Listen to this blog post by using the audio player below:
As a child, gaming was one of my favorite things to do, starting on a tiny green Nintendo GameBoy Pocket and a bulky Mac desktop computer. Almost 30 years later, journeying through virtual worlds is not only fun, but helpful as I cultivate the home that anchors my family.
The story of this blog post takes place two years into my chapter as a homemaker following a decade in the technology world. I was no longer a complete beginner, consistently gaining traction and more easily identifying good methods vs uphill battles.
January through April of this year, I played the video game Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on the Nintendo Switch. I was gifted this game when it was released in May 2023. However, with a new baby on the way then the adjustment to two children, I did not complete the game until this spring.
I played the game for an hour or two after our two toddlers (ages 1 and 3) went to bed. These months were period of transition for our family: My husband was immersed in a starting a new job. Our 1 year was transitioning to solid food and by March would begin sleeping through the night regularly. Our 3 year old started preschool part-time, shifting routines and connecting us to a school community for the first time; she also was rarely napping anymore. There were a lot of good, exciting things, but life was dense and fast moving.
Over the four months I played Tears of the Kingdom, many things came into balance. Committing to playing the game each night — to sit for even an hour instead of trying to get other things done — was the rest I needed. However, this form of self-care was by no means passive. Over time, I noticed how my game play and daytime routines in the home began to mirror each other. I was learning a lot while having fun, becoming more successful at the game and in my homemaking.
By successful, I mean getting things accomplished consistently and gaining new skills along the way. I was moving through the game at a faster pace than when I first picked it up two years ago, likely because of how my brain had reshaped while learning how to run our home and adapting to caring for multiple children.
This blog post explores four mental models I find fruitful for navigating both video games and real life. Here, I compare and specifically focus on open world video games and homemaking alongside very young children — however, I believe many of the ideas here could apply to other contexts.
To start, here are a couple definitions of terms frequently used in this post:
What are open world video games? Open world video games allow the player to choose their path through the game and explore to their heart’s content. Often, there are several regions on a map to explore, several quests that can be completed in any order. This is a shift from linear games — such as arcade games — where players progress through levels in a particular order. Many major, decades-old franchises such as Pokémon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Legend of Zelda have released open world concept games in recent years.
What is homemaking? Homemaking is the art of caring for a home and the people in it. It includes but is not limited to meal preparation, cleaning, decorating, caring for children, mending things, and gardening. Homemaking is about making a home peaceful, nurturing, and restful. For more, see my post Embracing the Art of Homemaking as a Software Developer.
Structure and Open-endedness
Open world gaming and homemaking both require skill in balancing structure and open-endedness. There is a sense of achievement that comes from regularly accomplishing things, plus room for exploration. Often, there are surprises that need to be navigated, so a rigid structure is rarely sufficient.
Like a video game, the home has a map of spaces with their own rhythms, contents, and moods. The world has an abundance of suggestions for cleaning schedules, products, and so forth. Yet, mastery of homemaking takes some experimentation as well as a softened heart. Over time, I’ve found myself approaching the home not as a burden or massive to-do list, but as a puzzle to be solved gracefully.
Engaging in open worlds similarly requires planning and ongoing assessment of the environment. There are many anchors but a lot of variability. Here are three strategies I’ve found helpful:
Work around recurring events
In the home, there are three meals served each day and (for our older toddler this past school year) three mornings of preschool a week. Following that second example: I do tasks that require full attention, like mending a pair of pants, when one of my children is at school and the other is napping. On my preschooler’s “home days”, I tackle tasks I can do alongside children more easily, like watering plants or restocking ingredients. These “home day” tasks are also great learning opportunities for children.
Similarly, games are programmed with recurring events — some that mirror real life and others that are more fantastical. As an example in Tears of the Kingdom, there is an event called the “Blood Moon” where items and monsters across the world restock (or, to use gaming language “respawn”). The “Blood Moon” happens a certain number of minutes of of game play, it doesn’t matter what you are doing in the game. If I were deciding between quest A requiring items from the Blood Moon, and quest B that doesn’t, I would start with quest B. Then, by the time quest B has been completed, the Blood Moon probably has happened and I can collect those ingredients.
Set aside time for a goal and extra time
In both the home and open-world games, it can be easy to putter around and waste time without goals. I usually start with a goal to complete and then set aside leftover free time to see where things lead. In that free time I may complete something else, identify something to do later, or simply just enjoy my surroundings.
Stop and reassess when aimless
If I’m beginning to meander and not be particularly productive, that is a good time to stop and reassess things. Extended lack of direction tends to lead to boredom or lack of enthusiasm. Games that are not open world often come with a carefully designed system of reminders and hints. However, in the open world format, much like real life, the gamer charts their own path.
After stopping, I often revisit to do lists or game mission lists, choosing something I can do in the time left (if possible). Sometimes, the best choice is to simply stop for the session, leaving it ready to play next time (the section “Closing the Home/Game” discusses this further).
Bundling Actions by Location
In open world games, it takes the software a good deal of effort to move to a new location. The reason is because the world is so expansive, with complex 3D models. The map data is reloaded, which can take around 30 seconds to a minute. Games introduce loading screens with fun facts to read, animations, etc. to help the user pass the time. (Side note: This is true, at least for the first version of the Nintendo Switch — if you can confirm there are faster loading times in the Switch 2, please let me know!)
With computer games, certain hardware in the device can help with this, but for gaming platforms there is less customization. Similarly, as humans, we need to be mindful of our inherent limitations (energy, hours in a day, etc.)
