Housework Thread

[WOM]

Really. Not that I'd say that I enjoy housework, but it's very satisfying to "fix" the messy carpet by running a vacuum cleaner over it for two minutes or plonk all the dirty cutlery and crockery into the dishwasher, pop a detergent capsule in, hit the "On" button and remove clean and dry items a few hours later.

Yeah, this. Ironing, vacuuming and washing up have a very satisfying before/after effect. I also really enjoy wiping down the stovetop after she's made a fucking mess of it. It's stainless steel and gas-fired, so requires a lot of moving around of grills and grates and diffusers and such. Very engaging work.

[Balderdasha]

I am in the "I hate housework" category. I know it is bourgeois and capitalist and evil but if I could afford it I'd employ a housekeeper to come daily and do all of it.

[Balderdasha]

I lived in the same house from age 5-18, but since then I have moved house at least 33 times, if you only include places I've lived in for more than a month at a time. If you included places I've stayed for a week or less on holidays, backpacking expeditions, or when couch surfing while doing internships, I've "lived" in well over a hundred different places.

[Balderdasha]

We've been in the house we're in now for over five years, apart from my stint in the mother and baby unit, which is the most stability I've had for decades, but we don't own it and we'll have to move at some point. The fact that we've accumulated furniture in the intervening time means that the next move will be my hardest yet and I don't relish the prospect.

[Sporting]

I lived in the same house from age 5-18, but since then I have moved house at least 33 times, if you only include places I've lived in for more than a month at a time. If you included places I've stayed for a week or less on holidays, backpacking expeditions, or when couch surfing while doing internships, I've "lived" in well over a hundred different places.

Would it be fair to say that most of these moves didn't involve shifting furniture etc?

I must do a list cos I've lived in a shiteload of places.

[Balderdasha]

Would it be fair to say that most of these moves didn't involve shifting furniture etc?

I must do a list cos I've lived in a shiteload of places.

Absolutely. Until we moved to this house the only pieces of furniture we actually owned were an IKEA rocking chair, a TV, a cot and a computer desk. This house was unfurnished so we had to start buying furniture. We were sleeping on an inflatable bed while I was 9 months pregnant with our son. My husband then built an IKEA bed the day I came out of hospital after the birth. Future moves will be much trickier as we now own things like a washing machine, a tumble dryer and a piano.

[WOM]

Having 'closed down' my parents' house, I can't imagine dealing with ours just to move. The greater worry is L's parents' place, which is utterly rammed, most of which is antiques purchased during their England years and which won't disappear as readily on Kijiji / Craigslist / FB Marketplace.

Ugh....

[laverte]

I am in the "I hate housework" category. I know it is bourgeois and capitalist and evil but if I could afford it I'd employ a housekeeper to come daily and do all of it.

See, for me, the first part of this is what makes the last part inconceivable.

Like San B, i'm shocked to find that there are people in the world who don't find housework exhausting and soul-destroying. Even so, i'm clinging to my belief that the problem isn't you, it's the work itself: the word chore is used for a reason. i can't justify palming shitty and boring work off onto someone else just because it's shitty and boring. If i went down that road, i'd end up hiring someone to make my breakfast and reply to my uncle's whats-app messages.

[Balderdasha]

My mother's house will be a nightmare to deal with. She's lived in it for 33 years, is a hoarder (but a neat one who has everything in labelled boxes) and as well as her own stuff she has a garage full of things from my grandfather's house that she couldn't bring herself to sell, and now, most of the collection of art that my aunt painted (which is astonishingly good for an amateur but not at a level where you could sell it).

[Balderdasha]

See, for me, the first part of this is what makes the last part inconceivable.

Like San B, i'm shocked to find that there are people in the world who don't find housework exhausting and soul-destroying. Even so, i'm clinging to my belief that the problem isn't you, it's the work itself: the word chore is used for a reason. i can't justify palming shitty and boring work off onto someone else just because it's shitty and boring. If i went down that road, i'd end up hiring someone to make my breakfast and reply to my uncle's whats-app messages.

