If you’d told me a few months ago that a simple 10-minute routine could drastically improve my family’s nightly clean-up situation, I wouldn’t have believed you. After dinner duties felt like this eternal slog that weighed me down every evening without fail.
But then I discovered the magical power of the “Power 10” – a deceptively simple practice that has quite literally reshaped how we operate as a family once those dishes start piling up.
Here’s how it works: After our meal is over, we set a timer for 10 minutes. During that 10-minute window, it’s all hands on deck as every family member focuses with intense purpose on powering through as many clean-up tasks as humanly possible before the timer goes off.
My husband takes out the trash and refreshes the dog’s food and water bowls. The kids quickly clear their dishes and put them in the dishwasher or sink. Meanwhile, I’m a madwoman wiping down counters, putting away leftovers, and getting surfaces spotless again. It’s utter chaos and I love every second of it!
You see, by creating this defined, high-intensity 10-minute window, the chore of cleaning up after dinner has been totally reframed in our household. It’s no longer this dreaded, draining open-ended slog. It’s a rallying cry, a race against the clock, a sudden surge of teamwork and energy.
My kids, who would have previously moaned and dragged their feet through clean-up, now ZIP around in a frenzy of productive motion as we all hustle together to beat that 10-minute timer. Thanks to their short attention spans, a short burst of focused energy is far more motivating and rewarding than indefinite drudgery.
For me, knowing there’s a definitive end point to my cleaning within those 10 minutes makes the workload feel so much lighter. No matter how daunting the mess may look, I know that very soon I’ll hear that glorious timer sound and can happily down tasks for the night.
Of course, there’s usually still some minor straightening up required after our Power 10 is over. But having accomplished a serious dent as a family with our dedicated team effort leaves me feeling energized to quickly polish off those final items. No soul-crushing avalanche of dishes and chores – just a few simple closing tasks.
Even when our kids inevitably get older and move out, I have a feeling my husband and I will still incorporate the Power 10 into our evening routines. There’s just something so invigorating and bonding about that short burst of focused housework.
We emerge 10 minutes later feeling accomplished and closer as a unit. The dishesare miraculously demolished, the dog has been looked after, and I avoided yet another night of going to bed resentful and overwhelmed. All thanks to the Power 10!
So if your evenings have started feeling like a doom spiral of unending chores and clean-up crankiness, I couldn’t recommend this magical reset more. Set a timer for 10 minutes tonight and watch the accidental magic unfold as your family blitzes through those tasks as a team. You just may discover your nights instantly transforming into something far more sustainable and bonding!
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Camille: 0:00
So that's a good place for us to start, with everything we have going on, especially right now, with it being May and one of the busiest months of the year. It's amazing how this simple hack has really changed the practice of the magical reset for the day. So you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business, sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know this is Call Me CEO. In this week's episode of Call Me CEO, we are talking about Power 10, a new approach to cleaning up the kitchen in your nightly routine, and how this gamifying way of getting your kids involved is going to make it go easy, breezy and you'll have a better way of getting the chore done so you can move on with your day. Hey, everyone, it's Camille here from Call Me CEO. This is a solo episode that is really a drop in the bucket of so many good ideas, amazing stories of women building businesses while being awesome moms, and with that we're all very busy. And I can tell you, one chore that can really irk me sometimes, as a busy mom of four, is the kitchen cleanup after dinner, and I don't know what it is, but if I have cooked a meal, whether it's taken me 30 minutes or an hour or whatever it is if my kids decide to bail after dinner, even if they just put their dish away sometimes, and then I'm left with all of the mess, I can feel a bit resentful and sometimes really upset and sometimes mad. Do you ever feel like that? Well, I started a new thing recently called Power 10. And this is basically single-handedly saving my sanity and bringing a little fun back into this chore routine, because it is something that I just came up with out of necessity and basically what it is is after we've all finished eating. We set a timer for 10 minutes and I told my family during that 10 minutes we are going to stay busy. That means that there is a list of chores for us. I had this discussion with them when we were sitting down at dinner and I said I told them how I felt.
Camille: 2:35
I think it's really important as adults to be really candid about having moments of feeling overwhelmed or saying you know, this is a really busy time and all of us have a lot of things to get done. But I really could. I really feel like everyone needs to pitch in for mealtime and cleaning up. It's a part of being, and I really have tried to avoid saying help, mom. I don't like that. So I'll say I really try to say that everyone pitches in, that we're all a team, we all live here and everyone needs to pitch in.
Camille: 3:10
So what that means is the laundry list of what those chores might look like is taking out the garbage, putting away groceries that need to go back into the fridge or the food that needs to go back in the fridge dishes, the big dishes, putting in food for the dog, water for the dog, taking out the trash. You know coming up with a list of things. My kids are old enough now that they know. My youngest is seven. He knows what needs getting done. But I would argue that even little tiny kids, even tinier than that, they know what needs to get done, and sometimes assigning younger kids can be a good way to go in case they need a little direction with that. Whether it's the older kid helps with the vacuuming up and the younger kid puts the silverware away or something like that, you can come up with an idea.
Camille: 3:58
But what's been really cool about this is that with everyone pitching in for those 10 minutes, we set a timer using Alexa and it gamifies it a bit. Where it takes it from being okay. Everyone help clean up. Where they kind of want to skirt away from that to all right, it's the power 10. Everyone let's put in 10 minutes and see what we can get done, and it has brought in such a wonderful new energy for cleaning out the tasks and becoming a true team effort, so that it's not just you. So you'd be amazed how much you can accomplish in those 10 minutes when everyone is tipping in. I find that it really helps me. You know, six people for 10 minutes is a whole hour of one person's time, assuming that they all work at the same speed. But there may be some finishing touches that need to be done after those 10 minutes. But let me tell you, having multiple hands splitting up that work has made the remainder feel like a total breeze, because then maybe it's just scrubbing down that one last pot or wiping down the counters or vacuuming up a spot that got missed or something like that. And I really love that.
Camille: 5:06
The timer sets a motivation to the kids in a way that it turns like that dreaded nightly slog into something of a competition, almost like sometimes my kids will get into it and be like, yeah, I can do more than I thought I could, or I'm going to do more than I did last night, or sometimes they'll compete against each other. The key is to making it feel more manageable and motivating, so that you know the 10 minutes feels way less daunting than just saying vaguely clean up after dinner and having an indefinite amount of time of how long this is going to take, because I don't know about you, but my kids will accuse me of saying, well, if I do that, you still have always more chores for me to do, and so for them it kind of gets like I don't know if you would say like a get out of jail free card where they put in the 10 and that's good enough, that is good enough. So that's a good place for us to start with everything we have going on, especially right now, with it being May and one of the busiest months of the year. It's amazing how this simple hack has really changed the practice of the magical reset for the day. So that's all for today's episode.
Camille: 6:15
Make sure to subscribe and join me next week for more mom life and amazing stories of mothers building businesses.
Camille: 6:23
And if you haven't heard yet, I am now opening the doors for a CEO, which is a coaching program group coaching program that I'm doing with my sister, where we are putting together the best practices for brain performance psychology, which is using brain elasticity and goal setting that will really get done to help you in your personal life and in your business, and also a networking group and mastermind of incredible women that have built amazing businesses and are reaching for their goals. This is a two times a month training that is recorded live, but you can watch the recordings later. And then we also have four in-person events. If you want to hear more about that, you can go to sheoco in the link below, and I will see you next time. Hey, ceos, thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment and a five-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram at callmeCEOPodcast and remember you are the boss.
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