Hobson's Choice
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From the Domestic Seer's Crystal Ball
Two questions arise today:
-- If Eleanor eats what seems like nothing for supper, then how come the floor is still a disaster area under her chair at the end of the meal?
-- When will Eleanor be old enough to do laundry?
Now that I'm a Housework Goddess, Chris has asked me to write about chores and what I think of them, to give a sort of top ten list.
I really enjoy housework. Don't worry; I'm still a "lick and promise" type housekeeper, and some days our family is definitely a candidate for one of those home-organization-disaster makeover shows. OCD types would be advised never to look at or even think about our closets or cupboards (I'm still adhering to my premarital promise to Chris never to have an organized cutlery drawer). But I'd like to think that our mothers wouldn't be too ashamed of how our house looks now.
As I now spend the vast majority of my time at home, either with Eleanor or in the office, rather than just a few hours in the evening, I find that an orderly house becomes more and more important to me. To be anything like serene with a toddler in tow, I have to have clear space in which to think. In my thirties, I'm trying more and more to see housework not as a list of chores to be completed, but as a spiritual practice. I read once that the majority of dust comes from dead skin cells and disintegrated meteors. I doubt that it's true, but I like the idea of gathering up all our dead matter, the dying universe, daily to make space for life and breath.
And so here it, my list of chores.
(1) Anything outside. If housework means tending to death's particles, then yardwork gives life. I love touching my plants, and I love searching through the knowledge that my parents gave me as a child. Be clear, though: when I say "yardwork," I am not talking about mowing the grass. I think the lawn is a capitalist psychopathology, and I look forward to the day when we've transformed our yard into a grass-free space.
(2) Any project that's been needing to be done for a long time. There's so much about housework to feel guilty about; I wish there weren't. Nonetheless, there's something about finally getting around to a project and crossing it off your mental energy drain list.
(3) Anything involving a Swiffer project. I love the Swiffer and all its works. Of course, I'm required to do so by my age and gender demographic. But why fight it? There's so much gender programming that I need to resist; why resist a perfectly delightful product like the swiffer.
(4) Cleaning the bathroom -- this chore never changes. You know what to expect going in. The bathroom is not going to surprise you. Clean the toilet; clean the sink; clean the tub. From time to time, worry about the state of the grout.
(5) Washing windows -- same story as the bathroom. Simple, mindless, perhaps Zen if it weren't for the stink of Windex.
(6) The little tidying that gets done right before bed at night; putting the house to sleep (although Chris does get the manly job of locking up, turning off lights, shutting down electronics); the satisfaction of going to bed knowing that your house is basically okay.
(7) Anything involving the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. It is magic, and who would forego an opportunity to see a little magic in their day?
(8) Pretty much everything else hovers here, no great joy, no pain either. Until we reach the most dreaded of chores....
(9) Cleaning up the home office and filing papers. Hate it, don't know why, don't care why, don't wish to change, just hate it.
and most horrible of all.
(10) Laundry, Laundry, Laundry. Why do you think that a blog on housework is so long? Because I've got 5 damn baskets of laundry upstairs to fold, that's why.
7:48 p.m. - 2005-05-04
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