Experiment No. 12: Drop the (Holiday) Ball

The Basics

We’re Trying to Solve: Holiday pressure, stress, and the mental load
Target Audience: Individuals, partners, families
Ages: 2 and up
Category: Household chores
Estimated Time: 30 mins
Difficulty Level: Easy

Holidays are both the most wonderful and, often, the most stressful time of year. It’s just a lot of work to make that holiday magic. So much so that, in addition to the second shift of caregiving and housework, holidays can feel like a third shift. Women can often feel responsible for what Leslie Bella, author of The Christmas Imperative: Leisure, Family and Women’s Work, calls “family-making” - creating rituals and traditions that persist. Where we can get stuck, and where tensions and stress start to rise is when we try to do it all by ourselves, without thinking about what kind of family experience we all want to create together. This experiment is inspired by Tiffany Dufu, who wrote a great book on families more fairly sharing the load, Drop the Ball.

Directions

1. Gather the family for an honest conversation about the upcoming holiday. Each person shares the one thing they most enjoy or look forward to about the holiday.
2. Make a list of the work it will take for each person to have their one special holiday tradition. As usual, divide it up in a way that feels fair to everyone and makes sense for different age levels and interests. Enjoy making everyone’s holiday wish come true!
3. Then, drop everything else. Seriously.
4. If you’re so inclined, make a list of all the things you think you should do, or have done in the past, but that nobody spoke of truly enjoying, and put it under the header “To-Don’t.” Then, rip, burn, or shred the To-Don’t list. You don’t need to keep track of these things anymore.
5. Now, enjoy the holiday, doing only the most important things and nothing else.
6. After the holiday, get the family back together to reflect on how it felt to do less, what made the holiday special, and which balls you intend to focus on, and which you can drop next season.

Connect With the Better Life Lab

Are you going to try this week’s experiment? Do you have a story about how you and your own family solved a problem with the work at home? Is there a specific challenge you’ve been trying to tackle? Can this experiment be improved? Please let us know via this form, at bllx@newamerica.org, or in our Facebook group for BLLx Beta Testers.

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