My grandmother on my dad’s side of the family passed away nearly two years ago, at the age of 95. I am not too ashamed (maybe a little) to say I was relieved. My grandmother had dementia, and as anyone who has been a caregiver of someone with this condition will know, the last few years, when the disease really took its hold, were very rough years. She went from being an elderly person who had an active live and a strong circle of friends to someone who would not leave her house and was suspicious of everyone. Her little racist lapses – which we always chalked up to her not having a filter due to a stroke long ago – became more pronounced, and she wanted us to only hire white caregivers (she once beat her Filipina aide with a cane, calling her a “Japanese dog” and breaking the poor woman’s foot). She refused any assistance that would involve her leaving her home. She once wandered in the streets in her pajamas in the middle of the night. She accused everyone of stealing from her. It was a very hard thing. So her departure from this earth, when she was clearly so unhappy and tormented in her mind, was not a bad thing. It was such a difficult time, that it took a great while for me to forget what she was like in the last 3 years of her life and remember who she was before. My grandmother was a single mom with two kids in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Being a single, working mom was not a common or accepted thing back then, and I imagine that keeping your kids well cared for and making a decent living took quite a bit of grit on her part. So now, to honor her memory and appreciate one of the things she was to me, I pass along tips from my grandmother, the accidental productivity guru:
- Pick your cleanliness battles. My grandma used to say, “If your bed is made and your dishes are done, then your house is clean.” I doubt she meant this literally, because the two key things on her list would sometimes change, but I took it to mean something like this. If you are a working woman, or even more, a working woman with kids, you have to focus on the big impact stuff – the stuff that makes your house seem tidy and livable to you. For some people this might mean always having a made bed. To others, spotless bathrooms are mandatory. Either way, don’t sweat all of the small stuff – having perfectly organized drawers, dusting the tops of the books in the bookshelf that no one ever goes near – instead, find two or three things that will throw you off if you’re not done, and focus on those big-impact items. I would add to this rule: Hire house cleaners for everything else.
- Don’t give a rat’s ass about what the perfect housewives are doing. My grandmother would not bake cookies during the holidays. She wasn’t even a passably good cook, and I think my step-grandpa existed on his fair share of Hungry Man TV dinners. I am fairly certain she never threw elaborate theme parties for my dad and aunt on their birthdays. On the rare occasions when she did entertain at home, she just opened a few bags of chips and let the cocktails flow. And everybody did just fine. When my brother and I spent a weekend at her house – a big treat for us – the first thing she would do was take us to the grocery store where she’d let us pick out packaged cookies and sugary cereal. Then we’d hit McDonald’s on the way back to her place – that was dinner. And that memory is something I cherish just as deeply, even more so, than the memories I have of my grandma on my mom’s side, who was always exhausted during the holidays after days of baking pies and homemade cookies. The moral of this story is that labor-intensive feats do not make people love you more.
- Set a timer and just do something for an hour. My grandma had that kitchen staple: a wind-up egg timer. She’d sit there, wind it up, and tell me the plan: “OK, we’re going to get as much housework done as we can in an hour.” Then, for 60 minutes, nothing but cleaning happened. The egg timer only timed for an hour or less, and you can focus on anything for an hour. The key learning on this one was focus — you’d be amazed what you can do in an hour with a singular mind.
