The little rhythms that make home life work
And a wee primer on Scientific Management.
One of my biggest college crushes was Frederick Winslow Taylor, the early 20th century originator of scientific management (also called Taylorism). His theory focuses on improving workflow efficiency and, ultimately, labor efficiency. This obviously can be taken (and is often taken) to an inhumane extreme, but the core concept of reducing wasteful efforts and increasing efficiency in factories captivated 20 year-old me.
He is sometimes called the first management consultant, which was also my first job title out of college. I’m clearly A Type (or is it Type A?).
It’s no real surprise that my approach to household management stems from the same sort of engineering concepts Taylor studied.
I’m thinking about this in particular after returning home from a 2.5 day solo trip away. My husband ably held down the fort, but I returned to a house where processes hadn’t been run for a couple days.
The processes I’m talking about aren’t just cooking and laundry — that’s obvious stuff. It’s the subtle putting away and resetting of space that I do almost without thinking.
One of my favorite moments each morning is when everyone has just left the house to go to school or wherever the morning takes them, and I’m left with 30 minutes alone to run my little processes. I put on a podcast and do things like:
Take errant toys and clothing left downstairs back up to the kids’ rooms
Process bills and paperwork in my bill clothespin
Take miscellaneous items we’re ready to donate downstairs to the basket where I collect things bound for Goodwill/consignment
Put away extra art supplies so my kids have enough space to work on our makeshift art table
Pull out something from the pantry to contribute to my daughter’s end of year gift basket for her teachers, and toss out a couple expired items in the process
And so on
None of these is a big project. They take just moments each, but being able to freely move through my house (sans kids yelling “mama look!”) and handle these small tasks prevents them from becoming bigger tasks later.
It feels a bit like running maintenance on a factory floor. Just little tweaks and checks to make sure things are running smoothly, so life can continue to be supported for the 4 people who live in my house.
When I start noticing my movements are inefficient or I’m doing the same little job over and over, I can ponder if a new system would smooth the friction. And then that becomes a project I can do when I have a little more time.
Now You
What are the small processes that keep your space humming along? When do you usually run them?
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We're about to do a big gut kitchen remodel that will eliminate his kitchen dump zones, which he swears will eliminate the clutter / mess, but lacking another system to deal with the same things as they come into the house, I'm nervous about it. I have a feeling I'll be creating a new system for our entryway this fall, when it's done --though that's already kind of a cluster. It's always a work in progress, I suppose!