A Heart That Beats for Home
Hey friend! I’m Nikki Smith—wife, mom of three, entrepreneur, and host of A Heart That Beats for Home. Over the years, God has used marriage, motherhood, business, and everyday life to stretch me, grow me, humble me, and draw me closer to Him. This space is a reflection of the journey I’m still on—growing, learning, and leaning into much-needed grace. I have a heart to keep investing intentionally in my marriage of 26 years with the man God has given me as a partner and best friend, to walk faithfully toward the season of empty nesting, and to grow deeper in relationship with my adult and soon-to-be adult children. More than anything, I’m passionate about drawing closer to my Heavenly Father—truly knowing Him in a way that is real and active in my everyday life—and reflecting Him in all my relationships, actions, and plans.
Each episode is a real, hope-filled conversation about the things that matter most: building strong families, walking faithfully in the gift of marriage, parenting intentionally through every stage, and keeping Christ at the center of it all. Alongside my own story, you’ll hear from amazing guests who share a deep passion for nurturing strong families where Jesus is glorified. Their wisdom, vulnerability, and encouragement will remind you that you’re not alone in this journey.
Whether you’re single, newly married, raising little ones, building a business, or walking through a new season, you’re welcome here. This is a space for women who love their families fiercely and want to lead with purpose—honoring God in the roles He has placed us in, faithfully shepherding the souls in our homes, and nurturing an environment that reflects the fruit of the Spirit and a life that glorifies Him.
One day at a time, may we become women who cultivate hearts that beat for home.
Thanks for being here,
Nikki
A Heart That Beats for Home
63. The Silent Weight We Carry: Understanding Mental Load in Relationships
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The invisible weight of mental load is crushing marriages silently - creating resentment where there once was partnership. Continuing with a candid exploration of household management,I delve deeper into why the mental burden of maintaining a home can fall unevenly and how couples can recalibrate their approach through genuine connection.
Drawing from Dr. Morgan Cutlip's groundbreaking book "A Better Share," I shares six practical strategies couples can implement to better distribute the mental workload, including the powerful practice of "overdosing on appreciation". T
The episode introduces John Gottman's ATTUNE framework as an essential tool for productive conversations around mental load: Attend with undivided attention, Turn Toward each other physically, Understand through questions rather than fixing, practice Non-defensive listening, and Empathize genuinely. This structured approach creates space for vulnerable discussions without defensiveness.
We will explore how mental load distribution shapes children's future relationship templates. By establishing zone responsibilities, encouraging initiative-taking, and modeling healthy partnership, parents set their children up for balanced relationships. With the profound questions - "Would I want my children to marry someone who behaves as I do?" and "What skills do we want to instill in our children for healthy relationships?" - we can be challenged to examine how our current patterns influence generational outcomes.
Ready to transform your home from a one-person show to a true partnership? Listen now to discover practical strategies that honor both partners' needs while creating a family culture where everyone contributes meaningfully to your shared life.
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Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart that Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection, just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello friends, welcome back. Thanks for being here for another Thursday.
Speaker 1:We're back for part two of what was maybe a little bit of a scatterbrain episode last week, talking about what is mental load, how does it impact us, how does it cause resentment and conflict in the home and why is it such a real thing? And why are some of the stereotypes around whose job it is to do what so difficult to have conversations around? And we also visited on the top three needs of men and the top three needs of women and how different they are. I don't know if you haven't listened to that. I would encourage you to go back there and start with that episode before coming to today's episode where we're going to talk through more some strategies for how to manage mental load as a team in marriage and just kind of look into this a little deeper. Maybe some of you have already gone and downloaded that book, gotten the audible or ordered the hardcover to your house and have started digging in, but I hope that there's been just some good reflection. I know, for me, really just specifically thinking about the top needs of men, which obviously my husband would fall into, instead of getting so caught up in maybe, how some of my top needs aren't getting met and the conversations I want to have around that and just what that looks like and how, when we really are meeting the needs of our partner in a way that they need their needs to be met, how that can change the tone of a home, and just thinking over the top three needs of men that we talked about last week for that acronym of PAR, p-a-r, is peace, affection and respect and just working on that in my own life and then having conversations around where I need to have my top needs seen and validated, which, again, if you weren't here last week top three needs of a woman were to be pursued, to be appreciated and to know that they have a reliable spouse. And so I can so get on board with both of those lists of needs and see so much how those impact the marriage and the temperature within the home.
Speaker 1:So today we're going to jump into a little bit about and this is again coming straight from the book that is titled A Better Share A Better Share by Dr Morgan Cutlip, and it's the whole concept of doing a better job, of sharing the mental load of running a house, operating a family, and tips that will help you manage that mental load. And then we're going to talk a little bit about how to get our kids involved in a way that we can have conversation as married partners and then things that are appropriate for our children. So eight tips for managing mental load as a team in marriage and she gave in the book and I'm going to give the example that she gave because it's safe and I honestly can't think of a specific one off the top of my head with my husband. But I was listening to her give the story of kind of the disconnect in some of this and I was laughing out loud as I was listening to the Audible, because I think Dr Morgan is probably wired very much like I am after listening to this book a lot of similarities.
