So you know, just a trivial thread then.
Blackcurrants said something in the decluttering thread about us all having far more stuff than our forebears, and that partly leading to this problem with housework. I don't think that's at all true, actually. I think biggish households used to have big stores of linens, preserved food, candles, etc., because it wasn't possible to run out and buy a replacement at 2am, and without machines to wash dishes and clothes and carpets one needed more of those things to allow for the time consuming process of cleaning them.
But the reason I'm talking about it in a different thread is, I've been thinking about consumerism recently. It seems like everyone in my world is talking budgeting, decluttering, repurposing. We're in an era of austerity. Just as the mythical traditional household set up (woman at home, man at work, a nuclear family situation that existed between about 1945 and 1960) is held up as the Golden Ideal by social conservatives, it seems like wartime austerity, or the depression, are being lauded as an 'we was poor but we was 'appy' ideal.
And just as women are judged by the state of their houses, I think we're also, in this era, judged by, and blamed for, how much we buy. Are you poor? Is your home too small? Do you have debts? Well it's all that plastic crap you buy, isn't it? If you were just pure of heart and put more time and energy into repurposing, recycling, decluttering, you wouldn't have any of these problems. Look at the shining example of your forebears!
It's bloody women's work again, though, isn't it? All the women I know spend time decluttering, thinking about our houses, repurposing furniture (ok, that's fun, but still), scouring charity shops and flea markets for things to use, we swap coupons and keep mental lists of sales cycles, we meal plan and we start threads on websites about all of it. It just occurred to me yesterday how much mental energy, and in fact physical time, I spend on this. My husband, who has always done loads of housework and childcare and been about as Nigel as one can be? He does not think about this. At all. Ever. Yes, I spend more than he does. Because I do all the kid purchases, all the food purchases, all the home decor purchases. All on sale, or thrifted, or freecycled.
I suspect that even in households where the husband is the earner, and/or controls the finances, the minutaie that I'm talking about is wifework. Do you think I'm right?