Feminism and housework and hoarding and Flylady...

[solidgoldbrass]

I would love to get some feminist perspective on this because I am struggling at the moment. I have always been a housework avoider, always had a messy house, and I used to say that it was a good way of making sure any man i shagged never got any ideas about me being a little home-maker for him.
It's gradually dawned on me that I actually have a bit of a problem WRT hoarding, and I would like to sort it out, I know some MNers love Flylady but one look at the site made me queasy because it seems so very much 'Women! Embrace housework, it';s your destiny.'
Any thoughts anyone?

Yes, my mum used to save everything and still live in a clean, tidy house. I inherited from her the idea of the Shamefulness of Waste but I think back in the 70s when I was growing up, there wasn't such an avalanche of disposable shite - people were stuff-poor but time-rich compared to now. My mum has adapted, she throws stuff out now when she needs to. Somehow I haven't. I don't think the right thing is actually to learn to live a disposable lifestyle (thinking environmentally) but it's probably the most effective short-term coping strategy.

Lots of these definitions hit a bit close to home for me, especially 'Thinking it is up to you to provide that very one thing to help someone out.' (ramatama)

My next door neighbour frequently calls round to borrow all sorts of obscure items and I always have whatever it is she's after. The other week she called round and asked if I had a laminator - it was the first time in over 10 years I hadn't had whatever it was and I seriously thought of getting one!

Fuck me, I sorted out half the bedroom... One binliner of clothes gone plus 2 binliners of utter crap.

Thanks for starting this thread, SGB. It has really helped me examine the issue with fresh eyes. Tidiness is associated so closely with a woman's identity that it takes effort to pull apart the issues and break down that association in our own minds.

anyone seen the aibu laundry thread?

I think what I want is a tidier house, not a perfect one. Life is much too short to spend it scrubbing skirting boards, but i would like my home's general vibe to be 'too busy to be stepford wife' rather than 'needs major intervention by some condescending TV presenter and/or psychiatric treatment'.
So I guess I must just keep bashing away...

Jesus wants you to have a tidy house, you know

That squalor survivors site is quite scary. Looking at the measuring thing I'm definitely level one, never actually had anything blocked so badly I couldn't move things to get to it, but I can see how things might get that way which is quite frightening.

I'm finding I'm coping a bit better since DP has moved in a couple of weeks ago. He's tidier than me and seems to do it more instinctively, though at the moment things don't look that different to how they did anyway, which I'm finding frustrating. I think I thought that when he moved in he'd do everything, although to be honest I'm quite glad he isn't... I think I would be unable to keep up and then feel guilty. So we're starting small. We've agreed I'll do the clothes washing and he will do the washing up. But he tends to do it in a big binge once every few days, so we still have large piles of washing up waiting to be done, which is always the first thing people say on those threads where people ask what others notice first or think looks worst when they walk into a dirty house. Conversely I feel like I've done loads of washing... but then I haven't put it away yet.

I'm finding this thread helpful as well. It's a lot better than other threads I have lurked on of this nature which usually end up with everyone wallowing in self-pity. At least we have anger with our self-pity!

Oh dear the confessions page is quite an interesting read. I read once (I think it was on mumsnet actually?) that someone realised a dishwasher's main selling point is that it's a cupboard in which you can hide dirty dishes, so they had started hiding their dirty dishes in a cupboard and only washing them when it was full. I thought this was a fantastic idea and adopted it immediately... when DP moved in he specified that I clean out the (as he put it) "mouldy cupboards" first... it had spread from one to four and yes, some of the plates contained food which was in fact mouldy

(They're all cleaned out now. Except the one which had coffee or something in it, I almost got around to that and suspect it will sit there for a few more months... so not sure if I should really or laugh. I want to laugh. A man would laugh freely at this!)

I am messy, but I do sometimes enjoy the fruits of having a blast at something. This week it was the back yard- it was dirty with detritus from DIY stuff, overgrown with weeds and not all the dogs' mess has been located and removed. Basically it was unusable. But I've gutted it, jeyes fluid disinfected, clipped stuff back and done a tip run. I treated it to a little water feature and some fresh plants, replaced the bulb in the outdoor light, and it is lovely go and sit out in now in the day or evening. I feel really peaceful out there now, even if there are parts of the house which are pretty awful. So I don't think it is all about doing it for other people to avoid judgement, although that is a good point. I think that wanting your surroundings to be pleasant is also about pleasing yourself.

I am looking round my office with a bit of a smile, it is nicer not to have the legs of the chair constantly catching on things, and now I have more idea of where each stockbag is and what is in it.

I hear ya. Slatterns of the world unite; we have nothing to lose but that thing we just put down somewhere.

Garlic's Handy Hints for Housework Haters.

Paint every surface, vertical or horizontal, in matt paint. Not only is this trendier and hides uneven finishes, but it guarantees NOBODY can ever call your home "gleaming" or even consider that it should be.

Have boxes with labels. Chuck the stuff you haven't put away in the relevant boxes - this allows you to be a disorganised, hoarding eccentric with thousands of lidless plastic tubs & wires that don't fit anything but you can still have a decent stab at finding something within 10 minutes.

You have to clean, get a cleaner or learn to live with dirt. I like living in a clean & tidy place, but loathe doing housework. When I could afford a cleaner I had one but, now I can't, I've got the choice between cleaning and living with dirt. It's kinda simple really ...

