Feminist Pub 17: The Bluestocking frolics in the fells and fens of feminism

[AKnickerfulOfMenace]

This is the 17th incarnation of the Feminist Pub!

Here be goats, cannons and chat on feminism and related themes. Also snacks. And booze, copious booze.

Welcome!

lol, when we can write our names in it, is when the dust gets moved about.

I'd rather do without a vacuum cleaner than a washing machine. However, my viewpoint may reflect the fact that I don't do the vacuuming (the cleaner does), whereas I do do the laundry.

My friend argued that the vacuum cleaner was important, because (at the time) your DH would expect to come home to a clean house every day, and would accept that laundry only happened once per week.

OK I confess that our lovely cleaner does the dusting and hoovering. But we clean the kitchen and bathroom in between visits. And do the laundry. Which I actually don't mind. Because we don't do the laundry that often.

Now that DS1 has a smart shirt do you think we need to teach him how to iron or how to get the thing out of the washing machine as quickly as possible and hang it up to dry so it doesn't need ironing?

MN thread of the day that I find myself unable to wrap my head around. Someone's DH was fired two months ago. He didn't tell the OP. Instead he pretended to go to work, and let the family continue to spend money on expensive things like theatre tickets, meals out and redecorating the house. He finally came clean and wants to put mortgage payments on the OP's credit card.

And here's the bit I can't remotely understand... a very large proportion of the responses are along the lines of "Oh, poor man, he just be so upset".

W. T. A. F?

No one's takng my washing machine away . Hoovers over there in the corner, take it if you must.

Still, yes for kids without mothers it would be a problem. I'm currently a bit miffed with a kindergarten for going on about family which is giving my dd an obsession with her grandma (my mother, whom I'd rather keep at a distance). Can imagine worse.

Annie, crikey, that's some bad denial.

Someone's DH was fired two months ago. He didn't tell the OP. Instead he pretended to go to work, and let the family continue to spend money on expensive things like theatre tickets, meals out and redecorating the house.

This is not an unknown thing though, is it? Didn't one of the characters in the Full Monty do that "going to work" thing each day, even though he didn't? (The one who ended up dieing in the Best Marigold Hotel.) And I'd heard of it before then. I'd be bloody furious if it happened to me though - I'd be annoyed at not being told about being sacked (was it a fair dismissal? If not, there are limited time frames to claim against it.) And I'd be angry about the money side of things, and not being told. You can deal with things like joblessness and lack of income if you know.

Mind you, I am single, so I don't have to deal with anything like that.

I can go a couple of weeks without using the washing machine, but then I tend to do 2 or 3 loads all at once, and if I didn't have the wm, I'd have to do at least undies by hand by that point. I prefer not to walk on a gritty floor, either, but I can go longer than 2 weeks.

God we need the washing machine. It's a 9 kger, yet we seem to still be able to produce 1 load of washing a day... DP is a 6footer, so the clothes are big, and DS1/2 do tend to get stuff down them, but still, it's ridiculous.

plus we have hard floors, so sweeping isn't too bad, and I find running the microfibre mop thing round positively satisfying.

I stepped away from the tread about the fired DH. The DW is all about standing by her man but not only did he not tell her for two months while she refurbished the house, he also got fired and is being coy about why and not consulting a solicitor. Apparently none of this is his fault and she must be supportive because he is feeling bad.

It would be a deal breaker for me. The complete lack of trust and partnership would be an end to it. But then I can't imagine DH doing anything remotely like that. He would be down the local grocery store and stacking shelves in less than 24 hours.

I was also very tempted to suggest that the OP get a job and let her DH take care of the kids but suspected I would get a flaming for my lack of compassion.

I love my washing machine. It's the only "female" thing in the house that belongs to me. I think DH would wash monthly if left to his own devices, he has that hard ear wax / no BO thing. But I love washing. All other house work I try to ignore; between the cleaner and DH they sort it out.

I much prefer my washing machine to the hoover, althought I rarely use either of them. Dp does the laundry on his day off, and dd1 does the hoovering (and cleans the kitchen and bathroom once a week) for pocket money. I don't think I actually do very much housework at all, if dp and dd1 haven't done it I just shut the room I don't want to look at and pretend it isn't there .

I love laundry too. Ironing and fabric softener and folding clothes and putting them away.

I don't do it as often as I should, but I love it when I do. One of the only genuinely enjoyable bits of housework IMO.

