Don’t Avoid Your Chores—Do THEM!!!
Chores aren’t distractions from creativity — they’re invitations to it. They’re the quiet rhythm between our thoughts, the white noise that lets real ideas sneak through.
Ever since I started my self-imposed writing schedule while juggling work and life, I thought my best ideas only came when I was busy. Turns out, that’s a lie.
My best ideas also appear when I’m doing something boring — scrubbing the tub, folding laundry, wiping down the counter.
Chores, it turns out, are part of my secret creative weapon.
Work can be chaotic, repetitive, monotonous—sorry, boring as SHIT—at times. I don’t care what industry you’re in, there is no way that someone hasn’t had this thought pass through their head not ONCE in their lifetime. Whether you’re an entry worker, manager, self-employed, or a business owner, this thought makes us human, okay?
Chores are the same. Just with less lifting heavy freight or cleaning broken glass, and more laundry detergent and a bag of waste and trash.
Stop pretending to be androids in disguise alright? We don’t have that kind of public kind of access. Yet.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand.
Work is mandatory and we’ll get reprimanded by higher ups if we don’t get our work done, right? You know what else will give us backlash if we don’t do them?
Our chores.
Why do we have to villainize our chores that it has to be considered the “elephant in the room?” Or chores are “the frog we have to eat first?” We’re human, our schedules might not allow us to put 5 minutes to meditate, or let us take a walk if your brain is constantly on high alert-no time to wind down and relax.
The only reason I brought up chores is because they, like majority of our jobs(don’t lie to me here, Janet!) are boring as FUCK!!!.
I’m not saying there aren’t people who don’t enjoy cleaning, but I’m in the middle majority that does my chores to:
- Get it out of the way and over with.
- I have to feel productive for a few minutes on my days off.
- And I usually get some idea to write down and explore later on.
Because, from personal experience, I can tell you;
You can’t invite new ideas into a cluttered head when your place looks like a homicide crime scene.
What Kind of Ideas Were Born From Auto-Pilot Tasks?
A lot. A lot of ideas were born from doing nothing but my mundane chores. Most of my best ideas didn’t come from deep focus. They came while I was scrubbing the tub or folding my clean clothes sitting in the basket for 1 week. Boredom is the brain’s open tab — it invites things in when you finally stop forcing them.
All of the things you’re likely avoiding, or have hired someone to do it for you(sorry, Big Bucks over here can afford help. I’m kidding, that’s a different kind of help people need in their lives too, but I digress), such as having a clean space that you’ll be living in for as long as you possibly can has a HUGE amount of benefits.
Plus, let’s be real, no one wants to have an unkempt living space if they can help it, right?
When A TV Show Is Actually Relatable and Memorable
There’s a tv series, if someone knows what it’s called let me know, I’m too lazy to go looking for it myself, where a woman takes on a cleaning job with a pregnant woman with 2 young children. Her home is a hoarder’s paradise.
The reason this was impactful to me, wasn’t the mess, but rather how both of the women was interacting with each other; the pregnant woman isn’t able to pay her help more than she wish she could and she’s afraid to let go of her children’s things. To her, these things were her children’s childhood, memories for all of them to hold onto. But the mom is the only one holding on to tightly.
The helper, a single mom who’s taking on these cleaning jobs to care for her young daughter, told the other woman something along the lines that, “her and her children need space to grow too.”
That line — ‘her and her children need space to grow too’ — hit me harder than any productivity hack I’ve tried. It wasn’t just about cleaning a house. It was about what happens when we don’t make room for our own, and the people in our lives, growth.
This wasn’t in your face, loud, or obnoxious like some people who tell people to get their shit together. This was gentle, like an open and extended hand, and I kept that line in mind since I saw it on a YouTube short.
We All Need Space To Grow
Take a look at the people in your life whether or not this is true. Sure, maybe the people in your life aren’t best selling authors, Nobel prize winners, or anything like that.
But certainly you’ve noticed that your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, cousins, siblings(older, middle, and younger), children, guardian, friend(s), stranger in the street, your OCD coworker, or even yourself, has their own system of chaos, no?
How they were able to figure out things that your ADHD ass struggled to figure out, right?
You don’t have to defend yourself here, I’m not calling you out on anything. I’m inviting you to be more mindful of what people could be doing that might be pushing them ahead of the curve that meditation, nootropics, binaural beats, or walking can’t be complete without.
You don’t need a meditation app or a Himalayan salt lamp to clear your mind. Sometimes you just need to wash the damn dishes — because when your hands are busy, your brain finally has room to breathe.
Trust me, it’s why I published this post a lot later than my usual posting times. I’ve been feeling tired, weak, and under the weather, being up for nearly 24 hours in the last 5 days of working, and my chores were glaring at me when I just wanted to stay asleep until the world ends.
Call to Action: Sit, Clean, Think
Try it for a day or a week. Do your chores while keeping a small notebook nearby. Capture the ideas that appear while your hands are busy and your mind is quietly wandering.
Become a Fellow Archivist At Your Pace
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Thank you for taking the time to sit quietly with me, for carving out a few moments of reflection from your own hectic schedule. Your presence matters here, and your attention is part of this archive too.
Thank You for Reading to the End
If you’d like to explore more of the archives, feel free to check out my other works down below.
- The Stratagem’s Manifesto 2.0: A Companion Ebook
- The Stratagem’s Manifesto 1.5
- The Stratagem’s Manifesto 1.0
- I Made Small Tangible Artifacts of the Archive
