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Exhausted mom quits doing any household chores and shares what happened after just 3 days

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yesterday

It may seem obvious, but takes a heck of a lot more than most of us think to keep a household moving. Dishes, laundry, groceries, general cleaning and tidying, outdoor maintenance, scheduling, doctor’s appointments, and on and on and on. In most American households, mom handles most of it; the majority of the physical labor and almost all of the invisible, mental work.

If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Though men and fathers are sharing the load more than ever, the division of labor remains pretty bad on average. And it’s not just stay-at-home moms that are managing everything; it’s working women, too! It’s too much for any one person to handle.

Practically every mom I know occasionally daydreams about quitting-doing-all-the-things. Sometimes the impulse is born of exhaustion. Sometimes it’s the relentless daily tedium of cleaning, cooking, reminding, over and over and over without end. And sometimes it’s the desire for someone else to notice that these things actually need to be done and someone has to actually do it.

Even moms who share chores with spouses and kids often find themselves carrying the mental load of figuring out what needs to be done, monitoring whether it’s getting done, and organizing who’s doing what, and reminding/nagging/harassing her family members until it gets done. Sometimes moms just want to let all of that go and see what happens.

She stopped doing everything. Silently.

One mom, who goes by Miss Potkin on Twitter/X, decided she had enough. She decided, just like that, that she was going to quit without saying a word.

Channeling the fed-upness of mothers everywhere, she just up and stopped doing household chores to see what would happen. Two days later, she began sharing the saga in a Twitter thread that’s as entertaining as it is satisfying.

“Who will blink first?” she wrote alongside a picture of a mountain of dirty dishes.

The house fell apart faster than you’d think

Needless to say, without Lily managing things, the state of the home unraveled extremely quickly.

Letting go and letting your family sit in their own filth until they can’t take it anymore takes patience and discipline. There’s a........

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