Speaker 1:And she was saying that they had a big birthday party coming up and she was just in a season where life was crazy, there was so much going on and just knew that she couldn't do everything that she always does. She was tapped out and she had, in a kind of a huff, told her husband I just need I think it was their son's third birthday I just need you to take care of the balloons for the party. She said I want a bouquet of balloons that has primary colors, some baseballs and a number oh, I think it was eighth birthday and a number eight. Like can you just take care of the balloons? And he was like okay. And so she said she mentally was like okay, he's going to take care of the balloons. But she also mentally was like but I don't know that he is, I don't know that. That conversation downloaded to him like start to finish and she had even said to him start to finish, I want you to take care of the balloons.
Speaker 1:And so a couple of weeks goes by and she said she said I've thought about the balloons more, knowing that he was going to do it and not knowing if he was actually going to do it, if he was actually going to follow through, than had I just done the balloons. But she's like no, I got that off my list, I gave it to him. So she said he was up early one morning and he was working on emails with a cup of coffee. And she walked into his office and she said hey, I just want to make sure that we're on the same page. I had asked you to take care of the balloons from start to finish. Are you good with that? And he looked up from his computer and he said yes, just tell me when and where to pick them up and I'll be sure to do it. And she's like, literally I could have reached across the desk and killed him, because clearly you take care of it from start to finish doesn't mean I'm going to order them, do all of the work, and I'm just going to send you to the party store to pick them up. But that is how he had heard it and his response was I never thought that you would want me to do it. You have a very particular way that you do things. I knew that you gave me a lot of instructions, but I wasn't remembering.
Speaker 1:She made the analogy if you're giving your husband a grocery list and you give him three things, by the time you get to the fourth or the fifth he's like you know what? Just text me a list right, because they're not as good as us women sometimes of taking all of that information in and executing. And again there might be that husband that absolutely dominates that and if he was told, take care of the balloons from start to finish, he would go do that. But just having that example and just laughing because I can so relate to A, what I would think the expectation is. B, what maybe my husband would hear. And then C, just thinking I should just do it.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where we so often get into this rut of such imbalance in mental load, because so often we say it's just easier for me to do it. I've always done it. I don't have time to teach somebody else how to do it. I've always done it. I don't have time to teach somebody else how to do it. They won't do it the way I want it done, and so I do think that a lot of this we've created for ourselves and there needs to be conversations around how to navigate this.
Speaker 1:And so one thing that was brought up she shared something from Dr John Gottman. We've referenced him in many, many podcasts. He is like a relationship guru. He's done the largest ever relational study, like thousands and thousands and thousands of people in it, and it's often referred to. But John Gottman of I can't remember what his maybe I said John Gottman Institute, but he has an emotional attunement strategy with the acronym ATTUNE, about how to have connection through conversation and what it looks like. When we start to bring up these conversations around, hey, my mental load feels really out of balance. Or I need help with this, or we need to share this better, or I know you're feeling a mental load from work, that you're having a hard time coming home and taking on mental load at home, but I need you to take some of this and all these different conversations that we need to have and that, if you use this emotional attunement with one another and you use the acronym attune to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:It looks like this the A stands for attend and it's giving undivided attention. And if you are like me, if you are having a conversation and it's not undivided attention, it feels like not a conversation. So the undivided attention is the A. You need to attend to the conversation. The T is to turn towards, to have face-to-face engagement, looking eye-to-eye or instead of me. When my husband is trying to talk to me, I'm gonna multitask. I'm gonna do the dishes or I'm gonna be writing the email or sending back the text to the room. Moms, why he's talking to me? No, it's turning towards one another. We talked about it in an episode a couple weeks past.
Speaker 1:It's that bid for connection. If you haven't listened to the episode titled roommates or soulmates, it's that turning towards one another, the bid for connections that we get to either lean into or we totally miss when we're on our phones or we're not paying attention. And so the T's are for turn toward. The U is for understand. You need to ask questions, you need to seek to understand what is being shared and not try to fix the situation. So much good information in the book A Better Share about how men naturally want to try to fix things. They're fixers, they're let's get a plan together and often the role really needs to be to seek to understand and to ask questions like what do you need from me? Help me understand. What you need from me is a great question to ask. The N is for non-defensive listening and it's hearing without defending, and this can be so hard, and so I think it's important that we prepare ourselves Again.
