The Mental Load — Posts — Purposely Ever After

How do you streamline household work? A case study on weeknight dinners.

A few weeks ago, Jason and I decided to move out to Park City, UT (I know!) Because of the pandemic, we’d been staying with my parents in Atlanta, and, eventually, we decided to break our lease in NYC. We also decided it would be fun to spend the rest of the summer and part of the fall in Park City, where there would be plenty of socially distant hiking available.

There was one problem I was worried about: in Atlanta, my wonderful mother had taken on all the cooking, so I had a ton more free time. I was able to work more (not only at my day job, but also this very blog!), and I was able to squeeze in a long workout and plenty of reading time.

What I've learned so far by writing this blog

This post will be a bit different. One of the best parts of writing this blog has been the conversations I’ve had with friends and family about how they’ve faced or dealt with these issues. I wanted to share a few takeaways from some of the conversations I’ve had and articles that have been generously sent my way:

50-50 marriage, The Mental LoadAnusha DeshpandeJune 4, 2020blogging, gender biasComment

How do you know when the division of labor needs to be adjusted?

I got a lot of questions on my last post, specifically, how do you know when things aren’t 50-50 or fair and needed to be adjusted?

Discussing an imbalance of labor can be tricky. Because the person who’s shouldering the heavier load changes on a weekly (if not daily!) basis, it’s often hard to assess the division of labor at any given moment. Plus, bean counting “who does what” is not only petty and exhausting but also feels contrary to the spirit of a partnership.