Feminist Pub 14: The Bluestocking, a place for feminist chat and feminists to chat

I'm going to stay here for one more post.

Ellis I understand about the kitchen use. It's very frustrating. And people see that as a small thing. I know it's not but don't know how to articulate that.

Now that the kids are a bit older I went and bought sturdy glass tumblers and put them in the low cupboard so that the kids can help themselves. Remind me to hide them when toddlers come round!

I made Pub 15!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2256369-Feminist-Pub-15-The-Bluestocking-hangs-up-its-err-stocking-and-hopes-for-a-chatty-Christmas-and-a-Feminist-New-Year

Ellis,DH thanked me for putting the plastic in the child accessible drawer....

Thanks fibonaccin, I will try to maintain a thread of hope...

We keep all the girls' plates etc in a drawer so they can reach them, but they still expect us to wait on them hand and foot, and have the cheek to wail "I'm not your slaaaaaaaaave!" if you ask them to do stuff for themselves.

Annie, I am a hiring manager (well, when I can ) and believe me, sometimes you just want to hire someone and it takes FOREVER to line all the ducks up. I remember the last employee I hired, she was a solid yes after the last round of interviews, but the requisition wasn't quite in place, we had to sort out a couple of details with HR...I was freaking out that she'd just get another offer from elsewhere and we'd lose her, but I wasn't allowed to tell her that we were putting an offer together. So don't lose faith just yet! It has been my experience that rejections get sent out faster (I'm looking at you, Net-A-Porter ).

The only thing I get tetchy about in terms of home organization is when DH, who is well above 6ft tall, hides things at the back of the top shelves. If I have to get the ladder out to get some flour, he is in trouble.

Oh Ellis

I am going to move my plastic plates now! That is clearly a good idea.

I remember the Spoony fucker!
I don't mind people cooking, just going in there and making something to eat from beginning to end, but when we moved we had a number of entrenched battles about things in cupboards in the kitchen. I only tried to assert two things:

One, that a weird very short very deep cupboard be used for tumblers that are all the same, so that we had no need to rummage to the back of it which is tricky

Two, that the small dcs' melamine plates and cups go in a low cupboard within their reach so we can ask them to help lay the table (de facto advantage also that you then have at least one low cupboard which does not contain glass they can pull out)

I lost number one completely after a couple of attempts. Oh well. It is now a very inconvenient cupboard with 10 kinds of rice and noodle and you always want the one you can't see or reach that might be at the back. Oh well.

But, after finding the melamine moved to a high cupboard, despite explaining, 3 or 4 times, I actually cried when I put my foot down on this and sobbed that I ONLY put my foot down when I believe it is for the good of the dcs, I REALLY want them to feel at home and active in the kitchen, I went to college with people who couldn't boil an egg and felt sorry for them, it really matters that the dcs feel they have agency in the kitchen and they have to get used to helping out at a suitable level as a very gradual thing with no sudden alienating start.... etc. anyway I got this at the strength of my emotion but was FINALLY allowed to keep the melamine at child level and they DO use the cupboard and enjoy feeling they have agency. It still pisses me off that I had to fight so hard and make an over emotional tit of myself over something that has a perfectly rational explanation that he couldn't be arsed to listen to the first time. And that he behaved that I was mad for sobbing when I would not have been sobbing if he had listened the first time.

This is what I mean by mourning "MY kitchen". I do know kitchens better and use them better. I just do. not eveything should be up for grabs. I shouldn't have to fight for good practice as if there are two sides for everything. sometimes there is sensible and silly, and melamine high up is silly.

Ah, Annie, that's shite.

WHY won't they tell me if I got the job or not?! WHY?!?! It's been over a week!!!!! It's because they're negotiating with the person who got the job, isn't it?

My nerves are shot.

" I really do not appreciate people dicking about in my kitchen and hesitate to admit how much."

Tangent, but did you ever read the Spoony Fucker thread?!

Our house too is all joint space (apart from the kids having a room each - why do they get more space than us??) DH has suggested separate rooms but I am strongly socialised to see that as a relationship failure (also we don't currently have another room!)

It has helped me to see how he might feel about the clutter...

I think it is simply that a positive overpowers a negative.
If you like silence and your roommate likes music, (s)he will interpret the silence as a gap waiting for the radio to be put on. If you had the radio on already, you might have an argument about what station to listen to, but the other person can't just come in and put their music on as they do when they fail to understand that the silence - the negative space - does in fact have value to in itself.

Similarly, tidiness and physical space has an absolute value to some, but the lack of some blocking / holding device in it allows it to be interpreted as "empty space potentially for my stuff".

In the dim and distant past (my childhood) women were always using a very proprietorial possessive pronoun about the house and things in it. "Don't think you are bringing that in here over my clean floor." "If the Wilsons are coming we should use my good plates." "Get that out of my larder / kitchen / sitting room." I think that has fallen out of use because we are encouraged to believe that all family members share and take responsibility for the domestic space. As we know this is not really the case. Sometimes I mourn the loss of the Hilda Ogen authoritative "my". My life is bigger than "my" kitchen and I am grateful for that but I really do not appreciate people dicking about in my kitchen and hesitate to admit how much.