Speaker 1:Something that she suggested was saying hey, I need to have a talk with you, I need to have a conversation with you, and in typical relationships, if somebody says that to you, there's a little bit of panic because we only have quote unquote conversations. When we're in high school and we're in relationships or college, usually it's going to be a breakup conversation, right? Or, don't worry, it's not you, it's me. But when we're married, typically when somebody says we need to have a conversation or we need to talk, it's I've been building up all of this resentment and I need to just download all of this on you, and it can be very intimidating and getting good at saying hey, there's a couple things that have happened in the last week that I really want to be able to talk with you about. But I want to do it when you're mentally in a good place to be able to listen. When would be a good time for that Would tonight after work. Could we go for a walk Instead of just coming and dumping or exploding. And when we get good at doing this on a weekly basis, maybe even you have a quick touch base every night as you're crawling into bed just about each other's days.
Speaker 1:We don't get that build up of all of the resentment and the things that haven't been talked about, but that non-defensive listening hearing without defending is so important and just being conscious of how we show up to some of those harder conversations. And she mentioned so much in the book about getting to the point that you're not afraid at all. When somebody says, hey, we need to talk, that doesn't mean the world's fallen out from underneath us. There's a huge issue. You should be worried about the security of our relationship. No, it just is so regular that we're talking about things that have happened, things that feel out of balance, things that have gotten me a little bit frustrated and needing to talk through, and that that just becomes very normal. So N is for non-defensive listening, the E is for empathize and that's when we feel with the person. We are.
Speaker 1:We are being able to say things like that must have felt awful, or I can't imagine how that would have felt when I did that and you took it that way, or I'm so sorry that that caused you to lose sleep about that. I had no idea that my reaction caused that inside of you. It's that empathizing and feeling with them and reflecting their emotions. It's not defending and saying, well, that's crazy that you felt that way. It doesn't matter how you think your spouse or your children should receive something. What matters is how they did and how it made them feel, and then addressing and empathizing with. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 1:You know what my husband recently said to me. I wish that you would always know that I have zero intention and I believe this about him. I think some people would say this and it probably wouldn't be true but I have zero intentions of hurting you on purpose. Like nothing that I do or say. Is it ever out of a spirit of oh, this one's going to get her, this one's going to really upset her, I'm really going to get her off her rocker. On this one, I'm going to get a reaction. It's going to burn to the core. He just said. If things ever make you feel that way and have that reaction, I wish that your first response would be he loves me so much. He would never intentionally want me to feel this way and so backing myself up to go like gosh. He would never intentionally hurt me. So I must be hearing that through a filter or a lens, or he must have said it through frustration or through miscommunication and just being able to assume best intentions and fill those gaps with trust. But by doing that we need to be able to empathize with those that we're in conversation with. So that's just like a really good thing.
Speaker 1:Again, john Gottman, the emotional attunement, strengthening connection and just being able to dig into that. But then tips for managing the mental load as a team in marriage that were talked about in the book that I just real quickly want to touch on. Obviously you can go really deep into each of these, but thought they were just really good overview of managing the mental load together and I think obviously all of these are going to come after you've had that initial conversation. If you feel as a mom man, my mental load is just extreme. It's unbalanced over the years. Over the decades, there has just been a lot of stuff that has naturally defaulted to me and because I feel like I want to be able to take and carry so much of the burden for my family, I've done a really poor job at communicating that it's getting to be too much, that it's emotionally overwhelming, that I'm feeling resentful, I'm feeling unseen and I just need some help or at least just to talk this out.
Speaker 1:I think those conversations are happening already when we're working on these tips. I think that we've already gotten through some of the hard conversations and we're understanding each other and where we're coming from. And so the first one is you cannot overdose on appreciation, and I think for sure this goes both ways men to women and women to men. But if you are a man that's listening and you have specifically I shouldn't say specifically if you have a stay-at-home or if you have God bless her a full-time working woman who also is carrying so much weight of feeding and caring for the family and the kids and the schoolwork and getting everybody where they need to go and balancing the schedules, you cannot overdose on appreciation and it prevents the feelings of being taken for granted and it reduces resentment and just trying to out-appreciate each other.
Speaker 1:She gave the example in the book of everything. Used to be assumed that I just took care of it. My husband never knew that when he opened his drawer in the bathroom and there was a new deodorant, it never really occurred to him like, oh, my wife went to the grocery store. She had the thought of I would need toiletries. She bought them, she brought them home, she carried them upstairs, she put them in my drawer and, lo and behold, I have deodorant. And very seldom would somebody look over and be like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for getting me deodorant. We get into this comfort of new supplies just show up in the house. There's just bread in the bread box and there's just milk in the fridge and there's deodorant in the drawer and there's toilet paper in all the bathrooms and there's shoes for people to wear, and most often people are not taking into account that. Okay, for that to happen. Somebody had to do a bunch of steps to get that hearing.
