on women's work

Not long ago I came across this nifty little dittie about a traditional English mother's week...

Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

Not that I can relate to such a structured week of housework, but I have been doing a good deal of housework since becoming a full-time stay at home mom. Actually, a little structure in my week might make my home life a bit less chaotic. Unfortunatley, I tend to approach housework in cycles. First is the clean, orderly cycle. But sooner or later I tire of such mundane tasks, letting them pile up till the house is in utter disarray, the messy cycle. Once I get the courage to approach the disaster I allowed to accumulate, the cycle starts over again. It's as if at the heart of the matter my approach is Hindu--once the house is clean I'm like Vishnu preserving order and cleanliness to the tiniest detail, until my Shiva side takes over allowing me to turn a blind eye to the dishes piling up and the shoes sitting around. When I'm Vishnu, I've got better things to do--like writing this blog or reading a book or baking something I'm in the mood for and then leaving the kitchen in a shambles. When I'm Vishnu, I can get a bit anal retentive--pushing in all the chairs, arranging things "just so," and washing the dishes straight away.

For me the real funny thing (and a bit scary too) is that now I actually take pride in having a clean house. Never before was I remotely concerned about such things. Before I was a working woman, which to me justified not keeping the house in tip top shape. Also, I figured that if I was bringing home just as much or more money (the latter tended to be the case) then it was just as much my partner's responsibility to keep the homefront clean and orderly. In reality, however, neither of us ended up doing much around the house.

Now that I'm not bringing home the dough, I find myself baking the dough and cleaning up afterwards. Although I'll admit that it wasn't easy getting into a cleaning routine, especially with a baby that nurses every two to two and a half hours. A few wee months ago, I was still what I'd call a disaster in the area of "home economics" until my friend Diana appeared upon the scene. She is what I call, Mexican Housewife Supreme. She not only cleans her house constantly, she also cooks for her hubby everyday, washes and irons his clothes, and even brings him breakfast at work on occasion. I'm still not on par with Diana, that's for sure, but I learned a few things from her. The first is that, messes are much easier to handle if you clean them up straight away rather than letting them sit there and fester. Second is that cleaning is much easier and more efficient if you do it constantly since nothing really has a chance to get truly dirty.

It may seem funny that I'm writing so much about housework. I really never took it seriously before, but now that my main identity for the time being is that of mother and wife I find it ever so much more pertinent. It's actually something that a person can get some satisfaction out of when it's done well. It can be zen. Before Diana's cleaning logic entered my life of cleaning caos, I tried the zen approach to cleaning: trying to find harmony in my daily cleaning routines rather than resisting and loathing it every step of the way. If you cannot find the meaning of life in an act as simple as that as doing the dishes, you will not finding it anywhere. (I'm quoting from my book The World's Religions.) No matter whether I'm using zen philosophy or Diana's super housewife logic, I find that I am much more productive and in a much better mood when the house is clean. It just shouldn't be such a big deal to me, but it is.