How to Get More Help at Home Without Yelling

Learn how to get more help at home without yelling! Incorporate your entire family with the steps. You deserve to enjoy the life you’ve built for yourself!

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Are you feeling completely exhausted walking into your home each night?

Or do you feel yourself falling further & further behind on your to-do lists?

Are you starting to feel resentment about being the one who does it all around the house?

Can we set one thing straight right now? We all need help around the house. Not a single one of us can work all day, make dinner, keep the house looking somewhat put together, and still feel okay.

It just doesn’t happen, ever. ?‍♀️

Today, I wanted to share some of my favorite ways on how to get more help at home.

How to get more help at home

First, let’s start with being able to permit ourselves to delegate more, that it’s okay if the result isn’t perfect, and lastly, there is zero mom-guilt about asking & receiving help.

Whew.

And I’d like to be very clear, this post is how to get your husband to help around the house without nagging. No one enjoys being told to do more and really, none of us like having to repeatedly ask for more either.

Today is all about being very clear in sharing your needs, why something isn’t working, and taking actionable to steps to help make your time at home feel more enjoyable.

It’s so important that before you ask for help, that you allow yourself to give up the control of doing it yourself. It’s a hard thing. But my goodness, once you do it, you’ll feel so much lighter.

And when it comes to that mental exhaustion, that is a big thing.

How to Ask For Help At Home

1. Be very clear about how you are struggling!

If you’ve gotten to the point where you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s time to stop for a minute and start a conversation. This could be with your spouse or the family together.

As busy women who work all day, it’s easy to internalize our frustrations. But no one else knows our frustrations or our stress until we share it. And we may have to share it multiple times before it becomes perfectly clear.

Start your conversation sharing how much you are doing is affecting you.

If you are at your wit’s end and really want everyone to see how much you do at home, I’ve seen others recommend simply stopping picking up after everyone.

I don’t think I could ever recommend that myself as I would spend more time cleaning up days worth of stuff later than just keeping up with it every day. But if it works for you, then you may need to go that route.

2. Ask what everyone would enjoy doing more than other stuff

Once you have shared how overwhelmed you are, it’s time for everyone else to help pick up the workload. It’s easier to get buy-in by suggesting tasks that people don’t mind doing.

For us, in our home, I usually fold the laundry. Jordan does it if the laundry is piling up, but on big laundry days, I’ll take the folding duties so that he can do something that I would prefer NOT to do.

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3. Give Suggestions

Now that you know what everyone prefers or dislikes, it’s time to start delegating! You could start by agreeing on specific tasks each week, like dishes every other night or being in charge of starting the kids’ homework.

If you have the entire family involved, look at making a chore chart. There are so many great ideas on Pinterest to make it better.

One thing that I share in Your Life Made Easy, is that Jordan & I never sit down while the other is doing something around the house. We’ve both realized that it starts building an edgy attitude for the day. We know it, and we simply stay busy together to finish whatever the chore is so that we can both relax—together.

Feeling overwhelmed every day? Start the FREE Working Mom Life Hacks Challenge here!

4. Don’t go big or bust!

Getting help around the house is a must. We all know that we cannot do it all or should be expected to if there are other options. Once you start working together as a family, prepare yourself that small improvements that stay consistent are better than a big change that fizzles out after a while.

You’ll want to create a new norm and routine around the house. Not big projects that last hours and leave you feeling even more drained once they are done.

That is not the goal, at all.

8 Household chores kids can help you with around the house

Put away bookbags, jackets, and shoes
Set the dinner table and help clear the dinner dishes
Fold socks
Put clothes in their hamper
Keep their toys [somewhat] straightened up in their toy rooms
Put away their clothes in their dressers
Vacuum the floors
Help put away the groceries

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How to Get Even More Help at Home

If you feel like you and your family are at maximum capacity for doing things around the house, it’s time to consider delegating more.

But what does that mean?

That means you start hiring some help around the house. Before you hire a house cleaner, think about what you don’t like doing around the house, or what takes up too much time that someone would is better doing.

For us, when we lived in Michigan, it meant hiring a landscaping crew to mow our yard.

Jordan used to spend 2+ hours every Tuesday night mowing our 2/3 acre with a hill pushing the 1980s lawnmower. It took forever. After about2 years of us both dreading Tuesday nights, we agreed to hire a landscaping company to mow for $40, twice a month.

Every other week, they came, mowed our yard in about 15 minutes and they were gone.

Did they do as a meticulous job as Jordan did each week?

Ehh— they were about 90%. Jordan used to edge more and they simply mowed and used a weed whacker. For about the first 2 months, Jordan would edge the yard on the weekends after they mowed. But he finally thought “No one else is noticing, why am I doing this?”

Keep it done over perfect.

Think about your own home. What could you delegate to get more help?

Here are just a few areas where I quickly brainstormed getting help

Let Someone Else Meal Plan for You!
Housecleaner
Lawn Service
Grocery Shopping (this one is my favorite!)
Pool Maintenance
CPA to help with taxes if own a small business
Handyman for odd jobs
Use a Meal Delivery Service like Blue Apron or Hello Fresh

How to Keep Getting Help at Home

This is likely somewhat contradictory to everything I just said above, but I feel like it’s very important.

Say thank you and often.

When Jordan does his equal share (and usually more!), I remind myself to say “Thank you, I appreciate that you helped out with [specific topic].” He always says “You don’t need to thank me.”

But here is the truth…

I don’t want him to think I am taking him for granted and I want to remind myself, that we are doing something together. It’s so easy to get caught in the hustle of the days.

..and sometimes, I like to hear a “Thank you.” It may be trivial but it makes me feel appreciated, too. And I want to make sure I extend that on to Jordan, or anyone else who may be helping at home.

Once you’ve found what you need to delegate to your family, it’s time to start making some changes! I hope that this sparked how to get more help at home. You deserve to enjoy the life you’ve built for yourself!

How to Get More Help at Home Without Yelling