Episode 144: How Letting Go Will Give You Time To Enjoy Your Caregiving Life More

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Show Notes

Over the summer I moved from the suburbs of Minneapolis to live right in the middle of downtown Chicago. We had a five year plan that was finally coming true that would take us from living in a place where you drove everywhere to living in a place that has everything we really need within blocks of our home.

I can’t tell you how excited I was of the fact that I would be able to see Lake Michigan form my living room and only had to walk two blocks get to one of my favorite grocery stores. However, to make it to the phase of physically moving into our new home we had to downsize our lives. 

Let’s talk about how letting go of tasks is just smart caregiving 

Our condo in Chicago is half the size of the house we had in Minnesota and that didn’t include the storage space over the garage or the crawl space under the kitchen. We had lived in that house for a little over 6 years and had collected a lot because we had the room to put it. 

So this time last year, December 2021, we began the process of downsizing. 

Now downsizing sounds great. In theory it is. You go through all your things in order to get rid if everything that doesn’t have a place, doesn’t work for you or no longer fills a need. 

Some of our downsizing was easy because there would be no more room for personal gyms, full garages or outdoor sheds full of lawn equipment. 

Letting go of the responsibility of raking leaves, cleaning snow or mowing lawns was easy to do. 

It was easy to let go of the things we really didn’t like doing much in the first place and quite honestly it really felt good to know we would have some of those responsibilities. I remember one winter my husband had cancer surgery and we had a big snow storm and I was so worried about being able to clean out all the snow. One summer I hired a lawn service because he wasn’t allowed to lift anything for almost the entire summer. Not having to worry about yard work was a relief. 

What would you be relieved to let go of? What household chore do you have to do right now that you wish you could walk away from? We all have something on that mental list. Maybe it’s washing the clothes or grocery shopping. What  would you gladly hand off to someone else? 

You go through all your things in order to get rid if everything that doesn’t have a place, doesn’t work for you or no longer fills a need. Think back on this last year, what caused you to feel overwhelmed other than caregiving itself? What was the one thing that when you were stressed out from being a caregiver made you feel like you just wanted to give up? What task made you cry or feel angry? 

Now, why are you still doing it?

As we sold things off at the end of the season we needed them for we began to realize two things. 1. In theory it felt good to get rid of the snowblower and 2. It was hard to get rid of the snowblower. 

Even though my husband complained every time he had to go out into the Minnesota winter and clean off the driveway there was something upsetting about knowing he wouldn’t have to do it. Even though I complained each time I went out to help him I was sad to see the snow blower go. 

Now, snow removal is big business in Minnesota as you can imagine. It really wasn’t something either one of us ever had to do but we never decided to outsource it to someone else so we didn’t have to worry about it. It didn’t really occur to us that we would be so much happier to wake up to a clean driveway instead of being woken up by everyone else’s snow blowers and dread having to go out and do it ourselves. 

We didn’t realize how much happier we would be to not have to worry about shoveling snow and the only reason why we came to this realization was because we moved to a place where it wasn’t even an option. 

What one big task would you get rid of if you felt you could? 

Now you could say, I don’t know what the big deal is, why didn’t you just hire someone to clean your driveway each winter?

The answer to that is complicated because there isn’t just one reason. My husband likes anything mechanical. So the thought of gassing up the snow blower and making sure it has the right oil at the beginning of winter lights him up. The obnoxious sound it makes and the smell of gas it gives off was a happy place for him. Maybe not so much actually going out covered in 10 layers of clothing in a blustery subzero wind but the ritual of getting ready to use the snow plow was fun for him. 

I think since we had a snow blower when we moved to Minnesota we just thought we had to do it ourselves because we could. I think that’s also the reason why we never hired anyone to do it for us. Even though I can confidently say snow removal was the one thing both of us hated to do the most we didn’t hire someone to do it for us because we could do it. The thought of hiring someone to do something we could physically do made us uncomfortable. 

I think that is why so many of us caregivers don’t even think about outsourcing the tasks that bring us to our knees on the bad days.  We can do it and it makes us uncomfortable for us to even consider hiring or asking someone to do it for us instead. 

Why is it that you still do the task I asked you to bring to mind a few minutes ago? Why does it have to be something that would happen in a “perfect world’  or “if things were different”?

What is stopping you from getting help with it now?

