Taming the Mental Load: A Minimalist’s Approach
You know that feeling when your brain is overheating, and your mental batteries are draining faster than a smartphone with a hundred apps running in the background? Yeah, that’s my brain – except I can’t just close those pesky programs without my family ending up homeless, naked, and hungry.
This phenomenon is known as the mental load – the invisible work that makes up the position of Family CEO. It’s the constant management and anticipation of every potential need for our loved ones, and it’s a role that, more often than not, falls squarely on the shoulders of women.
After the birth of our first child, I was having a full-blown breakdown trying to pack the diaper bag before we left the house. My husband, in his typical supportive fashion, said, “Just tell me what to get, and I’ll get it.” That’s when I nearly lost it – in a totally calm, collected manner, of course.
That formative conversation, however, helped me see this mental load phenomenon I had never experienced before becoming a mother. Housework had always been equitable in our modern feminist household, but now there was this invisible weight crushing me – and it wasn’t the task of grabbing a diaper, but the responsibility of always anticipating and planning for every potential need.
Delegating the Mental Load
Now, that one conversation didn’t eliminate the burden of the mental load from my mothering life. It’s an ongoing balance that we revisit regularly as our family and life evolve. But it’s a part of the conversation in our marriage, and that makes all the difference.
To delegate is to entrust a responsibility to another person. What a perfect definition for a conversation around the mental load! Entrust responsibilities, not just tasks. There’s an over-functioning/under-functioning dynamic that a lot of partners find themselves in, where one leans so far forward that there’s no space for the other to do anything but lean back.
To break out of this cycle, you have to stand up straight. Send your partner the link to this comic explaining the mental load, make a list of all your invisible responsibilities, and invite your partner to choose some. And here’s the hard part – let it go. Don’t remind, criticize, or check. Let the natural consequences happen, and be truly okay with your partner’s version of completing the tasks.
For me, it feels like juggling, and when I invite my husband in to take over a responsibility, I visualize myself passing him that ball – I let it go. Then, we revisit it seasonally and make adjustments. Have a date night where you go out to dinner and talk about what you’ve learned, what’s working well, and what could be changed to function more fairly and efficiently.
Delegating to the Next Generation
If you’ve taken the Bucket System class, you’re all too familiar with this concept in the context of leaning back so your children can grow into this space of intrinsically motivated responsibility. If you haven’t, I highly recommend it.
Children want to participate in the work of the home to grow in their competence and feel valued. It starts young, when they’re 2 years old and want to cook, or when they’re 3 years old and want to choose their own clothes. If you honor the independence they reach for, it will blossom.
Entrust them with responsibility. It won’t be perfect – in fact, it’s guaranteed to be messy. But the gains are immense. My kids do their laundry when they anticipate needing clothes (yes, I find LEGO minifigures in my dryer), and they add ingredients for meals they want to cook to the grocery list (yes, sometimes we have mac and cheese and baked beans for dinner). When I say yes to the independence they want, I end up with less mental load down the road.
Outsourcing the Mental Load
Delegating also includes outsourcing. This means asking friends and family or hiring help when you need it. Someone comes to deep clean our house once a month, so I don’t have to worry about the quality of cleaning that happens as a team effort on a daily basis. I don’t think about the deep cleaning of the house, and that’s where I get my value on those dollars spent – the lightening of my mental load.
I would include Sage Coaching in this category too – you give me the weight of your family’s challenges for a month, and I lighten your load moving forward. If you’re frugal like me, this can be a tough one to pull the trigger on, but it can also really help.
You know, I say to put your money into your values. I only get my hair cut once a year, I never get my nails done, I can count the number of pairs of shoes I own on one hand, and I do not shop for sport. I say no to a lot so that I can say yes to a monthly house cleaning.
Harnessing the Power of the Calendar
According to one study on the inequity of women’s responsibilities, we are the unofficial keepers of where the entire family needs to be and when, and the perpetual guardians against anything falling through the cracks. Even in a consciously unbusy family, an immense amount of mental energy goes into managing our time and energy, perhaps even more so since our life is not bogged down with routine commitments but instead novel, flexible, and experience-rich.
Some families make choices once a year when they sign up for a school math tutor, dance class, and soccer team. Every week is different for us, which we love, but also requires a lot of managerial decisions within a variable schedule. If you asked me what I was doing in 2 days, I’d tell you I have no idea, but I can check my calendar.
