I thought I was failing at homemaking

—then I went to Italy.

My laundry often sits… growing all manner of smells before I can ‘get to it’. I just tossed out a gallon of beautiful chicken-stock that I forgot to use before it went off, buried deep in the back of the cold room. The onions from last years garden are bolted and rotting in my root cellar, and I can’t even begin to talk about the state of the school cabinet. I feel run-ragged with nothing to show for it.

How can I be working so hard only to have it look and feel so… sloppy.

It was in our small Italian village, where we spend the month of March, that I found the answer. Let’s explore (unless, of course, you’ve got it all worked out already?)…

I never knew I had a large washing machine. A few times a week, I easily stuffed armfuls of dirty laundry down into its wide, open mouth as it happily accepted the jeans, socks and undershirts I offered. Soap was added, buttons were pushed. An hour later the large load is spun dry… waiting for me to play catch up. This is the way laundry here works - it’s big, it’s efficient, it’s quick. At least until it’s time to fold and put away eleven loads at once…

Not so in Italy.

For a family of one or two, their traditionally smaller machine would easily suffice. For a family of six… well, that was a bit of a process. The machine happily accepts small clothing donations please and thank you. You can come back in three or four or five hours to collect. But our small and slow Italian washing machine, which frankly we were very grateful and blessed to have, was the start of something wonderful in our time away.

I’ll be blunt. I’ve been pretty hard on myself this past year. I’ve felt wasteful and insufficient in my work as homemaker. I’ve struggled deeply with feeling like I’m not doing a good enough job and tending to things well. Then, I was forced to take smaller steps.

I learned to manage laundry slower in Italy, because laundry had to be managed slower. There was no cramming, no stuffing, no persuading the small machine to run any faster. It ran small loads for a long period of time. As did the dishwasher, which seemed to run far longer than our standard time between meals. Dishes, I learned quickly, were also to be managed slower.

Instead of cramming the washer (or dishwasher) full with days of filth, the filth must be managed in small pieces, bit by bit. Bite size chunks of effort to match the bite size chunks of mess.

Instead of a “laundry day” in which a week’s worth of dirty clothes were to be washed, dried, and folded, laundry day was every day - a small amount of effort to keep the factory line moving through. Likewise, our small collection of dishes insisted that each meal be cleaned up promptly, dishes washed, dried and put away to be ready for the next need. Instead of massive kitchen overhauls spanning several meals and many dishes (with much effort), we learned swiftly to manage small kitchen tasks quickly.

All of this resulted in smaller, but more frequent, pockets of effort.

I can’t lift a thousand pounds.

But I can lift a hundred. Over and over.

Catching onto the new pace of life, I began to notice it everywhere in our small village. Frequent trips to the grocery store meant I was only carrying home a bag or two of groceries every few days. This stood out in sharp contrast to my local trips to Costco which result in hours of effort, heavy boxes I often need help to carry, and a herculean effort to put away and organize. In Italy, meals were planned for two days ahead, at most, which meant a smaller, but more frequent, amount of planning and forethought.

I’m not naive enough to think I can recreate a rural Italian village-pace in the middle of modern Washington. There is no butcher for me to walk to, no fresh bakery from which to collect my daily bread.

My walk-in refrigerator and four freezers means that managing food resources is all but a part-time-job and my large (and fast) washer and dryer mean that I can easily procrastinate on laundry for days and days before facing the a mountain of effort. I’m asking myself - continually - to lift a thousand pounds.

Without meaning to, I beat myself up with the fatigue and failure of the effort… for not “not managing the home well.” But what if the problem is trying to manage too much?

Gathering up the warm laundry from the dryer, I place it quickly into the only laundry basket, and carry it easily up the stairs. Less than five minutes later, the load is folded and taken to the appropriate rooms - put away and managed with a small bit of effort. Another minute of moving the load from the washer into the dryer and starting a new load - the laundry cycle continues. Each day, consuming about ten minutes of time in total. A small bit of effort.

Our Italian kitchen was managed the same. Ten minutes of meal planning for the next few meals, taking stock of my small pantry and refrigerator stash meant I didn’t need an entire Saturday morning to devote to full on kitchen-recon. A small bit of effort.

I realized, over the course of weeks, that I am trying to manage too much. Asking too much of my daily-efforts.

I’m not bad at homemaking. Without awareness, I set myself up for failure. Amazing as homemakers are, we are but humans - with limited energy, resource, creativity, focus, and capabilities. As we used to say in the 90s… like, duh.

Here's how this applies to the home:

If we cease to be blessed by a blessing, then it’s a pretty good sign we have too much to manage well.

Let’s delve into my filth further. If my root cellar is always a complete disaster I now see it as having two choices: 1) learn to manage it with bite-size efforts or 2) have less in the root cellar to manage.

To some internet-push-back, we’ve decided to tarp part of our vegetable garden this year. With rising grocery costs, this may seem absurd. But the past few years, the garden was not managed well. To be frank, it was too much for me to manage as a working-mom. I’m only human. What should be a blessing became a burden, all the while, dusty jars of preserves and food from years past sit on our root cellar shelves. Food, grown with an insane amount of effort, can easily be wasted if not managed well - and if there’s too much to manage, it doesn’t matter how good you are at it. It’s just too much.

Instead of adding more, I’m taking a note from our life in Italy. I can manage small pieces well - I’m a competent, motivated, and intelligent homemaker. I know how to make supper, scrub my kitchen sink, iron clothes for Sunday, and change my sheets.

The problem isn’t with me. It’s in the size and scope of it all. I can’t lift a thousand pounds at once - I won’t ever be able to. But wouldn’t it be a shame if I spent my life convinced that I was weak? Instead, I can lift a hundred pounds over and over again, convinced that I am strong.

Food for thought.