See, I do believe that some people enjoy cleaning (the weirdos), though I acknowledge that most people who do cleaning as a job mostly do it because of a lack of better alternatives. But if someone has to do the cleaning, I'd rather that someone else earns a decent wage from it (whenever we've had cleaners we've always paid well above the London living wage) rather than me doing it for nothing and resenting it.

There are plenty of things I've done as a job which I wouldn't have done for free and getting a wage for it made it better.

[WOM]

Commiserations. My parents, while far from minimalists, weren't hoarders at all and didn't even have a garage. What's more, my mother did a lot of the shredding / paring / parsing while she was in her last year of life. After she died, we had almost a year to clear it out and prep it to sell. Fortunately, I have a pickup truck and I'm not terribly sentimental, so things went where they needed to go - charity shop, dump, friends and neighbours, etc.

My sister, having lived with mom for 18 months to 'help her clean out', managed to do sweet fuck all before moving out into her own condo. Good times....

[hobbes]

That sucks. Is he ok now?

Oh yeah, he's fine. Some soft tissue damage and he's hobbling, but no real harm done.
I was worried he'd busted something because he actually screamed and then cried when he did it and couldn't put any weight on it. He's both stoic and has quite a high pain threshold - I've seen him go headfirst over his scooter bars and land on elbows and knees on the pavement, cutting and grazing all 4 and the most he did was screw up his face, suck in breath and wish he knew some swearwords.
He gets it from his mother. She barely made a sound while having him, despite him being 10lb 4oz.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I can't imagine what kind of move results in a broken ironing board. Unless it was two drunk guys playing 'hey look, I'm surfing'.

It might have been broken before we moved, I don't know for sure. It hasn't been right since we got here, anyway. We paid people to do all the packing and moving and unpacking.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Has TonTon nicked your login?

Aren't you passionately opposed to business attire?

[WOM]

He gets it from his mother. She barely made a sound while having him, despite him being 10lb 4oz.

[WOM]

Aren't you passionately opposed to business attire?

As much as a man with a penchant for electric Jaguars can be....

[hobbes]

Aren't you passionately opposed to business attire?

It was how the questions were written more than the actual questions.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Yeah, Balder's list seems about right.
Add to that managing a building project and that's my life right now.

Oh and sitting outside the hospital for 4 hours yesterday because only one parent is allowed in and the cub had slipped on the stairs and buggered his foot.

Really sorry to hear this, hope he's OK and it was nothing more than some bad bruising.

[DCI Harry Batt]

It was how the questions were written more than the actual questions.

Aha, yes, fair dos.

[laverte]

if someone has to do the cleaning, I'd rather that someone else earns a decent wage from it (whenever we've had cleaners we've always paid well above the London living wage) rather than me doing it for nothing and resenting it.

That's important. i was listening recently to a researcher who made the point that many professional couples make a nice profit from employing a cleaner. Effectively what often happens is that for each hour of cleaner time (London average rate: GBP 9.90), one of them, usually sir, works an extra hour at his much higher-paid job, while the other stays home with the child/ren, potentially saving money on childcare. It's not uncommon, apparently, for the cleaner to have to pay someone to mind her own child so that she can go to clean the house of a woman who has delegated the housework in order to spend more time with her children. More frequently, some relative ends up doing unpaid childcare somewhere along the line.

Much of this could be resolved with free state childcare, but we can't have that for some reason.

No need to add how it entrenches class and gender inequalities, impresses them on the body, justifies the toxic long-hours office culture, etc.

[scratchmonkey]

Ah, I'd forgotten an additional reason why I don't like dishwashers, and that's because my wife has no concept of what can safely go in one. It all goes in -- the really good, sharp knifes, the delicate glassware, aluminum cookware, hand-painted mugs, if it's out in the kitchen, it goes in the dishwasher. So if any of that gets used, I need to make sure it's hand-washed, dried, and put back.

