Consumerism, budgeting and wifework

[Tortoiseonthehalfshell]

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?

I think I might have seen that. It's the planning/organising aspect I was thinking about. 'Doing the shopping' isn't just the time spent in the supermarket. It's the time spent meal planning, the monitoring of stores, the checking for any birthdays coming up etc. All the stuff that has no product at the end of it.

Bonsoir- have you thought about why, from a psychological pov, you want an uber clean house?

Should we be campaigning for a cleaning element of wtc for double income/working single parent households?

Yet, is this not the activity sold as high value project management in the world of business!

Interesting though...

My Dh will buy toilet roll if there are no spares in the cupboard. I will buy several packs of toilet roll when it's on offer and stock up the cupboard. My DH will buy a birthday card. I keep in a selection of cards suitable for different ages and occasions.

Yes to project management. That it effectively what 'wifework' is.

Just to prove that men are perfectly capable of doing wifework - well, my DH does. He had to retire through disability 11 years ago, when the DSs were in primary school and I went out to work full time. He said that he would do everything in the home to ensure that I could work ( had a very long commute, plus other issues). So, he does all of the shopping, cooking, organising, financial stuff. He is too disabled to clean, so we get in a cleaner every 2 weeks as I'm also too ill now to do that. I'm the one who needs to be reminded about bins etc. That saying, I tend to do the washing and ironing and also the garden, when I am well enough. We rope in the DSs (19 and 21) as much as we can, which will stand them in good stead for the future. I think what helps is that my MIL taught DH how to cook and clean, alongside his sisters and that he lived on his own in his house until his mid-30s, when we got married.

We try to play to our strengths and have massive rows discussions, if either of us ever feels that the other is not pulling their weight (usually me)

I used the term shitwork and you're right, not all of wifework is shitwork and I don't mean to imply that, so sorry if that offended anyone, it's an unthinking use of the term to imply it applies to the whole of being a SAHM and I Wont Do It Again. Of course lots of wifework is project management, but a lot of the project management, is managing the shitwork - the cleaning and picking up and clearing up and clearing away of everyone's stuff. TBH that is the bit, that I would describe as shitwork, that I find easiest and least problematic - I just put the radio on and get on with it. The real shitwork IMO, is the admin - the looking through the internet to get the best car insurance quote, the making sure that X's PE kit is ready by Wednesday and Y's cheque for guitar lessons is written for the right amount and I've sent the Thank You card to friend for putting us up for the weekend and the birthday card to someone else and phoned cousin to get the kids to meet up, etc. etc. - that's all mind-numbingly boring admin stuff for me, the equivalent of having to do your expenses and timesheets. Necessary and disastrous if you let it pile up but oh so bloody dull. Which is why top executives hand it all over to their secretaries to deal with.

Whereas making cookies with the kids or cooking dinner with them, is my fun-work bit of domestic work, but that doesn't really count as wifework, does it? Or maybe it does? What do we mean by wifework, I tend to mean the organisational side of it, rather than the actual doing of it IYSWIM. In fact, I tend to think of it as being the bits of domestic work, that I personally don't find much fun. That's probably not a very reliable way of finding a definition though.

I agree with that. HerBex. I seem to have a deja vu conversation with my DP every fortnight or so about the cooking. Sometimes I'm so tired that I find myself complaining about having to do it, so he offers, but then starts asking me 'what do you want me to cook? Do we have all the right ingredients?' and by the end of all of the decisions and stock-taking I'd rather do the actual cooking bit myself - that's the fun bit! What I actually mean when I say I'm too tired to cook is that I don't want to be responsible for any of it.

Herbex, you've hit the nail there!

Yep, that is how it is. But I think any job has shitwork and the good bits, so I see it like that.

I've been a neat freak all my life - I was born that way . I was the spooky child who didn't think her mother cleaned and tidied her room well enough!

What would happen if you both worked, though, Leningrad? You can't both be dropping the ball because you can't keep your eye on both home and work. So many families have both parents working and, in the majority of cases it's the woman who does the domestic admin as well as her own job.

Notquite- you say your dp does wifework but everything you say after that illustrates that he doesnt. I think you have cognitive dissonance.

Rainbowtoenails - which bits doesn't he do then? Apart from washing & minimal ironing, which I do? The cleaner has only been a recent thing and DH does things like general tidying every day and wiping kitchen surfaces etc. He also does all of the home admin type stuff. I do the washing because I want to help with something apart from working outside the home. All of this has enabled me to do well in my career since I went back full time after 7 years as a SAHM. I think I have come off pretty well here in fact!

I'm finding this thread quite puzzling, as even a single male adult (unless an orphan, or the son of an immaculate conception) will have family, and a lot of the "admin" stuff isn't wifework, it's life. If you are a single person, you will still need to sort out insurance for your house,pet and car, maintain a minimal standard of cleaning and hygiene, buy loo roll for your bottom, maintain social relationships with some of your friends and family, and so on. My brother is a single man and manages all of this beautifully in spite of having a job that is awkward hours/shifts. My DH, before we married, was highly organised in this regard, an excellent cook, keen gardener, and did a lot of voluntary work. Once we married, we discuss between us what works and who does what. He continues to manage our finances - we have various spreadsheets and we discuss these every month. At the same time we discuss things like forthcoming birthdays, how much we will spend and so on. Both of us will be involved in choosing presents - I make cards because I enjoy doing so. At Christmas, we sit down in October with another spreadsheet and discuss/organise/budget together. We take advantage of sales during the year for things like presents - both of us do this.