Xposted, I was thinking of the "space" thread too. And the thread recently where the MNer's DH had basically claimed every spare room in the house they'd just moved into whereas she'd been looking forward to having a room for herself and felt deflated. But he was oblivious.

Oh no I see exactly where you're coming from there. With the "But I was doing it for you and now you're not even impressed!" thing, I've had that before, where you (think) you've done something to improve a situation/compromise for someone else and they are not appreciative because in their mind it doesn't solve the problem at all. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth but I don't think you need to take it personally - if you want you could always blame him for not communicating how he wanted you to solve the problem in the first place

Just a difference in the way your minds work I reckon. I think broadly the clutter thing tends to go the way of men having more clutter and expecting it to be allowed to take up infinite space whereas women are socialised to take up less space, but I'm the messy one in my marriage too.

OK, my emotional response was upset that he wasn't pleased with my solution to the clutter problem (yes, I would discard the boxes once I had the images digitally).

But maybe he was thinking 'well, if you ever want to track down an image, which you never seem to do much, you probably can anyway, so why not just get rid of them without the scanning part?'

So he was baffled why I was upset and I felt he'd been dismissive of my work to solve this problem (which as I don't have a problem with clutter was something I was doing for him not me, IYSWIM).

Apart from the AIBU fear, I decided this was, loosely, a feminist issue because I struggle not to 'automatically' attribute emotional differences in response between me and DH to our different sexes!

Thanks for the link, it's jolly funny.

Keep your postcards, Yonic, HIBU to ask you to get rid of something precious to you. Does yours and his precious stuff have equal space? Clutter except books is 'noisy' I find too much of it stops me being able to think over the 'noise', however, if DH said 'Oh, you've got a Kindle now, you can get rid of all those daft books' I'd probably make him eat them

Thanks sisters - it wasn't a reverse (this is why I don't post on AIBU as I am clearly bad at it!) - I will digest all comments and come back with something more enlightening!

to all

Just taking this at face value ...
I also find that clutter clouds up my brain so would have no tolerance for it.

The idea of scanning the postcards sounds good IF you would actually get it done AND then throw out the postcards (but aren't they the point?)

I do think that people who collect things like this have some attachment to them that non-collectors just don't get.

Is there a possible compromise - the postcards get properly stored away, and within a reasonable amount of time. Once stored, they can get scanned a few at a time, but get them sorted out first.

btw - the compulsion to store large amounts of something can be (although not always) an indicator of OCD or spectrum behaviors, so reactions to any kind of challenge to them can be completely disproportionate. A reaction along the lines of 'love me love my postcards' would not surprise me.

Emotional response: Some kind of hoarding thing? Being afraid to let go? Worrying that they will be worth something one day/you might want to look at them in 10 years and they will be gone? The amount of time/effort/money you've put into it over the years?

I think he is being a bit U for not realising it's important to you, but, at the same time, he could just be asking the question out of bafflement and literally mean "Really? What do you want to do that for?" rather than the more scathing "What do you want to do THAT for?!" What was the tone? Did you interpret tone or was there a definite tone?

But I don't see what you're asking about you potentially BU. You haven't done anything to judge the reasonableness of. Do you mean AYBU about the emotional response? In which case it rather depends what it is and what it's a response to

On the clutter issue, I think DH sees it a bit like that. But I like a bit of clutter, I find minimalism sterile, clutter makes me physically relax and feel almost cosseted, I suppose. And I like having loads of old stuff that I can come across every now and again. I don't have tons of old stuff though because we moved country so I had to be ruthless about it which gave me nightmares for three months

Is that a reverse AIBU?

I've always wanted to post that but too scared to venture too far outside FWR

Do you actually collect postcards of old buildings? That's cool, I collect postcards but stick them up all over the place - basically replicating the vibe of my teenage bedroom (sans Blur posters, though a do have a Manics mug on display)... Have I missed the point a bit ?

fear, not far, obviously.

I have to say I'd be driven mad if DH filled up with house with something that I considered to be crap, even if it was important to him, without him bothering to put some kind of serious storage system in place to keep his crap away from me. He'd be entitled to want to keep it, I'd be entitled to not have to look at it/deal with it on a daily basis.

So while I guess your emotional response was to be angry that he doesn't respect your love of postcards, if you're leaving them around, you are the one who is BU. Sorry!

Buffy, thanks for having my back on the How to Address Christmas Cards thread. What an odd bunny!

This is an AIBU type post but I haven't got the strength...

Let's say I have as hobby collecting postcards of old buildings; there are boxes of postcards of old buildings lying about the place and annoying DH (not bothering me though). I almost never look at them, collecting them is the key point. We have had a couple of arguments about the boxes and their proliferation.

I find an app that will scan the postcards and I come home and tell DH about it. His immediate response is 'why do you even need the pictures still? you never look at them.'

My emotional response to this is a mystery to DH.

Questions: What was my emotional response and who is BU?