A Week At a Time - A mother and daughter's summer challenge together - Hand washing the dishes! Day 1-2

A week at a Time

Hi All! My daughter Rebekah and I are doing a challenge for the summer. We are taking regular tasks (or maybe something we've always meant to do but struggle starting or finishing it) and have agreed to consistently do it together for just one week and journal our way through it. We've named it "A Week At a Time", and we'd love to have you follow our journey!  If it inspires you, share it! If it inspires you to start one of your own we'd love to hear about it in the comments below. 

(Here are the first two days journal entries.  The rest will be in the form of a separate post.)

WEEK ONE: Hand-Washing the Dishes together.

This one started because I forgot to buy dishwasher soap and we were stuck having to do the dishes by hand. (Gasp! say it isn't so!) Later we decided to make it a Week Challenge this summer, asking the question: What happens when we go back to hand washing the dishes together.

P.S. I'm very sorry for the strange fonts, Blog Spot blogger is defaulting to weird settings and fonts no matter what setting it's given.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better! This would be one of the reasons a new webpage is coming soon!

Day One

Rebekah: Doing the dishes by hand is relaxing.  I actually prefer it over putting them in the dishwasher… I noticed that I feel much more productive, granted my Mom and I also cleaned up the house a lot too after the dishes.  It felt like I actually deserved to sit down and watch a show rather than just sitting there and wondering if I’ll ever get off the couch.  My Mom was very… encouraging before we started.  As if she was trying to paint it into a better picture than it actually was.  I told her that since I came up with the idea, I’d have no problem doing it - a small advantage of being a prideful person, I guess.

Michelle: In some ways, I felt like I needed to create momentum for the task.  I noticed myself trying to outwardly manage any potential negative response or resistance to our plan, by acting energetic and positive; which apparently was a little annoying -  haha!  It seems people know when they are being manipulated – go figure! When Rebekah said she didn't need to be coerced into doing the dishes with me, I had to release more control and trust her cooperation. Normally the dishes get done fairly soon in the morning, but if Beks and I were going to do this together, it meant I needed to wait for her to get up and do them with me.  It meant I had to cooperate too.

Day Two:

Rebekah: Maybe I’ll end up eating my own words for this challenge thing.  I did the dishes with my Mom without complaint, and maybe it was because I was a bit more tired today, but I didn’t really want to do them.  I think it’ll be the whole, “getting them started” part that will be the hardest, because once we got into the groove, I wasn’t even thinking about it.  I think people like the idea of something, and we'll may actually do it ...once, but after that, we just kinda stop doing it.  Like when we work out and give it our all the first day; maybe the next day we work out too, but the day after that we may stop.  One day of working out doesn’t do anything.  In a similar way, one day of doing something one aims to do won’t actually accomplish much.  It’s the repetition that matters… I’ll have to keep that in mind during the next days.  Dori’s words in Finding Nemo are my current inspiration: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”

Michelle: I struggled leaving the dishes in the sink until she was available to do them! It’s the morning of Day Three as I write this, and the dishes are just sitting there waiting to be washed and put away - This part is hard!  I want to swipe it off my to-do list and move on. (We will get to that in Day Three’s post, I'm sure!). When we finally did get to the dishes yesterday it was 3pm! We were both in get-it-done mode and I had to remind myself there was a bigger purpose to this exercise. I had to inwardly give myself a quick pause to notice the opportunity that was before me: I was given a few moments of side-by-side productive time with my daughter - a daughter  who is willing to do this challenge with me!  The only requirement at that moment was to wash and dry dishes together and let the conversation happen. When I am in get it done mode, I am less present with those around me.  Setting that aside allowed for great conversation that would not have happened otherwise.