Everyone Needs A Deck Of Cards Like This

Maybe Not For The Reasons You Think

Hi My Friend!

What’s making you feel pleased? (Is there anything? Sometimes for me, there’s nothing; and I think that’s OK, so long as it doesn’t last too long.) Besides the yellow flowers everywhere (which I write about way too much, and thank you for not calling me out about this), and the three mysterious fruit-balls growing on my vine plants in the front yard, I’m pleased that the white “Problems For Weekend Sophie” bin by my bedside is empty, and it’s Friday. It’s Friday at the end of one of the busiest weeks of my calendar year (back-to-school week), and so how is this possible?

Luke took this picture at the park near our house. Can you believe this is real?

In case this bin isn’t self-explanatory: I put things in there when I need the floor to be clean but I can’t possibly do any sorting or organizing or folding or putting of dresses on hangers. It is a tall bin, and it yet gets full quickly. I want to tell you I don’t put trash in there (Just put trash in the trashcan WHICH IS RIGHT NEXT TO THE WHITE BIN, Sophie!), but I do. I round up everything loose on the floor, think about it not at all, and put it in there en masse. They’re problems for Weekend Sophie, and she will deal with them when she’d much rather be in the garden with her daughter.

This week’s empty bin was made possible by The Fair Play Deck, which it seems like I am about to advertise to you. But I have no business advertising this product, as I’m not using it correctly. It goes with a book that I haven’t read, and is attached to instructions that are clear and concise and I think are shoved in our Wingspan box, and that’s fine. This is not to say that The Fair Play Deck shouldn’t be advertised — one of my greatest internet crushes Laura Danger is Fair Play-certified (this is a thing!), and she writes and talks about this tool eloquently and helpfully.

I’m going to talk about the concept of a deck of cards containing the names of all the possible tasks, mechanisms, and domestic responsibilities that exist when you are an adult human being surviving day-to-day in modernity. The Fair Play system is designed for couples, and I understand the deep importance of that: so, so often there are responsibilities that one person takes on (birth control, estate planning, first aid) that feel heavy but also unseen. That said, not everyone is in a couple, but I do think everyone would benefit from having some version of this deck of cards on hand. And ultimately, the story I’m about to weave will lead us through a neighborhood with an unexpected pineapple, to this Friday morning, where I’m sitting naked on my velvety couch, thinking about how pleased I am with the unexpected state of my white bin.

I bought The Fair Play Deck because I was feeling overburdened by little things that Luke was not paying attention to, and I wanted a “fun” way to talk to him about the things. Like, I was always responsible for buying the presents for all our family members, and now every two-year-old’s birthday party. Why are these things important? Maybe they’re not. I just wanted to talk about it all without crying. This deck of cards seemed like it would help.

Initially, it did not help. 

He said it was not a game. He said it was like a chore wheel, where you’re taking something horrible and acting like it’s fun.

And this was kind of true. My insistence that it was a game does, I hope, explain how the instructions ended up in our Wingspan box. Comparisons were made.

I told Luke he could sulk about it for as long as he wanted, and when he was ready, maybe we could talk about it again. 

In the meantime, I went through the deck and sorted the cards into four piles: things Luke did, things I did, things we both did, and things that we didn’t need to do yet because we don’t have an elementary-school-aged child. Even when I was VERY generous and gave Luke cards that we shared but he did slightly more often (taking out trash), the piles were like this:

Left: shared. Middle: me. Right: Luke.

This was validating. 

Eventually, Luke came around, and we decided to use the cards like this: we would make a dinner date somewhere fancy and exciting. We would get a babysitter. We would sit down and go through the decks of cards. We’d talk about each task, and discuss how it was going. What was the task like for the person who did the task? Did the person who did the task want to give the task to the other person? Could we ask someone else in our circle of friends to do the task WITH us? Was the task really necessary? What was the emotional reality of the task? Did it feel hard? Easy? When the task was something we shared, we talked about that too: how did we share it? Who did it more often? Why was that? How did that feel? Was there a way that we could strategize so that the task would be more predictable?

A card like “First Aid” would come up and Luke would go, “Oh, we don’t really need that one.” And then I would get to go, “We don’t NEED that one? Where do you think our first aid kit comes from? Do you think it gets stocked by a fairy who flies down from the sky and magically puts one upstairs and one downstairs? And what about when our babysitters need that document that explains what to do in case of emergency? The constantly-updated Google Doc? With the doctor’s numbers and the neighbor’s numbers? The updated list of foods she likes and how to make them? Do you think that’s just… not… labor?” I wrote that in the passive voice. Don’t worry. I SPOKE it in the aggressive one. 

This went both ways; Luke asked to be able to hold a card to signify the work he does when I’m overwhelmed with work, and am crying uncontrollably — which, to be fair, happens at least once per month for three consecutive days. 

It sounds like this would result in a lot of fighting, but it’s really lovely. We say thank you. We ask for things. We eat fried mushrooms and drink weird kombucha and stay out a little too late. (At least, this is what happened most recently, when we went to Fancy Plants — a restaurant in Chicago I highly recommend, with a gigantic patio. On the walk to Fancy Plants, we noticed that someone IS GROWING PINEAPPLES!? IN THE YARD?! HOW!!!! But yet.)

What this made me think was, This conversation would be great not just for couples, but for everyone. What I mean is: we are all asked to do too much. There are too many tasks. (This deck is gigantic, and it’s unrealistic. It’s ridiculous.) There are images of people getting everything done, somehow: their jobs, ON TOP OF THIS ENTIRE DECK OF CARDS. Absurd. We should be talking about this with each other! We should be telling our friends about how often we do or don’t do the dishes, and what we have to give up in order to get them done; about whether or not folding laundry feels important, or sweeping floors. Why is it important or not important? The places we live matter to us, but they can also make us feel so sad and inferior. Using a deck like this as a kind of conversation starter for communities makes a lot of sense to me. It would also be a great way to figure out how to ask for and offer help. 

We mostly live in nuclear family units, or by ourselves. We mostly don’t know how to work collectively, especially when it comes to domestic tasks. That probably isn’t going to change on a large scale in the lifetime of anyone reading this letter. But being able to talk about what’s not working about it is essential, and a tool like this — which is designed to temporarily solve a problem (it’s a really good Band Aid!) — can work on so many levels. 

My white bin is empty because when we came to the “Cleaning” card, Luke and I were both like, “Welp, there’s no time for that one, is there?” And there is not. Neither of us could possibly hold any more cards without overwhelming ourselves or giving up our Basic Human Needs. 

“But what if, just one day a week, we cleaned for an hour after T went to bed?” Luke said. 

“This sounds amazing,” I said. My truth is that I think I would like to do that every night, but also, it’s probably good that sometimes I stop moving. 

So last Tuesday, we cleaned. We put on our respective podcasts and did cleaning tasks around the house, and I emptied the white bin. The house is still basically trashed, and whatever. There’s no way for everything to get done, and I’m not apologizing. The only way we arrived at the Tuesday solution was because we got to have that nice dinner, where we got to appreciate how difficult it is just to be alive every day, doing the things we do to survive. But also, what a joy — to know we are taking care of each other, too.

If you don’t have anyone to tell about all that you are doing to keep your home running, I’m here to receive it, always. I know that it’s a lot. Tell me about it. You’re doing a better job than I bet you realize. 

Love,

Sophie