Our family Google calendar is my sanity-saving lifeline. I put everything in the calendar and release it from my mind. It’s like an external hard drive for my brain. If I notice a kid is needing more outside time, I pick a cool nature spot and put it in the calendar. If we need to return library books, I add it to the calendar. Travel, friends, appointments – it’s all there. The calendar is how we hold the space for our priorities. I don’t have to remember any of it. We live by the calendar like a bible.
One key feature of our calendaring system is that it syncs automatically to every family member’s devices. This means that everything doesn’t have to run through me. If your friend calls and wants to know if you can see a movie together on Saturday, you just check the calendar and either say no or add it in. If my husband’s boss wants him to fly out of town, he need only go to the calendar right there in his phone for availability and scheduling. We all have access, and we’re all on the same page – literally and figuratively.
Harnessing the Power of Notes
After my family members and my calendar, my Notes app is my most essential strategy for mental decluttering. That little notes app on my phone is where the bulk of my mental load lives, outside of my head.
Remember that juggling metaphor, where I handed some balls off? This is how I set some balls down. I put my mental load into someone else’s hands – or, well, the digital equivalent.
I start with a “To Do” list, which includes present and future tasks. Present tasks are things like “schedule dental cleaning,” and future tasks are things like “record audio book for Sage Homeschooling.”
Then, there’s the “Buy” list, which is my list of things we want or need to purchase, in order of priority, pending funds availability, and waiting period, to avoid impulsive purchasing. For example, “larger socks for Bay” is above “larger capacity hot water heater.” I also have my kids’ and husband’s names under the main list, where I jot down things they mention wanting, which I then pull from for gift-giving.
The “Watch” list is for films or shows that I hear about and want to watch. It may seem silly, but trying to remember the name of a documentary is a ball I’ll juggle until I see it if I don’t write it down.
The “Read” list is my reading queue – the list of books I want to read, in order of priority.
The “Adventure” list is for adventure ideas that people mention or I see online that pique my interest. Once an adventure is planned, it’s in the calendar, but before then, those ideas live here. For example, “horseback riding” was an adventure two of my three kids put on their experience list during our seasonal bucket system collaboration, and it sat here on this list while I asked around, Googled, and called to find the right opportunity. Finally, it all came together right in time for Sky’s birthday, and as soon as I made the reservation and planned the trip around it, it was deleted from this list and put in the calendar.
The “Heal” list is for issues I’m keeping an eye on and/or that I need to bring up to various health professionals. I have each of our names and a list of things I notice or need for each. For example, “questionable mole on a kid’s back.” The next time that kid was at the doctor’s, I asked them to check on it, and it was perfectly fine.
Lastly, the “Eat” list is for anything helpful that I want to remember around food. It might be a restaurant we all like with a Sunday kids eat free night, or an Instant Pot meal someone recommended. If it’s official meal planning, it goes in the calendar; if it’s still in the inspiration stage, it lives here and doesn’t take up precious real estate in my mind.
The first thing I do each morning, after my morning routine, is sit down and address my “To Do” list. I might, for example, have “schedule doctor’s appointment for Sky” on my present to-do list, so this is the time when I call and make that appointment. I might also write “get albuterol Rx refill” from the “Sky Heal” list in the notes for the appointment in the calendar, and then I delete those things from my lists.
When the kids ask to get or do things, I jot them down here, and they know that if it’s written down on the list, I’m working on it. They don’t have to harass me because they have learned that they can trust that if it’s here on a list, I’m taking care of it.
Automating the Mundane
We live in an attention economy, which means that your attention is being pulled from every angle. One place where most people have room to simplify the mental clutter is by automating more of those mundane, repeat tasks.
Money is automatically transferred to a lot of things that we have consciously chosen on the first of each month, reducing loads of time and mental energy spent on transferring to savings and bills. Even something like grocery pickup, which may add a few bucks in tip money, reduces all the time spent and choices required wandering through grocery aisles and all the money spent on impulse buys.
Look around for things you can automate, and you will lessen your mental load. I would include the Minimalist Wardrobe class in this category as well. My wardrobe was a stress point that siphoned significant mental energy before I overhauled my approach to shopping and getting dressed. Now, it’s basically automated.
Embracing the Minimalist Mindset
Mom brain is a real thing, but it’s not an inherent deficiency of biological motherhood – it’s a sociological condition that we can work to improve by sharing the mental load, pulling things from the abstract into the physical realm by writing them down, and improving efficiency with automation.
These four steps – delegate, calendar, list, and automate – can drastically reduce the crushing overwhelm you might be experiencing from carrying the weight of the mental load. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to lighten your load and embrace the minimalist lifestyle.
