Articles
March 7, 2023

What a relief.

Hey mamas, are we allowed to say we’re tired of taking care of the home, including our kids? Not only do some of us work from

What a relief.

What a relief.

Hey mamas, are we allowed to say we’re tired of taking care of the home, including our kids? Not only do some of us work from home, but we also maintain the home full-time. Most of the time, we don’t really want to cook — too many things to do, that by the time we realize it’s time for the next meal, we either make an unhealthy choice or rush to cook without even really enjoying the process. But if we don’t cook, who will? What will our kids eat? Will they keep raiding the pantry for snacks? Processed-food galore?! What will our partner come home to (let’s not open this can of worms)? And don’t get me started on dishes. There are only so many times you can order pizza or get takeout before you start missing a home-cooked meal.

We love a tidy home, but we don’t actually enjoy cleaning it. With kids (who might occasionally help), what’s the point if it’ll just get messy again? It’s frustrating, but we also understand that this is just life. The mess will continue to pile up because everyone assumes that mama will eventually get to it, and most of the time, they’re right. Looking at clutter every day genuinely stresses us out — there have been so many studies on this in relation to cortisol levels, so we know we’re not irrational to think this way.*

Most of all, we don’t want to do laundry! It may have been therapeutic for us to fold clothes and daydream away, but now it’s become a tedious, time-consuming chore. There’s nothing more frustrating than running out of clean underwear or socks, not having a clean bath towel, or putting on a top with an obvious stain that you forgot to treat and let sit for too long before you finally washed it! And if we don’t do it, that’s right, no one will. It never ends. There will always be a need for clean clothes, which means that laundry chores will forever remain.

Sometimes, we daydream about having a professional maid — someone who can give us back our time so that we can enjoy cooking again, watch a movie with our kids and not be folding clothes at the same time, and honestly, just sort our life out. We feel like we’re behind on so many things, including work, that we just need a grasp on something. If we could just get relief somewhere, perhaps everything else would feel lighter and more bearable. And then we’ll realize that we’re not actually tired of taking care of our kids and the house — we just need help.

We need help but don’t know how to ask for it. And when we get help, we get anxious about having lost control over something we feel we should have control over. Wait, we can’t stay on top of laundry? Us? What happened? It wasn’t hard before.

Out of all the household chores, laundry is one of the most dreadful for us. This is where magical dree steps in. We may be reluctant to start the service because naturally, we’re professional hesitaters. The idea of having someone else do our laundry, touch our dirty clothes, and fold each item is kind of ___ (you can fill in the space). It almost feels like it’d be a violation. They’ll know your secrets — that you like designer pieces, but cheap underwear, that you’re too lazy to sew the hole in your collar, but insist on having that shirt hung dry, and the paranoid list goes on. But once we decide to give in because we’re at our wit's end, the weight of it all will start to slowly melt away. Next thing you know, the time you’d be spending on doing laundry is spent on doing what matters most to you, whatever that may be. We’ll start valuing our time more than ever, and we’ll realize that dree was so worth it. Of course, you still have to manage your time with everything else, but at least you have EXTRA TIME. From one mama to another, believe me, what a relief.