I also don't mind washing up - you get to stick your hands in a lovely warm tub of water for ages :) - but I don't like it in practice because the sink is crap so water invariably splashes down my front, my arms are sticks so I can't roll sleeves up reliably and the ends get wet which gives me rage, the drying rack is sadly not a conveyer belt of magic drying and gets full, and the dishes are too greasy and make the water dirty after washing about four things, so I have to keep stopping to refill the bowl, which takes forever because we also don't have hot water in the kitchen.

So I leave it to DH. He gets around the grease problem by using far too much soap and pretending the water is not greasy, which leaves the dishes with a residue of greasy soap. I pretend not to notice because it gets me off the hook of doing it.

Bertie how come you don't have hot water in the kitchen? I couldn't cope, I hate washing up at the best of times!

I do find ironing quite satisfying, getting rid of all the wrinkles and making everything smooth. (Not that satisfying that I am going to be taking in laundry, before you all bundle up yours.)

We've just moved house and the water connections in the kitchen were only set up for one machine. We plumbed the washing machine in initially, but after a week or so of doing dishes by hand a few times a day (we're both home full time atm so the dishes were stacking up) and only doing a few loads of laundry, DH made the very salient point that we would benefit far more from plumbing the dishwasher in instead.

So we did. Happy days! I hate washing dishes.

We had another week of building up lots of dirty laundry, then DH bought some extension hoses and we ran them across the kitchen and into the sink when a load needed doing. This plan also results in a minor flood the first time we tried and the pipes fell out of the sink, but the floor needed a clean anyway, so no harm done.

Now we have attractive extension pipes running along around the outside of the kitchen, but at least it's all plumbed in, no pipes need to be dangled in sinks and we can wash clothes and dishes all at the same time. First world luxury, I tell ya!

I can definitely appreciate that r.e. the washing machine - washing clothes by hand takes so. Bloody. Long.

R.e. its invention having more of an impact than the vacuum cleaner - could that partly be because before the vacuum cleaner was invented, you didn't have wall-to-wall carpets in many houses but wood / brick with rugs? Whereas if vacuum cleaners sudenly stopped working now we'd have a lot more carpets to clean than our ancestors might have done. But people have always had clothes!

Obviously those would still need to be beaten but I imagine that the time saved between beating and vacuuming wasn't anywhere near as big as the time saved between handwashing all your clothes and putting them in the machine.

I would have been an awful Victorian.

*Obviously the rugs would still need to be beaten...

I like to think I would have been a fairly standard Victorian ie fairly grubby

I'm third generation "I can think of lots of things I'd rather do than clean" and I like to think that if the sentiments of previous female generations of my family were recorded they'd concur. Other things to be getting on with.

I have discovered in the last two weeks that few LARGE loads of laundry are better. If I didn't have a washing machine or a hoover I'd have to have serious lackeys (I did that when I lived overseas, though).

Have any of you seen this?

Mother's Day/Mothering Sunday can be pretty awful for those who either don't get on with or have lost their own mothers, or who would love to BE a mother but can't.

I'm not a huge fan but did get rather a large bar of chocolate today!

Good article in the Observer magazine today about the female senior journalists covering the election. What they didn't do was put their age next to their name and job title. I kept looking for it but it wasn't there, then I realised the fact I was looking for it told me a lot about how such articles are usually framed.

My great grand mother was in service during Victorian times and after that ended up in the home for single mothers before marrying my great grandfather. If I was around in that era I think I'd probably have died in a workhouse by now!

I think I'm on the side of the washing machine in terms of time saved.

Annie, I saw that AIBU post. I was also shocked that so many people seem to think it's OK. I would be furious if that happened to me, it's such a disrespectful thing to do. I try to avoid posting in AIBU as I rarely have the patience for it.

I'm off on holiday tomorrow! I'll probably still post but I'll be on holiday.

When we moved into our house we discovered that there is no plumbing in our kitchen for ANY machines. Also there doesn't appear to be a way to plumb any machines into the kitchen without getting proper tradespeople in and it costing a lot of money for basically a whole new kitchen , so we've lived with our washing machine being in the old coal shed/outside toilet for FIVE YEARS! And the washing up has to all be done by hand. We are getting a new kitchen this year, as we can just about afford one now we aren't paying for ft childcare, I can't wait to have a washing machine inside the house again, it won't freeze solid in the winter, I won't have to get wet going out to get the washing from the machine, I'm getting a dishwasher too

Oh, just because we live in a crappy tiny roof flat which is supposed to be a holiday home, and only has a kitchenette. We have illegally installed an oven so DH won't ask the landlady to fix the hot water (which has been missing since we moved in) in case she objects to the oven! Luckily the bathroom is right next door and that has hot water, but what a faff! The washing machine is in the cellar, too, and we're on the 2nd floor, so that does put a dampener on my laundry.