Wife work during lockdown

[Al1Langdownthecleghole]

There was a thread a week or so back about the impact of CV on women, but I've just read that Grant Shapps thinks people should only shop once a week for essentials and I'm feeling pretty ranty about it. I have other stuff going on so am not at my calmest just now but the bloody man has really wound me up.

Does he think the fairies stock the kitchen cupboards?

So we shop just one a week.
We buy no more than three of everything.
We can't have home delivery because vulnerable people need the slots (fair enough).
We need to shop for friends & neighbours who are at risk (in my case MIL or self-isolating (DS).

How does he honestly think families acquire their food? And I know it's not an exclusively feminist issue, but it is women in the main that are meal planning and shopping for neighbours & other family members.

I can't help thinking that the cabinet's lack of sensible women is showing.

Grr rant over.

It's driving me fecking bananas.

I'm a key worker, out of the house nearly every day in a risky situation. Teenagers at home, needing to do school work. Partner WFH. I come home and I have to direct people to do housework, I have needed to cobble together a menu from random stuff, which has meant from scratch cooking every day, and I got some bullshit from him last night because I came to bed as soon as I got in, and Partner cooked some packet stuff that I had left for others to cook (read the kids) because I know how to cook and he needed to have his hand held through the complicated process of opening a jar and cooking pasta. He also can't possibly set the kids up with their work, because he has to sit on his laptop and do t-cons, but apparently after a full, very physical shift, I should be just fine to do it.

Night before last, I asked for some help to set a menu for the next few days so that we could do some sensible shopping. He did this bullshit thing about letting me get an early night, and he'd take on the shopping himself, when basically, he couldn't be arsed to plan, and of course came home with random shit we didn't need so I still have to put extra effort into planning food because he thinks some garlic bread and mayo can be turned into dinner for 6 for a whole day.

Arrrrgggh.

Hmm. What I read is that he said:
“Mr Shapps told people to "try and shop just once a week – just do the essentials, not everything else" ” in an interview about corona virus and the social distancing measures.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with telling people to try to food shop once a week during a pandemic. Taken in context, he was telling people to minimise shop visits as much as they can due to CV. Smaller families and couples with no kids regularly are able to only do one food shop a week. I’ve seen threads on MN where people have stated that they shop only once a week.

There was no “should” in his statement.

And no, I don’t think shopping is wife work or a woman thing. Nor do I think his comment was a man being oblivious to women’s work. Every time I’ve been in a grocery shop I’ve seen just as many men shopping as women.

Yes, but the point is 'just the essentials, once a week' will not compute with supermarket limits on specific items, plus the need to plan what you do with the essentials you do manage to get.

What's doing my head in is how I'm supposed to strike a balance between shopping as infrequently as possible, supporting local businesses, and keeping 2 weeks food supplies in, in case we have to self isolate.

The advice would be fine if groceries and medicines were available in store and for delivery.

I wonder if this is the general advice to make everyone take things seriously, so shops are quieter and shelves are relatively stocked (like not popping into a shop just for ice cream, not clearing the shelves of things or driving 10 miles to go for a walk).

It is difficult if you’re trying to shop for multiple people or have to fit queuing with your trolley outside a supermarket before work or late at night when you can leave kids at home.

We’re all going to be significantly inconvenienced for some time, and this will tend to inconvenience women more in many instances, but I keep reminding myself that doing it well means not doing it for as long, and that I would rather be struggling on the home front than on the battlefield in A&E like my lovely SIL.

Thank God I don't live with a man - he'd be dead by now if he was that useless LadyQuarantina.
I divorced a husband for less than that.

I guess the actual request is to minimise the total time you spend out shopping and interacting with people, only that has too many long words and so many people wanted simple clear rules ( possibly more than normal because when things go wrong rules provide comfort' , and as soon as you try to codify into simple rules, you can lose the meaning

And no, I don’t think shopping is wife work or a woman thing

Of course it isn't. Nor is cooking or cleaning. The answer to the problem with wife work is in the hands of the "wives" doing it. Sort it out with your partners and families. No one else can do it for you.

I think I need to be here

Yes, it's super special maths Tinselangel. Buy no more than three quantities of anything once a week from a local business to feed a family for a fortnight.

That's mn maths...the chicken that feeds a family of 6 for a week

It feels more like Shroedinger's maths right now Midgebabe.

I don't think there's anything wrong with what he's said - it at least gives people something to aim for. The wife work is another problem!

I don't know, this seems like a guideline to me, and one that is probably workable for many people. I have a family of six and I can do a once a week shop excluding milk - the problem with that is I don't really have enough room in my refrigerator. (I tried to pick up powdered milk for baking but it was all gone.)

But guidelines or suggestions are not rules, if you live in a room with a bar fridge obviously you can do less and I don't think statements like this are meant to make people in those situations feel badly.

It takes practice to change how you shop and cook, which is IMO the real reason it often becomes one person's job. The idea that shopping and planning for meals and other household activities is totally skill-less is sort of bs. Changing habits for a situation like this is similar to trying to shop on a severe budget, you have to think differently about how you structure your shopping and even your meals. There are some websites that talk about how to shop for longer periods, deal with storage issues and such, what kinds of meal plans work, for anyone looking for inspiration or help it could be worth a look.

It is a stupid thing to say because nearly everybody shopping for 1 or 2 or a family is not able to buy everything.

And nice as it sounds on paper the online shopping slots are not going to the old and vulnerable. They seem to be booked even as they are added.

Also if you are someone who doesn't have a car and have been told to avoid public transport it is highly unlikely you can carry everything you might need for a week.

Its just like so much of what it decided on in Government. It is based on a life stylr that very few of us have.

But as said above, if I was in the position of having to shop for anyone else who wasn't even attempting to understand how to plan out and check what is needed, I would be totally screaming with frustration.

Next bit is slightly off topic, but remember that in fact when growing up it was my father who put together a list of everything that it would be good for us to have in stock. Then easy to check each week needed to be ordered. Not sure that this was necessarily to help my mother put to prove that if you are methodical things get done better! (In fact it meant she could leave him to do ordering). It was quite a new thing for us at the time, being in the position to do a weekly order.

So maybe if the man in your life is someone who things then have managerial skills maybe you could get them to do this. Draw up the list (which I see could bring up all sorts of other differences), and then praise his wonderful skills and say that as he has shown such superioed ability in doing it, he should obviously be the one to implement it!

And nice as it sounds on paper the online shopping slots are not going to the old and vulnerable. They seem to be booked even as they are added

There probably needs to be some sort of attention paid to this. A verification process seems like it might be unworkable, but maybe some blunt social messaging that people who are able-bodies and healthy need to avoid using up these services.

I mentioned that the shops wanted that on my neighbourhood FB page, and a lot of people had clearly not received the message, many even thought they were supposed to be using delivery.

My sense is that a lot of government messaging is inconsistent or a little too generalised, because people's communities or lifestyles are so different. But if they aren't specific some people ignore it, while others take guidelines as if they are rules and will even castigate people for not following them when it is for a sensible reason.

There has been clarification that once a week is not correct, and it is just minimising ( guardian or bbc sorry, keep losing my place )

There’s a thread in AIBU that has a link to the actual legislation, and that doesn’t specify any limits to how often you can either do essential shopping, or exercise. One shop a week isn’t feasible if you are simultaneously trying not to buy more than you need and while store stock levels are still messed up. And exercise once a day was what Johnson suggested, but it wasn’t put in the bill.