Shopping lists and menu planning are another joint exercise. He often works away during the week, so at that time I pick up some more of the domestic stuff, but he more than compensates when he is home at the weekend.

As for Kirsty Allsop - bah! I love cross stitching and quilting and do both, have done for years but don't do it to be trendy - am quite clear they are my hobbies, not a lifestyle statement. We both spend a lot of time doing voluntary work, and we try to keep everything organised as this gives us more time to spend on the things that are important to us.

Scuttle, that sounds perfect. Not all men in relationships leave all the household management to their wives, but many, many do.
Yes, if a man was single he'd have to do the work, and that's what gets so annoying, that they then stop when they live with a woman.

Can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I find domestic work has become easier the longer I've been an LP.

The only emotional support I'm expected to give is to my DC and friends/family. The latter pay me back in equal amounts and my DC obviously provide their own rewards. By living on my own I actually have that mythical thing known as 'me time' after I've got in from work, put the DC to bed and performed the necessary domestic chores. If I was in a relationship most of this time would be spent assessing how my partner's presence had altered the domestic set-up (e.g has all the cheese been eaten, the last toilet-roll put into use) and engaging with him (asking how his day has gone, etc).

My DC start school this september and the differences apparent now they are a little older is phenomenal. They can wash/dress themselves, put their own clothes in the basket, eat their food without me having to spoon it in/cut it up, go to toilet by themselves, etc. When they were 18-months and I was working full-time it was really hard, but now they're older it's not just manageable it's enjoyable. I get to have fun with them when I'm home rather than spending all my time coping with their physical needs.

As my DC are in full-time childcare, no one is in this house mon-fri in the day time. No mess is made so there is no wifework in the week other than laundry and things I would have to do for myself as a single, childless adult. Domestic tasks can mostly be taken care of in a couple of hours on a weekend. I am almost compulsively tidy (stems from years of living in shoebox size places where not putting things back could result in a broken neck!) though I am not particularly clean. I wash-up after every meal but only vacuum/dust when I notice it needs doing and apart from a love of books (I have far too many but they are all on shelves out of the way) I can't stand clutter so dusting takes about 10 mins to do the entire house and vacuuming about 20 mins to do the house. Laundry takes longer but I only iron cotton clothes (half hour a weed) and shopping is done online (10 mins to put away - DC help). Like snowmama I batch cook and freeze. I can cook 4 different meals to last about 2-3 weeks in about 1.5 hours. Sadly, I can't do ready meals as I hate the amount of salt, preservatives and saturated/trans fats in them. The so-called healthy options are either lying (e.g. replacing fat with sugar), or when genuine are so ridiculously expensive as to negate the point.

TBH the only conclusion I draw from this is that unless any future partner I had was prepared to do ALL the wifework and conveniently make himself disappear for at least two evenings a week so I could recharge on my own in peace and quiet, I would actually find having a partner harder than being on my own.

Once again Sunshine you sound uncannily like me. I keep doing double takes on your posts and checking that I didn't post that when I was asleep or something. Except for the bit about full time work and being obsessively tidy....

Have we moved on from why Wallis' life is perfect now?

Excellent. Because this wasn't actually a SAHM thread, nor a 'women have it so hard' thread. And garlicbutter, I'm not a SAHM, so I hope you don't mean that the preponderance of SAHM-ness in my post put you off. Actually I'm currently the main breadwinner.

And someone asked about sales cycles; I mean, I remember that the biggest clothing sales in the US happen the day after Thanksgiving, and I know which day of the year Thanksgiving lands on every year (it's the last Thursday of November, you're welcome), and I remember to check for end-of-winter purchases in the UK stores just when the autumn stuff is coming in over here in Australia, that sort of thing. Also supermarkets run on sales cycles; if something is on offer now, it'll probably be on offer again in 12 weeks, so if you can stock up for 12 weeks' worth of non-perishables you can always get them on offer.

DH and I have very compatible attitudes towards expenditure, and we've always both worked outside the home, and all accounts are joint. When we've been flush, we take equal responsibility for any investment decisions. When we're tight, though, the minutiae of budgeting falls to me. It doesn't occur to him to think about it. And to be honest, I think that's partly because it doesn't enter his sphere. I am not aware that men talk amongst themselves about which supermarket a BOGOF is happening, or that they use coupons or sign up to offer websites. It's not a conscious thing, it's just...women's work, trivia, too fussy for words. He'll gladly make the cuts when I've worked them out, but that's it.

i think that in the first flushes of a long term relationship, when moving in together for the first time, many women choose to 'mother' their partner and 'do nice things for them'...

that sets a precedent that the couple can't break out of without a concerted effort.

but the worst thing, is WOMEN judging OTHER WOMEN for things which are either joint responsibilities or the man's responsibility.

I will NOT EVER feel guilty if DH forgets his own mother's birthday. it is not in any way my responsibility. same goes for a messy house or whatever, i will accept joint responsibility but not sole responsibility - 'homemaking' is not my job.