The Joyful Housewife

Here I am, tired on a busy morning. I have tons of school work and cleaning to accomplish before we go off skiing for the weekend. (This is our third year in Colorado, and only the first year we have skied, because we’re usually just barely getting through the week, without adding a lot of driving and exercise to the mix.)

But when I get myself to make coffee, put on some music, and this adorable apron that my talented little sister made me for a wedding, gift doing dishes without a dishwasher becomes a lot more tolerable. Almost fun! (Okay, that’s a lie!)

I love my pink dish gloves and various aprons. Aprons are especially important for me because we’ve lost the little round thingy that goes on the end of the faucet to direct the flow of water, so I always end up completely soaked in the front after doing dishes by hand. (I’ve also managed to break about 15 glasses this year. Housework is not my strong suit!!!!!! Hence, my extreme need for motivational attire.)

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I’m hard pressed to believe that anyone actually enjoys housework. It is something which simply must be done. One cannot allow the dust bunnies, toilet grime, and shower mildew to take over (though in my house, they have been allowed to proliferate robustly without actually hindering us from our duties in the outside world - it’s just gross, that’s all). But in fact, there is nothing in the constitution of women that is better suited to performing those household duties which prevent too much filth from accumulating. It simply falls to the person in the house who feels it is her duty to do it, or to the person for whom the tolerance threshold is the lowest. 

Division of Chores

For my good friend C, it is her husband who has the lowest threshold and who indeed does most of the housework. They each do their own laundry; he tends to do one load per day, and she tends to leave her clothes in the dryer indefinitely, with him removing them for his needs and then putting them back in to “fluff.” He sweeps and vacuums, dusts and mops, and stacks the things she may have left out on the one messy shelf in their house. Because it is understood that the existence of one dirty dish in the sink will give him an aneurism, they both rise after a meal and clean up the mess together. They are both in the habit of cleaning up messes as soon as they occur. They both seem to enjoy cooking equally. 

In my house this is not so. It seems both my husband and I have nearly equal tolerances for messiness. The problem for me is that I am the one most disturbed by it, but we have let things get so bad that I cannot bear to deal with it. And not once in the time that we have lived together has he ever decided to wash a dish or take out the garbage, without my having goaded him into doing it. 

Cooking vs. Baking

It seems that cooking is often done because one must eat, but baking is an art which imparts love and care to the household. There is no such thing in our home as the smell of fresh baking and the accomplishment and comfort that it provides: Neither of us are bakers. And the cooking, if it is done at all, it is seven times out of ten, done by him. I do my best to keep that ratio more even, but it seems, his threshold for getting sick of eating out is lower than mine.

Dishwashing

One difference is that dishes, unlike vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping, etc, must be done or we cannot cook. That task unfortunately falls to me. Two facts which make that intolerable: we do not have a dishwasher, and he is unable to cook a meal without demolishing the kitchen. Hence, the constant state of my kitchen which I have illustrated in former posts.

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