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?

Well after growing up in a house of haording I seem to have developed an allergic reaction to clutter and quite happily throw/sell/giveaway stuff that I don't want or need.

I think, as others have said, hoarding is linked to perfectionism which I think is a feminist issue. Women have had it drilled into them that we have to have a gleaming bathroom, sparkling skirting boards, lavender smelling livingrooms yadda, yadda. When, in reality, being able to see the floor and works surfaces and nobody will die from cholera is good enough. We all need a happy medium in our homes.

Perfectionism is a curse on woman hood. I have read on Mumsnet about women kicking themselves because they are a size 12, their children are not in the top set at school, their clothes aren't fashionable enough. etc When was it decided that we had to be brilliant at everything?

SaF I too used to HATE laundry and so I asked people who didn't mind it (or actually professed to enjoying it ) what they did. Having nicked the bits that worked for me, I now don't mind it at all and our laundry bins are frequently empty now - that's pretty much a miracle.

I put on a load first thing almost every morning (4 loads of clothes a week, 1 of towels and 1 of bedding) take down the dried stuff from previous day and (this was an important bit for me) fold into piles according to owner so i had 4 tiny piles rather than one enormous mass which i couldn't face. I put the 2 DCs stuff away every morning as I put them down for a nap - takes 2 mins most. I put my stuff away after that, again there's so little that it takes 2 mins. I leave DH's in a pile for him to put away.

I don't iron anything (dh irons his stuff and i don't buy stuff for myself which'll need ironing) but if ironing becomes necessary for shirts etc once ds starts school then i will get an ironing service.

Yeah SAF that would be great :)

WRT toys, I don't operate a one-in, one-out policy, but we have a small living room and when DS is struggling to find space to play with something then I suggest he tidies up the other things he has abandoned, and usually I help him, he's not quite 3 after all. He's started to suggest tidying up when he wants more space now, though he always asks for help. We have been having trouble at mealtimes with him staying focused on eating as well so DP's idea was to tidy up his toys before dinner so there were fewer distractions. Unfortunately this didn't happen yesterday as the other main idea WRT eating is to get dinner in early enough that he isn't too tired, and DP was still in bed, so by the time I had to cook dinner it was that mid-afternoon slump time and I just couldn't summon the energy to tidy as well.

Oh yes definitely start a thread! I am now all shaky after landlord&landlady visit but at least they are not going to evict me - but I had better do some more cleaning...

Oh have a big cup of tea and a cigarette, you deserve it. I hate it when my landlord comes. Last time he was really nice about it but then sent me a letter a few days later saying he wasn't happy at all :( I put off ringing them for days when DP moved in, though (fingers crossed) he doesn't seem to have objected to that.

Put your feet up - sounds very stressful.

It will be a gradual process so don't be too hard on yourself,

SaF. that's weird... laundry is the only job I don'T mind.. although I do still have clothes everywhere. Actually folding and putting away is a PITA, but love hanging it out.
As you say, the current set up is incredibly inefficient. I wouldn't mind doing other people's laundry, if they could russle me up some meals.

I think what I like about laundry is that you just chuck it in the washing macine and it comes out clean, so you feel you've done something without actually doing anything IYSWIM. Actually, I think that's probably exactly why I like laundry.

I don't mind washing clothes but hate, hate ironing. what sort of sadist decided it was even necessary.

Interestingly enough I think we probably spend roughly the same time doing laundry as they did in the Victorian era - most clothes weren't actually washed e.g. trousers were just brushed down, men wore one shirt a week. Our standards are so insanely high nowadays that most people wear a freshly cleaned outfit every day so despite the introduction on time saving gadgets in reality it just raised the bar.

One of our main roles as stereotypical Western women is that of consumer. We spend the most money and buy the most things.
This pisses me off, I want to be productive and creative, not just a passive consumer and rejecting that role of patriarchy helps keep the clutter down.

Having routines for housework makes it less hassle and I think having protocols for things is essential if the other members of the household can be as involved in the housekeeping.
For instance, if I use one dishcloth to wash the pots and another to wipe the counters, but DH isn't aware of that he could use the spray-cleanery cloth to wash the pots.
How to negotiate that so it's not all the woman's responsibility I don't know though.

If someone cooked meals for me, I would not be fussy about what they made. I don'T really "do" food. I mean I like eating it but I can take it or leave it. When you've got a man in the house you can't graze, basically. I probably eat better now than I would if I was living on my own, and DH does his share (and as I said we eat out a lot, which is a cultural thing and it's SO cheap).
But meal preparation is the one part of the day I cannot stand-- because it HAS to be done, and it comes around every. fucking. day!

(I do like cooking creatively, when I don't have to. Demand resistance I think it's called--when you resist a chore because it's expected that you do it)

We have the washing machine on everyday swallowed and there's two of us plus one baby.

I have no idea where it all comes from. I think it breeds.

Oh can we just all live in a little feminist village where we trade up the jobs we like and those we don't, men and women, and the children can all play together with the wrong gender-specific toys.

And yeah I don't wash things after one wash, it has to either look or smell dirty to qualify. Though this does mean I spend hours sorting out "dirty" from "not dirty enough", I expressed this on a thread once and someone was astounded that my dirty and clean clothes ever met

We could have a creche.

I couldn't bear anybody trying to help me clear up, not even my equally messy best friend or my mum. They'd See My Dirt and wouldn't appreciate the specialness of my precious things accumulated junk. I'll happily muck in with somebody else's housework though and actually find it easier than doing my own. Two working together can get so much more done, I wish I could bring myself to accept help. I haven't always been like this, something's gone awry. I could accept meals, maybe.

I like gardening best but I'm not sure that counts. Really hate hoovering - it's too noisy.

Glad you survived your LL's visit, SGB. I sometimes think if we rented this place I wouldn't have been able to let it get so bad. SAF that sounds like hell! I have a mattress arriving tomorrow and I'm going to ask them to just leave it in the hallway because I don't want to let them upstairs.