Europeans spend as much time thinking about household chores them as doing them

On average, French respondents say they spend 92% as much time preparing for tasks as they spend doing them, research reveals. — AFP

WASHING dishes, vacuuming, changing sheets, paying the bills; the list of household chores to be done can be a mental burden in itself. In fact, the findings of a new survey reveal as much, with Europeans spending almost as much time thinking about or preparing for household chores as they do actually completing them.

And this inevitably adds to the overall burden, which, in short, ends up twice as high as it should be.

If work is a source of stress for many employees, and the issue remains little discussed in the workplace, it’s important to bear in mind that many people start a second day once they’ve left the office.

Whether it’s picking up the kids from school, preparing the week’s meals or cleaning every nook and cranny of the home, household chores too can take a heavy toll on people’s mental health.

Such are the findings of a survey carried out by Samsung Electronics in October 2023, among 6,066 European consumers in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom to mark the launch of its mental load index, ‘The Invisible Load,’ which gives people the opportunity to find out how much these tasks are weighing on their well-being.

The mental load associated with household chores is not to be underestimated, since those surveyed claim, on average, to carry out 72% of household tasks. In detail, over three-quarters claim to take on more than 50% of these tasks, and almost half say that they take on between 76% and 100% of these responsibilities.

Contrary to what you might think, it’s not the distribution of tasks within the household that poses a problem – more than half of those surveyed (52%) feel that this is fair – but how the burden of these activities weighs on mental health. And this is amplified by a number of factors that hinder respondents’ effectiveness in accomplishing these tasks, starting with lack of motivation (36%), lack of time (34%), lack of money (18%) and – nevertheless – lack of support from other members of the household (16%).

Thinking + doing = double burden

Interestingly, on the whole, Europeans spend almost as much time thinking about or preparing to do household chores as they do actually completing them, and this is especially the case for the French.

On average, French people spend 47.2 hours a week thinking about preparing meals, laundry, bills and running errands, and 51.2 hours actually doing such tasks – in other words, they’re spending 92% as much time preparing for these chores as actually doing them.

In Spain, meanwhile, respondents spend 61.2 hours thinking about household chores and 69.2 hours actually doing them, while in Italy, people spend 66.3 hours thinking about household tasks and 75 hours doing them.

In detail, it appears that cooking meals is by far the most demanding task for Europeans, both physically and mentally. On average, they spend seven hours a week thinking about or preparing for cooking meals, and 7.6 hours actually doing so.

This is followed by cleaning the house (5.6 hours thinking about it vs 6.5 hours doing it), looking after pets (5.2 hours vs 6.4 hours), tidying the house (3.7 hours vs 4.5 hours), gardening (3.4 hours vs 4.2 hours), washing dishes (by hand or machine) (3.8 hours vs 3.6 hours), and shopping (3.3 hours vs four hours). This suggests that Europeans spend more time worrying about the dishes than actually doing them. The same applies to managing and paying bills (two hours vs 1.9 hours).

Cost-of-living crisis

The cost-of-living crisis seems to be adding addition weight to the burden felt by Europeans when it comes to managing and completing household chores. Almost a quarter of them (24%) consider that it has made managing these tasks more stressful or overwhelming, compared with 19% who feel that it is now more difficult, and 17% who say that it has caused tension within the household.

Other factors affecting how people approach household tasks include rising energy prices, the economic downturn and, to a lesser extent, climate change and geopolitical events.

As a result, if they could, Europeans would first and foremost like to reduce the costs associated with household chores; like energy bills (38%), ahead of spending less time on them (30%), reducing the quantity of tasks to be carried out at home (25%), reducing the mental load and stress associated with this work (25%), and having more support from the rest of the household (20%). – AFP Relaxnews