Speaker 1:So she said we've gotten to the place in our home where we just gently let people know what we've done for them, not because we're trying to keep score of who's doing more. I do more for you than you do for me or you owe me. She said it's not at all that. But we started to bring to light the little things that we do throughout the day to support our family. So, for example, she said, my husband said to me the little things that we do throughout the day to support our family. So, for example, she said, my husband said to me the other day hey, just so you know, I took care of the property taxes. They're all good, they're paid for the year. That's been taken care of for the household. And she said, oh, my gosh, awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:And she goes. It's not that he was trying to brag about that, he was just letting me know hey, that's been done. Where he would just silently be doing that for years and years and years and I would never think about it because that wasn't ever on my to-do list. It's something that he's always taken care of. She said in the same way, I would say to him hey, I went to the store today and I restocked all of your toiletries. I got your toothpaste and deodorant. I think everything should be good. Let me know. If there's other things that you don't have, I'll add them to next week's grocery list and then it makes him go oh awesome, thank you so much for doing that. Thank you so much for taking care of that for me and it's I mean, that seems so silly, but when you think about it and you multiply that out by how many little things that we do for each other that we don't verbalize because we're just going through the motions, that there is a ton that my husband is doing for our family that I don't see because it's just on his to-do list. He's just going to take care of it and vice versa.
Speaker 1:So just really getting in that practice of overdosing on appreciation hey, thank you so much for running the kids to practice tonight. You doing that while I was cooking dinner made such a huge difference for me to be able to keep going on what I was doing. You can say those things to your children that are old enough to be able to be helping. Thank you so much for doing that, or thank you for seeing that. And so tip number one is you can't overdose on appreciation. Number two is be generous. And the one thing that she brought up that I thought man, this is good. And she said shape the story you tell about your partner in a generous way and I know it can be very easy for us and I debate if I should share this, but I think I'm going to because it's it's so appropriate for this situation and it made me actually chuckle a little bit.
Speaker 1:But my husband and I got into a disagreement before he was leaving for a work trip and we had to cut our conversation short because literally he had to get in the car to get to a really important meeting and I had just said hey, I go, I want you to go. I don't want to dig into this deeper right now. It's not fair to send you out the door with a hard conversation, for you to have to stew over a bunch of stuff that we weren't able to completely resolve or finish, and I was crying. We left hugs. I love you, have a great week. But it's hard when you have a spouse that's traveling and there's stuff that you just know is going to have to be tabled for a couple of days. And it's not putting us in a dangerous spot. We're pretty good at communicating regularly, but that was just a weird situation for us, when we don't usually have to table something that feels heavy for days at a time, and so I love you, have a great trip, I'll talk to you tonight, whatever. So he'll be gone all week.
Speaker 1:Well, a couple hours later the doorbell rings and there was flowers that were here, and, sure enough, they were from my husband, and that's not something that is very typical for him. He is not somebody that buys a lot of flowers, not because he doesn't want to, but because I love flowers so much that I am super picky with flowers, and I also cannot stand the upcharge from floral shops when they send flowers Like really great flowers are so stinking expensive and I know I can go to a floral shop and get a bunch of random loose flowers and put together an epic bouquet and I could do five of the bouquets for my house at the cost that they're going to charge me for one. And so he knows that about me and so that's not a way that he often expresses love to me is by sending me expensive flowers, and so when the flowers came, they carried extra, extra weight to them because I knew that he just did it anyways, because he wanted to and he felt like that was appropriate for the situation that we were in and, of course, having the flowers here and a card that just says I love you, my, my kids were all asking like, oh my gosh, are those from dad? So much so that our daughter even took a picture of them and put them on social media and was like, oh, my dad sent my mom flowers just because. And my kids had said to me, why did dad send you flowers? And I had a choice in that moment to say well, because we were in a fight and I was super mad at something. He said to me that I thought wasn't kind and it hurt my feelings. And then he had to go to work, because everything is about work, work, work.
Speaker 1:And I, in that moment right, had to decide to be generous and I was actually really proud of myself and I just said, yes, wasn't that so sweet of him. He's going to be gone and I said I have really been just struggling and feeling overwhelmed with some stuff recently and he knows that, and so that was just like a kind gesture for him. And so often we want to instead paint a picture of yeah, he totally. I thought he was a jerk and he messed up, and so this is him trying to suck up, or this is him sending flowers, or he thinks this is going to solve the problem and just in that moment to say like no, this is his bid for connection. This is his way of saying, hey, I know, there's some stuff we got to talk through. I'm sorry if I hurt you. I love you. Even though I'm here at this meeting, I'm thinking about you.
Speaker 1:And I just thought, when she shared that, that we have the opportunity to be generous in how we shape the story that we tell about our partner, both to our children and to those around us, to our girlfriends. It's very easy to get into situations where we just want to chat, chat, chat. Again, this goes for men as well. It's very easy when you think your wife isn't getting enough done at home or the house is a mess, or you've been eating fast food a ton because she just feels buried and she's not been able to cook as much as normal. How we share and shape the story about our partners to others when we can be generous in that and we can point out the good and we can show affection and praise and even just physical connection, extra physical touch throughout the day, when we feel out of balance or I feel like my mental load is crazy or there's tension between us just how far that goes. So I really, really appreciated just that reminder to be generous in how we shape the stories that we tell about our partner.