Everyone has their own crud threshold: mine's very high indeed (only the things that touch food are clean) but it really, really doesn't matter.If you've got crawling children, you can spray the dirty floors with Dettol

Serious crud can be removed with a steamer. A wallpaper stripper does the job fine. I do this every six months or so, most people do it more often!

Flylady does have one useful tip: keeping the kitchen sink clear. I've no idea why it matters, but it does make you feel things aren't out of control.

Serious hoarding is a psychological symptom, btw, related to OCD. Which is peculiar, since a compulsive hoarder and a compulsive tidier could make a very good team

Sorry I didn't read the whole thread, SGB, but I'm happy to hear your chair won't be tripping over today!

I think (while, yes, the flylady stuff makes my teeth itch) that it IS for me, most of it. I know this cos even when I think the place is clean and tidy it's STILL not patriarchy compliant, really (Mum could find dust in seconds, I'm sure) - but I am more comfortable and calm, and I can find what I want, do what I want to do in any given room, and not lose time and energy looking for something, getting frustrated, and feeling chaotic. so, fuck cleaning to appear like a stepford wife, I'm never going to give it that much time. But huzzah to being able to find things, have clean clothes/dishes always available, and being able to lie on any bed, sit in every chair and at every table!

Not feeling chaotic is a useful life goal for me. I always feel better when I don't feel overwhelmed by Stuff. I noticed this when we finally got rid of the last couple of boxes (this week!) after our 1st July move. I stopped stubbing my toes, and things finally had a place to live. My mood improved dramatically.

Yes, blackcurrants, it's about being true to yourself rather than measuring yourself against some imaginary standard, isn't it :)

Oh wow, this thread is very timely for me. I am ashamed to go into detail about the state of my home. There's one room we can't get into at all (we call it the room of shame), which sounds completely shocking and awful yet we live like this. It's not dangerously filthy - no bodily fluids or rotting food - but it has reached crisis point as there was a mouse in the kitchen yesterday - we're in flats, and there's been issues in the building before, but we need to sort it and it can't be sorted if there are areas of the house which can't be accessed.

For me it's defiant, or rooted in defiance - my bedroom growing up was piled high (no floor visible), with stuff, it was an abusive childhood and I think I was making it physically difficult for 'my' space to be entered or for my things to be gone through (since everything of importance was hidden in the drifts).

It's serious, though - there was a problem with the phone line and the engineer needed to come in to my place right then to fix it (called from outside); I had to pretend we were out and ask him to come back the next morning as I couldn't've let anyone in the house.

The DCs are making friends at school and I hardly ever have them round - I have social anxiety issues and it's a circle - I can't invite anyone over, so I don't invite anyone over, but it's a mixture of despair and relief when I think about it. For a playdate we have a day of tidying just to get the kitchen, hallway and living-room okay and even then it's not really tidy. There are lots of jobs around the home - repainting, the roof needs looking at, issues with the loft - which haven't been addressed because of the stuff.

I am absolutely, 100% sure it's inhibited the older DCs social lives a lot.

I know I need to sort it out but don't know how - I have never, ever tidied up after myself. I have these grand plans of hiring a van and filling it and filling it and we actually did a hippobag TWICE (like a mini skip but much more economical), yet here we are again.

These kind of threads do help don't they I had a nose at that Squalor Survivor and after reading it I was itching to tidy up and clean something

Contrary to popular belief, hoarding is actually connected to perfectionism. Think about it, if you're fairly relaxed about what you throw away, or how you clean the toilet, then you don't mind doing "Half a job" but getting something done.

If you're a perfectionist, like me, you think "a job's not worth doing unless it's done well" so you spend ages cleaning the cooker, say, and when it gets dirty again you remember how long it took to get it "just so" and you can't be bothered.

I think we have to give ourselves permission to do "half a job"

YY to the connection with perfectionism. I'll have an emergency clean to do and get caught up alphebetising flour or whatever. So it's done properly. I'm a terrible procrastinator generally and I know it's connected.

There's so much 'all or nothing' in how women are portrayed/seen/see themselves - a good mother or a shit mother, housewife/slattern, desirable/not blah blah. It's certainly easier to opt out if the 'good' option isn't achievable.

Once, when DS was about 2 weeks old, two men came to my house to deliver a second-hand piano. One of them was being really "off" with me and it was because there were toys everywhere. Obviously with a toddler and a NEWBORN I couldn't really do much, but he really went out of his way to screw up his nose at me.
My newborn was in its bouncy chair, in full view and he just never made the connection of " Newborn> post-partum mother >exhaustion> bleeding lochia> toddler in the house-> alone in a foreign country give her a break"

It was only after they left I realized what he'd been doing with his sneery face.

"alphabetizing flour" LOL!

Or putting ancient random photographs in chronological order

Those two realisation made a big difference for me -

I like living in a nice home and I deserve to live in a nice home.

The cleaning can be 'good enough.' If that 'half a job' is all I have the time or inclination for then that is great.

My house is still far from perfect, but that is good as I am letting go of the perfectionism that kept that me in either frantic clean or sticky squalour mode.

There are some parts of Flylady that really bother me but the general idea is good.

Will actually go read the thread now, I'm sure a million posters have said that same.

You know what? I'm super good at tidying and decluttering. I would LOVE to lend a day to someone who needed it to get their house in order.

I wonder if something like that would work? People just helping each other like that who were not there as a friend or to judge, just help, crack on with the job and get it done.

Life laundry without the cameras!