Our very much not magic coffee table. We all worked together to clean up this mess!

Have you seen the skit about the magic coffee table? The guy of the house swears that his coffee table is magic because at night he leaves it full of rubbish, food scraps and dirty dishes and in the morning it is empty and everything is clean. The same with the magic laundry basket – he fills it with dirty clothes, and like magic, they turn up in his wardrobe, clean and neatly folded. He can’t understand it. His girlfriend, however, can understand it. And I’m sure you can too.

Eventually the girlfriend goes missing. The guy tells the police that she must have sat down on the magic coffee table … yeah.

It’s a funny skit, but it’s based in reality. So often we don’t see the work that others are doing for us and around us. Or we see the surface work but we don’t see the mental load that takes place behind the scenes.

This can often lead to one person in the house feeling taken for granted (like the girlfriend in the skit) while another can be completely oblivious to how much work is being done for them.

I don’t think it is usually intentional and I think that it can change with good communication and with a lot of grace.

I like the idea of each household (whether they are flatmates or family members) taking on their share of the jobs that are required by the household. You could write the jobs out on cards or you could make a list or just chat about it. But the trick is that when someone has taken responsibility for a job, the other members of the household need to leave that responsibility with them and everyone must be prepared to suffer the consequences.

For example, if it is my job to wash my clothes and I don’t get around to washing my clothes, then I need to wear dirty clothes.

Or, if it is my job to make dinner, and I don’t get around to making dinner, then I need to go and buy something or heat up some soup or somehow get food on the table. I need to make it right. It was my responsibility.

This can go wrong in two ways:

1) the person who has previously been in charge of the jobs can refuse to let go. They will nag others until the job is done or they will just heave a huge sigh and go do the job themselves. This leads to the other members of the household knowing that someone always has their back and they don’t need to take on the responsibility after all.

2) the person taking up the responsibility can refuse to take it on. They take the easiest possible route around their responsibilities and make everyone else wear the consequences.

I don’t have a quick fix for this. It takes a lot of communication and working through. It’s hard work to get this right, especially in a family setting. And the way that every household does it will be unique. But it’s worth it.

I believe it is a parent’s job to slowly give more and more responsibility to their children so that when the child leaves home they are able to keep a house for themselves. Our kids started cooking meals for us in grade 7 and the were fully responsible for their own washing by grade 9. Yes, sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes they had to live with the failure and sometimes we did swoop in and save the situation, but mostly they did the work and helped us out around the house. 

They might not have done things the way we wanted. They were responsible for their bedrooms, for example, and both of them chose not to have chests of drawers or other bedroom furniture (we offered!) but to instead store their clothes in plastic tubs and hanging from hooks on the wall. Now that I know they are blessed with ADHD, this visual method of storage makes more sense. But even back then, I chose to let them own their choices for their bedrooms and I let the responsibility go.

Taking care of our homes is a big thing and each of us need to take on our own load. When we do a job around the house, let’s make sure we do the whole job and not just the surface job. And when we give others a job to do, let’s trust them with the whole responsibility and allow them to fail occasionally. 

There are no magic coffee tables, just human beings working together to make our systems run. Let’s appreciate what people are doing for us, and let’s each do our bit to make everyone’s life better.

What do you think about magic coffee tables? Let me know by writing to me at ruth@ruthamos.com.au or tweet me @aquietlifeblog or find me at Ruth Amos Author on Facebook. 

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