Speaker 1:And I want to go back to that too, just for a second because with the flowers right, obviously, in this podcast I share things that are vulnerable for my family members. I usually ask permission, and that one I didn't ask permission, but just the effort. It isn't even the flowers that meant so much and I'm saying this to the men, to the women, when we want to put up our walls and we want to be defensive and stonewall, just the gesture of sending the flowers there's been more texts than normal when he's traveling. I love you, I hope you're having a good day. I'll touch base with you tonight.
Speaker 1:Take those things again, like we talked about as a bid for connection, and, instead of being resentful, allow yourself to go to a place of. Maybe you have to sit down and make a list of the different things that you're grateful for your spouse for and the things that they provide for your family and the things that they do, and take those small gestures just to try to work on that generous spirit of I'm going to choose to believe the best and I'm going to choose like my husband has asked me. Don't assume that I meant to hurt you when I did A, b, c or D, because that was not my intention. So, just how, looking for those little things that our partner is trying to do, to try to break down walls, to try to say hey, I love you. I know that there's a lot going on, I know that you're maxed out, I'm maxed out, but our relationship is a priority to me. Okay, number three, reassurance is powerful. And again, this is when we're sharing about hey, I'm feeling overwhelmed with this, or I feel like this is unevenly distributed, things like I hear your need, we make a great team, I love you, whether you're stressed or you're calm.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes, when we start to get tension, there starts to be a little bit of fear of if I show them who I really am or if I lash out, that this is going to be something that makes them run or that makes them not want to be here. And I think it's important for us in a long-term relationship, like a marriage, that for us there is no backdoor, is to be able to say things like hey, I love you when you're stressed and when you're calm it's maybe more enjoyable to be around you when you're calm, but I love you in the storms of your life and I love you in the beach days of your life and just that reassurance that I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. Clearly I am not talking about a relationship where there's abuse, physically or emotionally. I'm talking about a pretty normal marriage where there's just some tiffs and we're having a hard time and we're maybe walking through a difficult season is just that reassurance that I love you no matter what, and this is a safe place and we can get through this. So number three is reassurance is powerful.
Speaker 1:Number four is to expect setbacks and anytime that you're making a change specifically if maybe you're re-delegating some of the mental load and the household management stuff, that it is going to feel, like she said in the book, very mechanical at first it's going to feel very unauthentic and very forced, but eventually that is going to become very normal and it's also very normal that there's going to be backslides. So let's just assume that there's something where, in the mental load of life that you have, you've had a conversation and you're going to offload. Maybe your husband's going to start driving Johnny to to baseball practice and that's just something that he's going to pick up. He says, hey, I can, I can totally do this, I can be in charge of getting Johnny to baseball practice every night. And there comes a night when, oh shoot, he's still at the office. He's not going to be home in time and we have the opportunity to either totally go into resentment and he never does what he says he's going to do or to say, ok, man, it has been so great that you know three of the last four practices he has been able to take Johnny and it's made it so much better for me.
Speaker 1:Tonight we had a little bit of a backslide, and that's normal. I'm not going to get discouraged, we can just revisit, like what happened. What do we have to put into place to make sure that on practice nights I can rely on you? Because, remember, in the women's top three needs, one of her top three needs is knowing that she can rely on her partner. And so just reaffirming, like I really need to know I can rely on you for this when you said you were going to take it, I don't want it to just naturally, you know, backslide into it becoming my responsibility again, but also knowing and not getting discouraged when it does happen. That it's normal, as we're all working on new normals around the house. Number five is small improvements make big changes. Don't think in your micromanaging and you're all just take it on. It's easier for me just to do it.
Speaker 1:Tiny little things add up over time and again there could be so many different things. Maybe for you it's offloading to your spouse that you agree that he's going to be in charge of dental appointments for the kids. Like that's just something. You've got four kids, the dental appointments seem like a really big deal. He's going to be in charge of dental appointments or eye appointments, whatever it might be, sports physicals for the kids. That feels like a very small thing. But over time, if you offload a handful of those things, those tiny shifts add up over time.
Speaker 1:I really experienced this and we're going to talk in a second about how our kids, as they get older, can be involved in helping with the mental load of running a home. But when, just in the last year or so, I have been sitting down with my older girls and walking them through like this is how you call the doctor's office. This is how you order contacts. This is how you get a copy of your prescription. This is how you refill a prescription. This is how you go get a registration sticker. This is how you you know, like all these different things, that when you are teaching somebody how to do those things, yes, it takes time.
Speaker 1:I go back to the times when I would take the extra 30 minutes to teach a kid how to clean a bathroom. Absolutely, in that moment it would have been easier for me just to clean the bathroom, but to take the 30 minutes to show them this is how you clean a bathroom. Well, right, it's the same things my mom taught me. You wipe down around the base of the toilet, you clean the toilet. You do all the different things so that they can do it well. It you do like all the different things so that they can do it well. Taking that extra time initially to now never have to clean a kid's bathroom is a tiny shift, but over time has eliminated me cleaning any bathroom but the master bathroom, because now my kids not only can clean their bathroom spotless, they can do the powder room, because they now know how to do that and by taking the time and offloading that one small thing off my list is a big thing over time. And so remember that small improvements make really big changes in the mental load that you are carrying as a mom.
