Monday, July 14th, 2008...12:46 am
#65: Screw the Housework
You get married, you buy a house, you have kids, and even if you keep working (obviously I’m talking to the women here), somehow it becomes all about the housework. Unless you married rich and you have domestic cleaners Bournemouth & Poole take care of you.
Here’s what I mean: Ask a 52-year-old woman to describe her perfect man, and somehow housework will creep into the description. He’s great in bed, and he changes the sheets! He can cook you a great dinner, listen to you talk throughout the meal, and happily cleans up afterward. Come to think of it, we can do without the sex and the conversation as long as he does the housework.
Think of your ideal life, and again housework inserts itself. You’d love a big gorgeous house that cleans itself! Cozy family dinners without the dirty dishes. A beautiful wardrobe without laundry. Great parties with none of the shopping, cooking, and post-party swabbing.
Well, of course, I hear you saying. We know all too well what it takes to run a home and a life. These things don’t just happen: They take work, effort, and you know who ends up doing it all! Of course we want a guy who knows his way around a canister vacuum!
Yes, but…..you didn’t feel this way when you were 22. (I wish I had, I hear you thinking.) No, you don’t really wish you had. You wanted to have sex and fun and wear cute clothes and go to yoga and listen to music and have a cool job and not only is that okay for 22, but it might improve the view from 52 also. The problem with housework is that it takes so much time and energy you don’t have anything left over for creativity and the life of the mind. You spend all those years keeping a perfect house because you think people are going to judge you by it and then suddenly the kids are grown up and you downsize to a condo and you have no career and no hobbies and nothing interesting to talk about.
What? Oh, right. This is supposed to be funny. I nearly forgot. Here, watch this:
Housework is one of those things I’ve never particularly obsessed about, thank goodness. My house is pretty sloppy and we have a cleaning lady who comes twice a month to take care of the actual cleaning parts. Life is too short!
I did go through a short phase of obsessive housecleaning when I first got my own apartment. It didn’t last long!
I used to be embarrassed to have people over because my house was never clean. It’s not my fault. It’s my family’s fault. They are slobs. When they go away my counters are clean. No junk mail (goes directly in the recycling – after I go through it, dogear pages, and then decide nothing is worth buying), no purses and gym bags on the table (I don’t know what floors those bags have been on!), no leftover food on the counter (right next to the fridge, but putting it away would involve finding plastic wrap and what husband does that?), no dishes in the sink (there are four people here, why are there 10 glasses in the sink?) no dog crap on the floor, (I think I’m the only one who lets the dogs out) no towels and dirty clothes laying around (what is so hard about walking 5 steps to the hamper?), no overflowing garbage cans (why am I the only one who notices that?), no piles of various obstacle course items on the steps waiting to be taken upstairs…
Here’s my fix-all: if you are nearsighted, don’t wear your glasses inside. You won’t see the cobwebs and dust. If you are farsighted or have perfect vision, wear dark sunglasses all the time for the same reason. People may talk about you and your dirty house, but who cares? They obviously have nothing else in their lives to keep them occupied. And you do. Otherwise you’d have time to clean.
JK Rowling found the time to write Harry Potter by abandoning housework. Nuff said.
As long as there aren’t bio-hazard stickers needed or the haz-mat team called to your house- relax. As my son tells me- it’s all good. Your true friends will love you no matter what and all the others? Do you really give a rat’s ass? Life is way too short to care about people who aren’t important to you.
I forgot all about actually cleaning house or paying any attention to it when widowed, enough on that.
Just now have decided I need to start doing something about it. Maybe new boyfriend is the spark I needed to remember housework needs to be done (by someone). Aren’t laundry and dishes enough to do? Got to quit reading these and get back to housework! Really do enjoy them when I have time to read them!
I guess I represent the unenlightened.
I’m 58 and just as into housework as I ever was. It’s not like it’s the only thing I do – I’ve owned and operated my own business for more than 30 years – but to this day it gives me a deep and profound sense of internal discomfort if some part of the house is messy/dusty/whatever. I’ve been a widow for five years and I’m probably fussier about the house now than when I was married. I find that when life is being challenging, there’s no better therapy than just cleaning the living hell out of something.
I enjoy the effort, challenge and results of having a clean, orderly home. It’s never perfect or done, but I like always having something to do. People say to “take pride in your work” jobwise. Taking pride in a clean, orderly home makes me feel good. Living in a mess is a reflection of other problems.