I also *may* have beaten Balders in the moving stakes in that I once went out with my friends, decided to drop some acid, came back to my apartment after merrily running around in the woods for 4 hours, and received a phone call from my friend reminding me that he'd be there with the moving truck at 8 in the morning to head over to our new place. I managed to get everything packed and cleaned by using the strategy of leaving the stereo system as the absolutely last bit, blasting techno, and pretending that I was a packing/cleaning robot.

[Balderdasha]

The other thing that I was wondering about this, is why focus on cleaners as being the only people doing "shitty, boring" work? Whether I think about it or not I pay a vast number of people to do shitty, boring work. The people who make mine and my family's clothes, the people who pack and deliver my grocery shopping, the people who pick my fruit and vegetables, the pig factory workers who grind the pork for sausages for my children (my dad was a manager in a pig meat factory, if those jobs don't count as shitty and boring then I don't know what does), the people who sort my post at the sorting office (I've done that and would definitely class it as shitty and boring), the people who make all the stuff that my husband orders off Amazon, and definitely the Amazon warehouse workers and drivers.

I mean, yes, there are some things I can do to reduce the social and environmental impact a bit. For myself I buy second hand clothes from charity shops wherever possible. I buy second hand uniform for the kids. I try to support small local businesses and cafes when I can. But it's often not possible in the modern world, and to shop truly "ethically" is extraordinarily expensive and time consuming, another luxury of the rich.

Is it because we can physically see a cleaner? Whereas the other people working shitty minimum wage jobs for our convenience are more hidden? Out of sight, out of mind? Why object to a cleaner more than, say, a zero hours deliveroo driver?

[Balderdasha]

That's important. i was listening recently to a researcher who made the point that many professional couples make a nice profit from employing a cleaner. Effectively what often happens is that for each hour of cleaner time (London average rate: GBP 9.90), one of them, usually sir, works an extra hour at his much higher-paid job, while the other stays home with the child/ren, potentially saving money on childcare. It's not uncommon, apparently, for the cleaner to have to pay someone to mind her own child so that she can go to clean the house of a woman who has delegated the housework in order to spend more time with her children. More frequently, some relative ends up doing unpaid childcare somewhere along the line.

Much of this could be resolved with free state childcare, but we can't have that for some reason.

No need to add how it entrenches class and gender inequalities, impresses them on the body, justifies the toxic long-hours office culture, etc.

This is very relevant. I did a module in my social anthropology course about migrant workers in South East Asia and the tension between, for example, a Filipino maid working away from her family for years and living in a small cupboard in Hong Kong doing all the domestic work for another family. That's the extreme version.

Fundamentally, there is a problem in the UK at the moment that the economy has shifted so that you need two adults working full time in order to have a chance at buying a house, but those jobs have not adjusted to take account of the fact that there is now no-one left at home doing all the jobs that previously allowed men to do their jobs relatively stress free. It doesn't matter hugely if you're working in the office until 8pm if there is someone at home looking after the children, cooking, cleaning, shopping, doing admin, etc. But if you have two adults working those hours, who does everything else? It's a circle that cannot be squared.

The solutions that exist are all crap. Pay someone minimum wage to do those jobs? Outsource to an elderly relative? Both attempt to do a bit of everything and get horrendously stressed? Stick the children in wrap around care at school so they're there from 7am to 6pm? Don't have children (women in many countries are opting for this as preferable to the alternatives)?

[WOM]

Is it because we can physically see a cleaner? Whereas the other people working shitty minimum wage jobs for our convenience are more hidden? Out of sight, out of mind? Why object to a cleaner more than, say, a zero hours deliveroo driver?

I think it's simply because cleaners = domestic help = servants. There's a real double standard about it. We had this row a few months ago, I believe.

[Gangster Octopus]

I think it's simply because cleaners = domestic help = servants. There's a real double standard about it. We had this row a few months ago, I believe.

A thread about this topic actually broke the original otf twenty years ago...