NO WONDER YOU'RE TIRED ALL THE TIME!

The invisible mental load borne by almost all women is secretly wiping us out.

Are you in a relationship? Are you also working? And do you feel exhausted most of the time? Chances are you’re not only doing more than your share of the physical housework, but most of the psychological work too.

I’ve talked about the split of household duties when both partners are working before, & my plans to evenly divide our chores between me & my boyfriend when we started living together. And yet over a year later, I couldn’t understand why I still felt so overwhelmed by the constant grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, dishes, washing when my boyfriend & I divide it up so well.

I never felt this way when I was single, even though I was doing all those chores on my own. It just feels like the doubling of clothes in the dirty laundry basket, & the fact that food disappears twice as fast, seems to make 10 times the amount more work… it doesn’t add up!

THE MENTAL LOAD

When I read this comic in The Guardian describing the mental load, it literally took me a week to recover because it felt so real & explained my exhaustion. The physical action of doing a household chore is one thing, but the psychological planning, preparing, list-making, remembering, managing, asking, “nagging”… it’s constant & for many women like me, it makes it hard for us to relax. It’s me who notices that the shower gel is running out & puts it on the list, it’s me who asks my boyfriend if he can cook dinner on a particular night, it’s me who makes sure the clothes are folded & put away rather than left in the clean clothes basket for 2 weeks. I ask my boyfriend to do some of these tasks - but the point is that it’s usually me ASKING - being the manager of OUR household.

We talk a lot about the “double shift” for working women, but it’s more like a “triple shift” - you work all day at the office, then you come home & do the majority of the household work, then on top of all that, you have the mental load.

I truly believe that if you’re a stay-at-home parent like my mum was, then part of your role that you’ve accepted IS to take on the mental load. But if you’re working & living with your partner (with or without kids), then taking on 75% of all the physical AND psychological work at home isn’t just unfair, it’s also unsustainable. What do you do when you run empty? What happens if you get sick? What are you teaching your partner, & your kids, about the the value of women’s time & energy?

SO WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?

Well, I’ve had a few conversations with  my boyfriend about how I’ve been feeling, & he agrees something should be done. My friends recommended an app called Wunderlist, where lists can be shared with others & items marked off so each person is more aware of things that need to happen or be bought & either person can action it. And we’re also looking into healthy meal delivery & online groceries to buy back more time on weekends. At first I planned to be the one who placed these orders… but now I think we’ll share that load too!

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