I have to be honest, I am uncomfortable having other people do things for me that I know I can do myself. However, when caregiving was overwhelming I felt I had no choice in getting help with things that I just didn’t have the time and energy to do. 

When I bring my husband back from a long hospital stay I outsource meal planning to friends, family and meal delivery services. When recovery orders kept him from being able to do tasks I depended on him doing I hired people to do it for us for the season. 

Believe me, no one wants me loosing my shit with a lawn mower that won’t turn on. 

When caregiving is low key it’s hard for me to feel comfortable having people do things for me because I technically can do them. When things become overwhelming I off load the things I can’t or won’t do without a second thought. 

Not all of you have caregiving that ebbs and flows. Some of you are in constant high caregiving alert. If you are then what can you do to override being uncomfortable with having other people do things so you can at least have that time to do things that are really more important? 

Can you do all the things you’re doing right now? Probably. I don’t know about you but I’m not good at everything I do. We can be skilled in every task we find ourselves responsible for. So why not let someone who is, do it? Or better yet, let some skilled in that task do it because they are almost always going to not only do it better but faster. 

Typically it would take my husband two hours to cut the grass and the year I had to hire someone to do it, it took them 15 minutes. It pissed my husband off to see it could be done so quickly. . 

It isn’t about being able to do it yourself. It’s about letting go of the things that you don’t want to do and that needlessly take up a lot of your time. 

Maybe you think you’ll be judged. People you know will think you’re stuck up because you hired a cleaning person to deep clean your house once a month or you hire out the laundry. I personally don’t have the time to care about what people think when it comes to how I run my household but I understand the dilemma. So here’s my suggestion. Once you know what you will hand off to someone else to do go to the person who will be the most judgmental and ask them to help you do it. Ask them to come to your house every month to deep clean as a way to help you care for your loved one. Ask them to come clean off your driveway, make meals or go grocery shopping for you. Then when they say they couldn’t possibly fit that into their schedule then hire the person you already planned on hiring. I mean they might surprise you and say yes but we both know that most likely won’t happen. 

This is a great way to get some support from family and friends in a different way. Once you know what you will hire out and have a company and a price reach out to the people in your life for help if you need it. Tell them you can’t do snow removal this year and you found a company that will. Let them know that you could really use some help paying for it and include your Cash App information so they can send you a donation. Maybe there’s someone who would actually be good in coordinating this and taking care of contracting a company. Or better yet maybe someone has a friend who knows a guy who would do it for less. 

Let people know what you need and you might be surprised with how they step up to help. Either way they’ll know you need help and you can’t control what they do after that. IF they’re still judgmental or gossip about you needing to hire someone then it might be best to take a break from being around them for a while. 

Getting someone to do something to help you isn’t a sign of weakness. I know, maybe your mom killed herself keeping the house clean when you were little or your dad spent all his time outside doing things that had to get done in the yard. What I’m hearing is your mom and dad were miserable. Being miserable doesn’t have to be carried over into your life. Looking back at the past 12 months and identifying things that didn’t work for you is just smart. Trying to find ways to have some tasks automated, outsourced and eliminated from your to do list is what makes you an efficient caregiver. 

Spending your time overwhelmed and overworked as a caregiver just trying to figure out how you’ll ever get anything done isn’t what’s right for you. 

I know the day our snowblower was picked up by the person who bought it was a sad one for us. As much as we hated cleaning off the snow it was something we just always did. We complained about it all the time but since we always complained about it and still always did it ourselves it was comfortable in a weird way. Snowplowing and complaining about it was just what we did. 

It snowed here in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and I loved that I could just enjoy watching the snow fall. I didn’t have to worry about how much it was going to snow because we didn’t have to clear it out. It felt really good to just watch the snow fall with my husband and not have that moment ruined by one of us complaining about how we’ll have to go out soon to clean it off the driveway. I didn’t have to check to see if we still had salt for the driveway. 

We were able to just enjoy that moment together.

That’s what letting go of tasks is about. Hiring out or having people volunteer their time to do things for you that you don’t need to do yourself is all about making time for you to enjoy moments with the person you care for. 

Being smart about caregiving allows you the opportunity to enjoy your life. 

That makes it worth the trouble. 

This winter my husband and I will be able to enjoy the Chicago snow from the warmth of our home together. 

What will you do to open up time to enjoy with the person you care for this year?

Thanks for listening.