To address this issue of “reloading the map” — which, in the home could be compared to context-switching — I make the most of where I am at a time. In a given room, I scan area for quick easy things to do while there before leaving.
When I give my toddlers a bath, I tackle quick tasks in the bathroom that can be done while keeping an eye on them. A few examples are refilling the soap dispenser, cleaning the floor, or swapping out towels and facecloths. As a result, I mostly just need to return to work in the bathroom to do deep cleaning projects.
In general — anywhere in the home — if I can accomplish something I come across in 5 minutes or less, I usually do it immediately. This cuts down my to-do lists. At times, I’ve found myself wanting to add small things to a to-do list. There is something rewarding about being able to check off something small off. Ultimately, though, I’ve found myself more nimble by addressing things instantly.
Going back to Tears of the Kingdom, a comparable example is acquiring scales, claws, and horns from dragons who fly around the world of the game. The dragon parts are used for side quests and to create and upgrade various valuable items. The dragons are reliably found on given paths, but it is impossible to know where at a given time (see this article for visuals). You may need to wait for a while in a spot on the path for them to appear. This is OK, but isn’t a good use of time, especially if you only have an hour or so to play the game. Therefore, it is really great to prioritize dragon farming if they happen to be in the vicinity.
Closing the Home/Game
My previous post Working Part-Time While Caring for Young Children shares how I started a consistent, calming routine of closing the home. This includes cleaning the kitchen by candlelight, a light pick up of the living room, and setting aside clothes and table settings for the next day.
When I returned to Tears of the Kingdom this January, I started something similar. I spent a few minutes intentionally closing the game. This involved:
- Cooking meals and elixirs: Meals restore health and elixirs provide special abilities (e.g. being able to withstand extreme heat for a certain amount of time)
- Fusing weapons: Weapons in the game start out as weak and need to be fused with different items (e.g. monster horns) to become stronger. Weapons also break after a while so the player needs to regularly build new ones.
- Gathering ingredients: Ingredients found throughout the world (in the wild and in shops) are needed in order to cook meals and elixirs and fuse weapons.
- Identifying questions and opening new tabs for them in my phone’s browser: This is unpacked in the next section “Research and Perform Loop”.
This is easy, repetitive work in the game, great to do to wind down and finish playing for the day. Usually when I open a game, I am eager to get going with something right away (again, especially considering my limited free time in this season of life). In the times when I didn’t close the game appropriately, the next day I felt unprepared and my time playing the game felt rushed.
Closing the game can also help me look ahead to my next gaming session. Sometimes, the preparation would be specific to whatever my next goal was in the game. For example, some missions in the Tears of the Kingdom involve huge amounts of a resource called stamina, which allows you to scale mountains, run for long periods of time, etc. One side quest that tests your stamina involves taming a giant horse. The night before I tamed the horse, I was sure to prepare many stamina elixirs — more than I ended up needing.
Research and Perform Loop
Over the months I played Tears of the Kingdom, I noticed that the open tabs in my phone were often gaming articles and recipe articles — this is no coincidence. Both gaming and cooking involve preparation and following several steps to do something you may have never done before. They are rarely the type of articles you go to to simply answer a question and then leave, they often involve returning to at least a couple times.
My researching of things tends to happen in the margins of the day. As a Mom of two toddlers often on the go, much of this happens on my phone. I don’t enjoy being on my phone too much around my toddlers, but it is certainly much harder to sit at my laptop in this season.
Learning something new often involves walking through the steps in one’s mind beforehand. In my story, this might be thinking about the steps to make bagels from scratch, or where to collect the materials needed to defeat a monster in a game (playing Tears of the Kingdom, the Gleeok multi-headed dragon was one I researched one day while pushing the stroller).
As far as gaming goes, this means the gaming experience spans two types of devices: the game console and a mobile device. This is fairly common for anyone — gamers might spend a lot of time watching tutorial videos, reading tips online, or having conversations with other gamers.
When I get back to playing the game, I regularly note questions I have and open tabs to read later. So, what emerged is a multi-device cycle of researching and performing. This happened at first by accident, and once I realized what I was doing I leaned into this mental model more and more for learning new things.
Conclusion
What does it mean that the physical world of the home and virtual world of the video game began to mirror each other? I believe the virtual world became an environment for me to process and restore myself, similar to how dreams are the result of the brain processing inputs. The brilliant design of the game is surely to thank for this — a chaotic, disjointed user experience would consume energy rather than allow my mind to breathe.
The comparison of gaming to dreaming does seem fitting as it truly became a time of rest. Being so intensely physically active running a home with two toddlers, to finally sit down for an hour or two is critical. To rest awake is in some ways more restful than if I went right to sleep — I would sleep but then jump right into another very active day.
While I also read and crochet before bed, gaming is more interactive — in fact, interactivity is the common thread among the four areas discussed in this article. Prior to my experience this year, I would have never guessed something interactive would feel so restful. It truly met my needs in a season of life where I needed restoration. Technology that is interactive is likely more restful than more passive (yet, usually more emotionally reactive) forms such as scrolling on the news and social media. Yet, it’s often easier to reach for those less intentional routes when one is feeling run down.
The more rested I am, the smoother our household runs. As each member of our family goes out into the world from home each day, I take the responsibility of building up our home seriously — while keeping it fun, of course. In a world where technology changes so quickly, I’m inspired to have video games as a steadfast, multi-decade companion in life.