Speaker 1:And then I absolutely loved this analogy that she gave. Number six was be a pipe cleaner, not spaghetti, and I was not sure where she was going with that initially when she said it, but she said spaghetti. When we try to bend it and to change its ways, it just snaps. And when you cook spaghetti, it just gets really soft. It doesn't really hold its own shape, it doesn't have any form. But a pipe cleaner can be bent and moved and still hold true to who it is, but it has the ability. It's flexible and bendable, but it holds its form and she's like. When you can learn to be a pipe cleaner instead of spaghetti in your relationship, that is when you can stay true to who you are but also adapting to change. And that was a really great, just a mental picture for me.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I feel like I'm spaghetti. I'm so rigid. I'm like no, this is the way we have to do it, this is the way it's always been done. I want you to do it, but I want you to do it my way. Or I wanted you to do it and you failed to do it that one time. You said you would. So I'm never going to give you this responsibility again. And it's way too rigid and it's not good. And then the flip side of that spaghetti is if I just become like this limp noodle and I just totally conform to how somebody else wants everything done, or I lay down and die, I just don't have any opinions anymore, I'm passive, aggressive. That's not good either.
Speaker 1:But to just have that visual of I'm going to be a pipe cleaner, I'm going to be really steady and I'm going to hold form, but I am going to hold form, but I am going to learn to flex and I am going to learn to bend and I am going to learn to have conversations on that or to talk through that or to navigate through that in a way that feels a lot healthier. And so I just thought that was such a good visual, even just to be able to talk to our kids about like, hey, I know you really like it this way. Here's how, when you like it that way, how that impacts other people and what if both of us were willing to kind of bend a little bit like go buy some pipe cleaners, let's have family meetings about not being so rigid and stuck in our ways and breaking like that spaghetti, but being strong, bendable and flexible, but firm pipe cleaners in our family. And so I just thought those were some really great things as we're working through mental load and trying to manage that with our spouses. And then, really quickly, I just want to talk on gosh. There was just gosh. Everybody has to go get this book. I'm telling you it is probably one of my top 10 books of all times that I've ever listened to or read, and she just dove into a lot about how to get our families involved in this mental load and just developing a language for our kids and an atmosphere for our kids that is healthy in how they see tasks delegated and also in their own understanding of this is a community home. There's a lot of people that live here and we develop.
Speaker 1:Her first point was to develop a family team mentality. A lot of times, if we will say to one of our kids, I know at least in our family and we're working through it, we've been as the kids get older, I think they see more and more. I'm actually very grateful. I feel like over the last handful of years they have done a really good job of stepping up and seeing where there is a need. But a lot of times, especially with younger kids, you'll say hey, johnny, pick up the Legos, and he goes I didn't play with the Legos, or I didn't get the Legos out, or it was Sally, or you know.
Speaker 1:It's always like I'm only responsible for my things and teaching our kids, when it comes to this mental load and community and living with others and being a team player, that you're not always only just responsible for your stuff as a mom, if I was only responsible for my stuff, my days would have a lot of free time, right, but I'm washing dishes that I didn't eat on, I'm putting food away that I didn't cook with, I'm washing towels that I didn't use after a shower and putting shoes in a shoe basket that I didn't wear All day. Every day, moms and dads are doing things that wasn't their mess, it wasn't their thing, but it's part of living in community. That happens in the workplace, that happens at schools, everywhere. There's going to be times where we're going to be just contributing. We're going to be contributing to the larger group and so having that number one thing is developing a family, team mentality and even things in language shift.
Speaker 1:If you go back and you listen to I think it's titled the Instagram post that broke the internet and it was an Instagram reel that I did on the concept of what can I do to help and, oh my goodness, the internet trolls that came out with just flames, a blazing over that concept of what can I do to help and people should just know what to do. And that's part of this whole mental load. Conversation is yeah, it would be really nice if everybody did just see what I needed. But that's not reality. That's not human nature. We can't read each other's minds, but that word help can imply that this is my job and I need you to help me with it.
Speaker 1:And she really challenged some of that thinking in the book and one of the things she said with language shifts was you know, a lot of times I go grocery shopping. I'll walk in. I do this all the time and I'll say, hey, can people help me get the groceries out of the car? And she said, even just shifting that like that's totally fine, and if that word help doesn't trigger you, it doesn't trigger me. I just feel like I'm at the point where I know that I have a group of people that live in my house that really love me and care for me and want to help. They just don't always see what it is that I need and I can be stubborn and naive and want them to see it and be frustrated when they don't or I can, you know, learn to just ask for help when I need it. But I do understand what she's saying with this concept of if I'm asking for the help with it, I'm basically saying this is my job, but I want you to help me with it. And just the language shift instead of saying hey, can you help me carry the groceries in, to walk into the house and say, hey, guys, groceries are here, let's all get them inside so we can have food in the fridge, right? All of a sudden it's a, it's a team, family mentality of wow gosh, mom got us groceries, now we can all get them in because it's food for all of us, right?
