Small Strokes Big Oaks

This is a guest post by the awesome Stephanie Farrell. You might remember her from this post previously. And now she’s back, being even more awesome. 🙂 Yay!

The grass at our house had gotten way too long, and gone way too long without a mow (in the summertime down in South Florida, you really need to mow your grass every week, basically at the lowest setting on the mower). It’s Richard’s “job” at our house to mow the lawn, which he really doesn’t like. I guess most people don’t. He puts it off and puts it off. At our house, it’s my job to do this dishes and house clean (sweep, mop, vacuum, dust, etc.) on the weekends, which I really don’t like. I put it off and put it off. Usually, neither get done when they’re supposed to, and by the time we get around to it, the lawn is out of control and the house is a disaster. For five years we’ve been doing this dance. I find other things, like say, writing on my blog, or work, or Facebook, or some other random thing to do besides clean the house. Richard finds other things to do like, clean the house (haha, since this is what I avoid at all costs), or play a game, or anything else in the world besides mowing the lawn.

If you recall my “Defying Social Norms” post, I mowed the lawn about a month ago to teach my children a lesson on what a woman and a man can do. I actually really enjoyed mowing the lawn. It gets me moving and exercising and I’m accomplishing something at the same time. Plus I really get a sense of satisfaction when I look at the lawn after I’ve finished mowing it. Well, our yard really needed to be cut, and since I knew Richard didn’t really want to but felt he HAD to now because it was starting to look ridiculous, and hello we have neighbors probably looking at our lawn thinking we must have died, I offered to do it. I don’t know how to change the blade height on the lawn mower, so Richard did that for me, and generously filled the tank up with gas. He said, “You don’t have to do the whole yard, I’ll do the back if you just want to do the front.” Man was it hot yesterday around noon, but I took the task. I really enjoyed being out in the heat, sweating, knowing I was exercising and alone.

I think you have to be a parent of multiple children who all want every second of your being to appreciate what it can mean to be alone. There’s no one screaming or crying or whining or hungry or thirsty, there’s just you and a lawn mower. It makes the same noise continuously (unless you run over a stick), but that noise means it’s working just as hard as you are. It’s just as good a silence- another rare commodity when you become a parent. It’s time to think, or not to. It’s when your mind isn’t racing, perfecting the art of multitasking without losing your mind. It’s peaceful mowing the lawn. No fighting over who had the toy first or who’s turn it is to take a bath. Just a nice hour to myself, thinking about whatever I want to think about, or zoning out and feeling like I’m doing nothing at all. I cut the grass again today, to make it shorter, so that next week won’t be such an arduous task.

Last night, I decided to have a talk with Richard and suggested we switch. Let’s switch responsibilities. You hate doing the lawn, I kind of like it. I hate doing the house, and you’re pretty good at it- dare I say you enjoy it. Who cares what other people think if I’m the one out mowing the lawn and you’re in the laundry room. We’ve been doing it wrong for the past five years, and nothing ever gets done, why don’t we see if we can’t be more productive this way? No argument, it sounded like a great idea to Richard. Why should we care what other people think about how we distribute household responsibilities? I HATE DOING LAUNDRY. Richard actually keeps up with it. Richard hates cutting the grass. I’m more than happy to do it every single week, on a specific day (Saturdays are great, a nice weekend relaxer). I felt great waking up this morning, the house was clean, the yard looked nice.

You know, it’s amazing that for five whole years, we assign our responsibilities based on what society tells us male and female roles should be around the house. It was just always assumed Richard was to take care of the lawn and cat box (he can keep this one!) and other “dirty” chores, and I should be the one doing the dishes and cooking and laundry and all the things I hate. Why? Because that’s what people do, right? Society tells me my role is household chores and yours is yard work. That’s the way things work, we thought, without really even consciously thinking about it. FIVE YEARS go by before we actually talk out loud about what chores we want to do. Forget about what we think we’re supposed to do, what would we enjoy doing most, what would be most productive and efficient, what would keep us most sane. These roles are so deeply ingrained in us that we don’t even think about them- we just go with the flow, whether it makes us happy or not, whether it works or not. Maybe it’s just hard to think solely in terms of what actually will make us happy when we have a whole other schema of what is supposed to make us happy. When those things aren’t working, we’re trained to think there is something wrong with us, not that there’s something wrong with those things. Our household is constantly evolving, and I only see things getting better as we actively think about stepping out of these boxes that society has put us in, and really investigating and experimenting and finding things that work for us, regardless of whether they work for society.

Stephanie Farrell is a 24-year-old stay-at-home-mom and manager of a five-person family. She is a mother two three beautiful children and a wife to a supportive husband.  Raised in South Florida, she enjoys making homemade jewelry, gardening, and having fun with her family.