When I was five years old I was already saying, "I hate housework!" I vowed to myself that I was never going to live a nitty-gritty "life of maintenance" like my mother (and all mothers) seemed to do, but that I was going to have a "life full of meaning."

How many times you have felt frustrated or hemmed in by housework? It's easy to view the repetitive, everyday things we do as nitty-gritty boring chores because they don't seem to "add up to anything."  

In contrast, the repetitive, everyday workout of a musician or an athlete adds up to accomplishments you can RECOGNIZE in terms of skills, performances, and feeling good about yourself.  

You can conclude that the everyday things you do to maintain your home and your health are unimportant, and worse, they make you FEEL unimportant.

Why Bother With Nitty-Gritty Chores?

Every lofty goal entails nitty-gritty work ... detailed, often repetitive work that, in and of itself, you would never choose to do. You do it because it helps you achieve something that is important to you.  

If one of your goals is to love living your life, you need to be concerned with the everyday maintenance chores that make it possible to love living your life. If you don't eat right or get the right amount of rest and exercise, everything else will suffer: your work, your relationships, your health, and your happiness. This applies to everyone, whether you are a musician, an athlete, a businesswoman or a stay-at-home mom. Here's why:    

• If you don't get enough food or rest you won't have the energy to do justice to your goals or your relationships.

• If you don't keep yourself clean and well-groomed, you jeopardize your health and no one will want to be near you.

• If you don't maintain your home, you will live in a filthy, foul-smelling, critter-invested, super-cluttered environment that will cause you physical and psychological stress and interfere with your ability to go after your goals.    

You can see why you "do" the nitty-gritty! But how can you learn to LIKE doing it? 

HERE'S HOW TO GET STARTED:
 
1. Allow Yourself To Rebel. Allow yourself to proclaim, "I don't have to exercise if I don't want to!" or, "I don't have to eat healthy foods if I don't want to!" or, "I don't have to sleep if I don't want to!" Try it out and see if you like the results. How do you feel physically when you don't eat right or get enough exercise and sleep? Do you have the energy and enthusiasm to do the things that are the most important to you?

2. Experiment. Test yourself to see how much food, exercise, and sleep you actually need. While most women get too much food and too little exercise and sleep, what YOU need is not necessarily the same as what your spouse or someone else needs.      

• Experiment with your eating habits. You may discover you are eating three times what you need, or that you are not eating enough. You may also discover that you are eating foods that make you fat and lazy rather than fit and energetic.

• Experiment with different kinds of exercise. Try different types of exercise, different times to exercise, and with different amounts of exercise. Find fun, recreational, and social ways to exercise, like hiking, dancing, or team sports. Exercise while cleaning house (climbing stairs) or doing yard work (hand-mowing, raking, digging). Or find a job at a gym or in construction that requires physical as well as mental exercise. For years I had a desk job, so I made sure I took a walk during my morning, lunch, and afternoon breaks.

• Experiment with different bed times. I discovered that I do best with 5 hours of sleep at night starting at midnight plus a short nap mid-day. My close friend does best with 9 hours straight, from 10:00 pm to 7:00 am. Find out what's good for you.  

3. Make A Conscious Choice. Ask yourself, "How do I want to look and feel -- and what do I have to do to look and feel that way?" Then ask yourself, "How do I want my home to look -- and what do I have to do to make it look that way?" These are actual GOALS. Moreover, they are not trivial goals -- they are goals that provide you a strong foundation for achieving all your other goals. And they DO add up to something lofty: they make it possible for you to love living your life!

With this kind of perspective you can see that you no longer need to see yourself as a "chore-woman" whenever you clean house or shop:

• When you envision your goal of how you want your home to look, you can take pleasure and pride in cleaning and rearranging your house to be more "user friendly."

• When you envision your goal of how you want your body to feel and look, you can take pleasure and pride in shopping, eating, exercising and resting to make your body and mind more "user friendly."

When you keep your eye on these vital goals, the mundane chores you used to have to push yourself to do become important steps that you actually want to do -- in order to achieve the things that are most important to you for your life.

After determining what you want to do for your health and your home, you can come up with a smart, efficient, and fun "nitty-gritty" routine that works best for you. That will free up more of your time and energy for the nitty-gritty of achieving your OTHER lofty goals -- which reminds me, I've got to stop writing this and get to the nitty-gritty of practicing my fiddle!

Have a fun, focused, fruitful nitty-gritty day that leads to fabulous results!