Who set the standards?

(The ones that are driving you insane)

Apr 30, 2024

Quick note before my main post: Do you feel your life works for everyone else but you? Last chance to join me tomorrow night (7pm, Wednesday 1st May - recording for those who can’t make it live) for an online workshop called Revive & Thrive where I’ll be showing you really practical tools to come out from under the overwhelm (I won’t be suggesting scented baths, I promise!) and empowering you to make better decisions so you can give from all those roles from a place of strength. Ok let’s get on with the main (but not unrelated post!)

Who sets the insane-making standards?

I still remember the joy of closing the door to my first flat.

Not the ones I rented, sharing with a range of flatmates… some of whom I can’t remember their names and some who became lifelong friends as we bonded over figuring out how to be adults.

I mean my first ever self-bought flat… a tiny little one bed studio that would have been perfect for swinging my cat should she have wanted to be swung. It was just me and her, and apart from the occasional mouse offering, she didn’t make much of a mess. It was my first, real ‘own’ space where I was in sole charge of making and tidying the mess. I didn’t even have standards as such…..it was so small, so new and so mine, it hardly merited cleaning… a daily wipe around the sink as I went along seemed to cover most of it. Occasionally, and it was only occasionally, I dragged a Hoover around…. storing it’s bulk in my storage-lite abode often making me wonder if it was actually necessary at all.

My standards for cleanliness therefore were fairly easy to meet. I put my breakfast plate in the dishwasher and left for work. When I got back in the evening the place looked exactly the same. My standards were high because it took no effort. And here’s the funniest part: because I was a singleton, no-one had any expectations at all, other than I didn’t live in a complete pigsty.

So why, pray tell, does the moment a woman gains excessive responsibilities, do the expectations go up?

I’ve never been an ironer. I used to watch my mum stand over an ironing board, on the verge of tear-drenched exhaustion, having worked a full day, visited her ailing parents, made our dinner, and I’m sure now, so many other thankless, unthanked, unnoticed but necessary jobs. I still associate an ironing board with the stress of seeing her so overwhelmed. So I knew even then, something was wrong.

Then, too soon, I moved from my solo-flat to a married house, where now there were two adults and two cats. Ok twice the mess but twice the hands right? Sort-of-ish. We had a garden and so that became more his domain where he chatted to the neighbours and people would remark on his handiwork, while I did more of the silent, unseen, unrecognised work inside. You know, the picking up, the hoovering behind the sofa, the dusting the tops of things - stuff only noticed when it’s NOT done. Still, it was fairly easy to keep up enough standards to keep the new neighbours from talking.

And whatever “standards” I adhered to (and where did they come from other than an 1950’s American ideal where the housewife stays home and dusts, while waiting for hubby to return and hold his hand out for a drink), they were still easy enough to maintain.

And then the shit-show began. Suddenly I ended up with three kids under five, a career on life-support, a husband whose job was '“very important” but the standards still needed to be kept despite 10 times the work.

It never occurred to me to adjust my standards to my capacity!

Why did it not occur to me? Why was I not given that message… to match my standrds to my capacity? Why had that not become the standard??

And then the shit-show got shittier and I became a single parent… now one pair of hands and 20 times the work. I thought it was just normal to be so overwhelmed I would cry at the end of the day, like my mum.

So many women I coach are buckling under the unrealistic standards, exacerbated by perfectionism in the Triad of Turmoil handed to us from the patriarchy.

We have to start putting our inner sanity before external standards. You are not less of a person because the skirting boards haven’t been hoovered. You are no less valuable to your family if the washing isn’t folded and left on individual beds instead of left in a pile for everyone to get their own. You are no less of a woman if you aren’t constantly running around like a blue arsed fly with your hair on fire trying to make everyone else happy.

Sanity v standard

This comes up a lot with my coaching. Women who are held hostage to standards not of their making:

Standards that were made when women stayed at home, and men went and lived their lives.

Standards set by magazine editors and Good Housekeeping articles.

Standards set by a system that survived by keeping women doing all the unpaid, unrecognised, undervalued work; a patriarchy that thrived by pinning a woman’s value on her piney and the cleanliness of her skirting boards rather than her lifting her skirts and running into life as a human being, not just a human doing.

We are the magnificent midlifers who live in a world where (for most of us, and many still don’t) women have rights, opportunities, chances and power never experienced before, AND, we still live with a lot of the old, crushingly critical outdated social narrative (and programming) that set women standards that are unrealistic. We are the transitional generations and that means we have to be aware that we aren’t in equity yet. That’s ok, we’re getting there but the slowest transition isn’t necessarily in the visible fields - education, board rooms, pay and pension gaps - but in the quiet, invisible fields of home, child-care, housework, family-care and “good girl-ness.”

So knowing that, means you might just take some agency rather than just assume that the standards that someone else set in your mind are right.

The standards you set when living alone in a pristine (or not) flat cannot be the same as the one you have working full time and managing three kids. They just can’t.

You own that standard, in direct relationship with your sanity, not the social standards Stazi.

As a single mum to three teenage girls, trying to write and run a business, I have had to really battle with the voice in my head that’s not mine, telling me what I should be doing, and how it’s all supposed to look. I’ve had to decide what really matters, and set my own standards for various things according to my own preferences and capacity. For me personally it means an ok-ly clean house and good, nourishing food. I can’t stretch to both. (I know you’re not meant to have a favourite child but I do. My new robot hoover is my chosen one, and I am happy to admit I even talk sweetly to her when she’s overworked). I’ve chosen where my standards can be met and where good enough is good enough. This doesn’t mean I don’t wish it was all just a bit better, a bit cleaner, a bit newly painted, better carpets etc but I can live with it so I can have a certain level of sanity. One standard I dropped is laundry. Unless you live with three teenage girls who think nothing of wearing something for 10 minutes before putting it in the wash, you have no concept of laundry levels. So I wash it, I dry it… and then I put it in a big basket and let everyone fight over the 12,151,245,342,354 non-matching trainer socks. Perhaps if I had a partner, a cleaner and a housekeeper I’d do it better. But I don’t, so I won’t. I’ll try and make nourishing food, but when it comes to laundry, I choose my sanity over a standard that would break me.

I’ve had to work with so many clients too in this way. Firstly helping them see their circumstances have to be taken into account in terms of their standards, and then choosing what matters most and where can you let it go a little. (Or a lot. Or altogether.)

What about you? Where can you drop some standards and sashay towards more sanity?

And on that topic… Do you feel your life works for everyone else but you?

You might think everyone is benefitting from this but you, but while it actually might be working for them in the short term, it’s not benefitting them in the long term. When you are constantly giving from a place of resentment, drain, exhaustion and pressure, they’re not getting a rich relationship with YOU, just the role you are playing for them, be that partner, parent, daughter, colleague, friend.

Everyone will benefit when you are investing in yourself - getting what you need, and thriving as well as surviving. Last chance to join me tomorrow night (7pm, Wednesday 1st May - recording for those who can’t make it live) for an online workshop called Revive & Thrive where I’ll be showing you really practical tools to come out from under the overwhelm (I won’t be suggesting scented baths, I promise!) and empowering you to make really good decisions for you, so you can give from all those roles from a place of strength.

(Paid subscribers get a 10% discount - just email me at alana@alanakirk.com)

I’d love to know how you think about your own sanity versus standards, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

Who set the standards?

(The ones that are driving you insane)

Who sets the insane-making standards?

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