Speaker 1:Doing things like using again, depending upon how old your children are, using timers and music or games for shared tasks. We a lot of times we'll do a one song cleaning dance party, like let's find one fun dance song, let's put it on, let's have it obnoxiously loud. If it's five minutes and we all power clean in the main area of the house, typically in five minutes with four to five people, you can get the dishwasher unloaded, reloaded, you can have you know things lined up, you can have all the loose ends put away. It doesn't take much. And so just developing this. We live here, we all benefit from a good environment. We all benefit from a cleanly enjoyable environment. So let's work together for that.
Speaker 1:The second thing is to increase initiative taking for our children and to give them opportunities, and the equation of observation plus action is initiative. It equals initiative. And so how do we start to help our kids to observe what needs to be done, like there's a need fill it. The dishwasher is full. So we have two options here. We can either just pile up dishes in the sink because we're going to assume that somebody else is going to magically come along and empty the dishwasher, or we can observe that the dishwasher is full. It needs to A be started or B, it needs to be emptied and the dishes need to go in To try to start to get our kids to observe that and then take action. That's initiative, and so that's really the goal as our kids get older.
Speaker 1:Somebody else that we interviewed last summer, erica McMullin, said see a need, fill a need. See a need, fill a need. If we all operate in our house in a way that see a need, fill a need, then things function smoothly. A little thing that I'm sure most moms can relate to how many of us pile things on the steps. We're busily cleaning the downstairs and there's random loose things that need to go up to bedrooms and we put them on the steps and I mean I've done experiments before where those things will literally sit there until the next season if I don't pick them up or if I don't say everybody, take your stuff off the stairs, teaching people to see, observe. Oh, there's stuff on the steps. Mom must have put these here because not because she's trying to make an obstacle course on the steps, but because she knows that these go somewhere else and I can grab them, I can take action and therefore I have taken initiative and so just helping our kids to get into that process of see a need, fill a need, observe a need, take action, initiate. And that not only helps them now, not only helps them in this home that we live in, but it helps them with their future self-management. It makes them better partners later. It makes them better employees and better roommates.
Speaker 1:And so number two is increase that initiative, taking in our kids. Number three is when we can teach our kids to help be involved in the mental load of home. It influences who they will be as future partners. I just kind of mentioned that. But children form templates in our home. How we operate in our home is forming a template for our kids. They're learning roles. They're learning who's responsible for what they learn. Oh, dad does this and this, so probably when I'm a dad, I'll do this, and this Mom does this, this, this and this, and so that's what women do, and so we are teaching our children templates for relationship.
Speaker 1:So if we're forming those templates for our children, those are conversations that we want to be having with our spouse as well, and she brought up three questions that, as husband and wife, we should be asking ourselves on a regular basis together to make sure that we are on target, to know that we are influencing our kids in who they're going to be in their future relationships and that the templates that we're giving them are healthy. And three questions that she said are very good to ask yourself with your spouse are number one what do we want our kids to remember about our marriage? What do we want our kids to remember about our marriage, and are we doing enough of that thing? I know for me. I want my kids to remember that mom and dad respected each other, they supported each other, they encouraged one another, they talked kindly to and about one another. And if those are not the things that we're doing on the day to day, if we are doing all of the opposite, then we need to do a serious assessment of things that need to change, because we are literally teaching our children how to act in their own relationships.
Speaker 1:Take inventory of my day to day, of my interactions with my spouse, of how I treated my kids, of my temperament, of my tone. If I were to be a fly on the wall in 20 years in my kid's home, if my daughters acted the same way I acted, if Landon, our son, acted the way his dad acted, would we be flies on a wall and be so grateful for the environment that they were living in? Or would we be cringing and going? Oh my gosh, I can't believe that she's so bitter. Oh my gosh, I can't believe she's slamming stuff around. Oh my gosh, she just snaps at everybody. She has no joy. That is a humbling question.
Speaker 1:Are we modeling the kind of partners we hope that they'll become? Would I want my sweet son, who I adore? Would I want him to be married to a woman who behaves in the way that I behave in my home? Now, that doesn't mean I'm not looking for perfection. There are absolutely times that the most godly controlled, loving, kind husbands and wives are going to have horrible days, are going to snap at their kids and they're going to need to come and apologize and to ask for forgiveness. I'm not talking about perfection. I'm talking about, overall, how we're showing up. Is that something that we would be excited for our children to be married to? Somebody like us in their partner of the opposite sex? Or would I be proud of my children if they were emulating what I am doing? Humbling questions.
