Conversion to Domestic Divary

I grew up in a traditional household in which Dad went out and worked at a career which afforded him great satisfaction and money to support his family and Mum went no further afield than the supermarket and the ice hockey rink, while doing all the indoor household chores, plus banking and gardening.**  Until I was told differently, I thought this was perfectly normal. And, indeed, on a deep level, I still feel this is perfectly normal. It takes tremendous effort to wrench my brain into a "But I need to carry the financial burden, too" state, and then I get a bit depressed and "Oh, why wasn't I more PRACTICAL when thinking about university?"*

But as it is, I am a writer, and I write from home, whereas my husband leaves the house and goes through the woods to his office where he performs various labours of Hercules for his salary. When he comes home, he is tired, so relaxes before the internet with a beer before embarking on his hobby of making supper while listening to BBC Radio 4.  The shine comes off his fun if the kitchen is a mess, so even before I decided I really ought to begin a daily housework onslaught, I tried to make sure the kitchen was reasonably clean before 6, all dishes washed. 

As B.A. has to leave the house every day to work for a salary under a real boss and management hierarchy, with all that entails, and I don't, it seems to me that the least I can do is two hours or so of housework every day. To feel happy and secure, I need to know my husband is working at a career which affords him great satisfaction and money to support us, and he needs the flat to be tidy. The poor chap told me this many times over the past five years, but it took the Moth Emergency for me to take serious, life-changing action. Really, I am a bad wife. Thank heavens I am reasonably good-looking.

Anyway, to answer a Reader's question, I have a lot more energy and sense of satisfaction now that I have been following this housekeeping schedule for a few months. Even if I don't get down to my next novel, I have at least got the laundry finished and the bedroom, library, sitting-room and closet in order by Tuesday at 1 PM. I am certainly on the internet less--a very good thing because I was really on the internet, thief of time, much too much. 

And being organized has helped solidify my other conversion--that of writing down every penny we spend--and concentrate the time I spend on Polish to a profitable hour or two every morning.  

One of the problems we women face about housework is that it is terribly devalued. It is difficult, and it is necessary, and it guards human health and happiness, and yet because it doesn't make any money, if one does it oneself, it is considered unimportant and a waste of a fine female mind. Women dread being "just a housewife" even more than they feel embarrassed before employed women for being "just a stay-at-home mum", as if legions of employed women wouldn't give their back molars to be stay-at-home mums. 

It helps, however, to have a friend or two who are so reactionary, that they think it is wrong and immoral for married women to work outside the home at all, stealing money from the working man and his children and disrupting the fierce, competitive masculine world of finance, etc. Although most women would probably like to slap such reactionaries upside the head and throw drinks on them, I find it novel and sometimes even refreshing. 

"I think I should try to find a proper job," said I to such a reactionary during my birthday party one year. 

"Why?" demanded the reactionary.

"Well," I said, too nonplussed to say "Money", "I have much too much free time."

"Then you could can fruit and make cordials," he said. "You shouldn't get some job."

At the time, I wanted to kill him---oh dear, and now so will poor B.A. But now I have actually made cordials, which is terribly fun to do.  Naturally my reactionary friend was wrong--("You SEE?! You are a FEMINIST!!!!")---but it is nice to know that someone out there thinks that I am more moral by staying at home pouring vodka on fruit than by earning an honest dollar/50 p.

The first push, as my brother Nulli reported of himself (yesterday's combox), was pretty awful, I must say. My hands started to crack and bleed, which was awful, for my mother has suffered from contact dermatitis most of her adult life, and I am terrified of developing it myself. However, I got myself some good washing-up latex gloves, and my hands recovered. And, like Nulli, I discovered that I could do household tasks faster and faster, in part through practice, and in part because there was less to do. 

Spiritually, I think more about B.A. and appreciate more how he has to put up with the challenges and difficulties of the contemporary work world, whereas I don't. And I do my housework with a glad heart because I know he appreciates that, too. 

Do I think I am more suited to household tasks because I am a woman? I have to say "yes", but only because women, as a group, seem to be better at it, more meticulous. We also tend to have maternal traditions to look back on, and thus think about/commune with our loved ones while doing our housework. My mother does the washing on Monday; I do the washing on Monday. 

B.A., who was mostly raised by women (i.e. great-grandmother, grandmother and mother, with his grandfather to provide masculine example and advice regarding women), also has domestic traditions, but they come from his grandmother. One of my first, and most painful, adjustments  to married life was to stop washing dishes like myself (with the two sinks, we do not have) and begin washing dishes like B.A.'s late maternal grandmother.

**I do not think my father could have achieved everything he has achieved, or enjoyed as comfortable a life as he has enjoyed, without my mother's constant, unpaid labour.

*I often have to remind myself that I do, in fact, earn money.