Every odd weekend throughout the summer, I typically have friends up to my cabin. The number of people I host typically ranges from 15-20 people and, by the time the weekend is over, the cabin gets fairly messy. Although I have now developed a system that gets the cabin clean within an hour or so, it took a while to implement the idea.
When I first started inviting friends to my cabin two summers ago they would consistently have a great time. We would spend the weekend on the lake, in the woods and made countless unforgettable memories. The only downside was cleaning. For the whole weekend, it would typically take me up to 6 hours to clean the property. By myself, I would have to vacuum the floor, wash all the bed sheets, clean the boat, etc. I could have asked for help but I was afraid that it would my friends with a negative impression on their experience. So, every time we went to the cabin, I would be stuck cleaning.
When relating this situation to strategies for dealing with conflict, it would be safe to consider that I took the avoiding approach. This approach typically leads to concerns not being met and limiting disruption. Although this can be appropriate in various situations, it was definitely not the best choice for mine.
Eventually, I realized that I would not be able to continuously deal with this situation in this manner. Therefore I implemented the idea to assign every person a job regarding cleaning up. I was surprised to find that the first time we tried the idea it only took about two hours to clean the whole property and today we can do it in almost under an hour.
This implementation associates with the problem solving strategy of conflict because I was able to gain commitment through a small compromise from my friends. This strategy was definitely the most appropriate for this situation because it saved me countless arduous hours of cleaning. I also realized that avoiding conflict is not always the best tactic for situations, being that this doesn’t allow the expression of opinions from both parties within the predicament.
word count: 361