Speaker 1:And then the third one is what skills or qualities do we want to instill in our children so that they can model healthy relationship within home that they can manage this mental load, that it doesn't, that they don't have to walk into a home in the future where there's such traditional like this is a woman's job, this is a man's job and that's just what women do and that's just what men do Like. How can we instill? We are a team unit and we have family mentality and your load is important, my load is important. How we show up for each other is important, and our job is to help each other to live in a place of peace and where they feel again. If every women and men's needs, that means that everybody in my house is either needing peace, affection and respect or is needing to be pursued, appreciated and to know that they have somebody they can rely on. Those are core needs, and are we teaching those skills to our children? Are we teaching them how to be initiators, how to be observers, how to take action, how to be team players and not just to assume that somebody else is gonna take care of it for them? And so I just thought those were great, great questions, a very practical tip that she gave that I kind of chuckled at, because this is something that we did for years and it worked so well for us in a season of life that, especially with littler kids, this was probably more like when our kids were in grade school, junior high, and we never have been chore chart people. We've kind of been like here's just ways that you show up as a family member, that you need to participate.
Speaker 1:But one thing that we did for a long time that really helped with just keeping the house tidy and took a lot of mental load off of me was we assigned our house into zones. So each kid obviously had responsibility for their own bedroom. But dividing the house into zones and one zone for us was like the foyer, downstairs, like the entryway, the steps and then the upstairs landing was one zone. Another zone was the kitchen and then another zone was like the dining living room and the kids would have that zone for a week. Sometimes it would be a little bit longer, two weeks and they were responsible at the end of the night to make sure that their zone was clean.
Speaker 1:So whatever zone you had, it didn't matter what was in it. It didn't matter if it was your shoes or your backpack. You were responsible for that zone. Number one it teaches them I'm in charge of this whole area. Number two it doesn't matter if it's mine.
Speaker 1:Obviously, if there was a child that was taking advantage of this and leaving all of their stuff for somebody else to clean up on a regular basis, that was addressed. But if you were on kitchen zone that week, it meant that you did the dishes and for seven days you were doing your brother's and your sister's dishes and your parents' dishes. And if it was the stairs and mom had loaded up stuff on the stairs and you had the zone of the stairs, you were picking up the stuff and taking it to the right rooms upstairs and it just created okay, if everybody cleans their zone, you don't have to do a ton of nagging. You can just say, hey, everybody check your zone. If we had enough to bed, all the zones need to be done. Might take three, five, 10 minutes if you're in the kitchen, but it just allowed them to take responsibility. To be within a community and as a greater group of. This really benefits us.
Speaker 1:When all of these different areas in our house are picked up and tidy at the end of the night, man, it really benefits us all. We all come down in the morning. It feels fresh, it feels clean. There's not stuff all over, all the clutter is gone, and so I love that she brought that one up, as well as involving them in meal planning and prep and taking away some of that decision fatigue that we talked about last week. There's so many decisions to be made in a day that you get to dinner time and you're like, oh my gosh, I cannot do this anymore. And just involving kids age appropriately hey, why don't you each come up with a couple recipes that you would love to try? Print out the recipe, make a grocery list, I'll buy the ingredients and you know, you can each cook a meal in the next couple of weeks where you can help with some of that Just really learning how to give our kids opportunity to start to see and take action to help with the day-to-day.
Speaker 1:So again, just so much goodness in this book. I feel like I just barely touched on so much of it. I think that there's great things for us to reflect on here as partners and as parents and as kids. Which parts of the mental load am I carrying the most of? Where do I need help? Am I being effective in talking to my husband and my kids about this, or am I just building resentment and getting bitter and running on empty and it's not benefiting anybody at all. Even if I'm getting it done, I'm not getting it done in an atmosphere that's peaceful or that's bringing joy. I just have a chip on my shoulder and I'm slamming cabinets and banging dishes around. Really just examining is how I'm doing it working and if not, have I had healthy conversations? And then just really a challenge to take one step, whether it's, you know, in just seeing and appreciating your spouse, maybe really reflecting on these top three needs, and asking yourself man, I'm wondering if I'm feeling these, I'm wondering if my spouse is feeling these, and then using that attune concept to be able just to have some healthy conversations. So again, go get this book.
Speaker 1:I hope that every single person that listens gets this either in a hard copy. There would be so much that you could highlight. I just love to listen why I'm doing stuff around the house, but I want to encourage you all to go into the show notes and click on the link here and pick up this book. So again, just some good things to go over, tips on how we can do this well with our spouses and our children. I hope that there was something in here that you can take away that encourages you, especially as we're coming into the summer. Just a lot of more togetherness in our homes and opportunity for more messes. You're not cooking a little bit more food three times a day? Everybody's home, there's looser schedules and things can just feel a little bit chaotic. So just a good kind of litmus test to check in with on the mental load that you're carrying and if it is a hidden weight that's really bearing you down, that you need to have some conversations around. I hope it was helpful. So until next week, friends, take care.