Job Descriptions for Your Home
Job Descriptions for Your Home
How to Make Every Space Work for You
When I was a facilities manager, I managed a physical office as well as the people who supported that office. Whenever we needed to expand the team, it would take so much time to write a job description!
I considered what was necessary, what was a nice-to-have, and what could be eliminated without anyone noticing. I also looked into whether certain tasks could be done less frequently.
This same method worked well when assessing different areas of the office. For example, what storage needs does the closet near human resources have that differs from the one near engineering?
Why not try applying a similar but much lower-stakes approach to your home? To start, create a precise job description for the space in your home that is the most frustrating.
Last week, a coaching client I worked with in 2020 wrote me this:
You helped my household internalize a new way of thinking. It’s really life-changing. We just redid the drawer next to the stove after living in a new place for two years. I thought about what jobs that small space needed to do and now every time I open the drawer I reach for exactly what I need. That small change has made the ordinary chore of daily cooking easier and more pleasant.
Which activities are carried out in this room on a daily basis?
If you look around your kitchen, you might say “I cook here”. Dig deeper. How often do you cook? How often do you warm up leftovers? How often do you assemble a few ingredients (aka, make a smoothie, put fruit and yogurt on top of granola)?
If you look around and discover your kitchen is set up for cooking that you do less than once a month, there is an amazing opportunity to reorganize it based on how you use the kitchen every day.
How can I organize my living space to streamline my daily tasks?
Maybe you discover that making coffee- which you do every day— involves going to get mugs from where you keep the glasses that are not near the coffee maker and the coffee grounds are in the pantry. Making it easy to make coffee is an important part of the job description for your kitchen. But it also might be so important that you decide to make a coffee station in your home.
No matter the size of your home, the main goal is the same: to support your life! A periodic review of a room's job description can help you identify if something needs to be relocated or liberated (aka, donated).
A small change can make a big difference! Think about how you use your space and make it work for you. By taking a closer look at each room and reorganizing it based on how you live, you can make daily tasks easier and more enjoyable.
When you have a job description for each space in your home, it can support you like a boss!