Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with it's endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
-Simone de Beauvoir
-from The Second Sex
Merci, Simone, for expressing my thoughts exactly on housework and putting them on paper before I even was born! You are my newfound heroine, inspiration, and mentor from beyond! I am in the process of devouring everything you wrote and I will dedicate a post to you on your 100th birthday next January. :-)
For now, I am publicly admitting that I am not a domestic goddess. That's a fancy, modern day term for housewife. I never yearned to be one. Ever. It would drive me insane.
I say kudos to the generations of housewives who have fed, clothed, and kept their families living in relative neatness and cleanliness. We wouldn't be here without them!
However, I don't fit that category. My apartment is evidence of that! %-0 It's not a pigsty but neither is it a Macy's showroom. Daily cleaning is BORING. I'm talking about thorough cleaning beyond just cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen or bathroom, like daily dusting, vacuuming, cleaning floors.
Cooking is also part of housework. Cooking is essential, and I like to cook the things I like to eat, but I am not a chef--though I do like to pat myself on the back when a dish turns out especially good. It's much more enjoyable to feast on other people's fine dining, like my family's or friends' or at a restaurant. ;-)
Referring back to de Beauvoir's words, it is the montony of housekeeping that I relate to. Having read half of her four volume autobiographical series, I can tell she was no housekeeper. She was an intellectual since her youth. She had no intention of ever submitting to the "service" of marriage and motherhood. And she didn't. She was too busy teaching and writing. She was a woman ahead of her times: freethinking and independent in her own right. She challenged women to think for themselves and become their own person. She laid the foundation for modern-day feminists.
Thinking about dust bunnies was not high on her to-do list. Nor mine--until I see them...and I have poor eyesight anyway!
What is the torture of Sisyphus, to which Simone de Beauvoir refers in the quote? Sisyphus, according to Greek mythology, was a king punished in the Tartarus (either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades or the entire underworld with Hades being the hellish component) to roll a huge boulder up a hill for eternity. The catch was that before he reached the top of the hill, the rock would always escape him and would have to begin again! %-0
That sounds EXACTLY like ironing to me! Torture. Repetitive torture at that! I hate ironing. But it's a necessary evil; I iron because I don't like to wear wrinkly clothes. I have wrinkly clothes because I've never liked to use a dryer unless I have to in emergency. I hang them out. Just as my mom has done probably her whole life. Freshly hung clothes smell better and last longer. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and they'd all be smooth, straight out of the washing machine! I can't think of a more mind-numbing activity than ironing. :-(
If I know company is coming, which is very rare for hubby and myself (as in a few times a year or less), I go on a mad cleaning rampage: I put on some kind of racy classical music in the cd player, while I wash and vacuum the floors, and make everything non-cluttered and clean as can be in a few hours' time! Yes, I wait until the last minute. That's how much I think of the the task of housework.
And no, I don't like looking at dust, much less dirt. I'll take care of it in due time thank you very much. Dirt first. We don't wear shoes in the apartment, so that helps a lot. I don't let company wear their shoes in our home, either, if they're going to stay awhile.
Clutter is another matter. I do try to make "neat" piles of stuff. It's hard! Hubby is a pack-rat, as is his dad and my family. I save a lot, too, but I try to organize it, or at worst, hide stuff in drawers until I get to it in another life. ;-) Hubby's worse than me: he'll even save cardboard boxes. He might have to send back an item someday he says. Hah! %-(
When we left our house four years ago, we had an attic PACKED with old boxes! A fire hazard, indeed! NEVER AGAIN, I proclaimed. He even took the words right out of my mouth one day recently: "I didn't sign up to be a WAREHOUSE manager!" Darn right I didn't, mister.
Hubby's favorite line to me whenever I make noise about clutter: "What's it hurting you? Don't you have more important things to think about?"
* BIG sigh*!
Well, of course I do. He's right. I DO have more better things to think about, like keeping abreast of new developments in my field of massage therapy, or devouring the work of Simone de Beauvoir or any other feminist, or reading about things Chinese. That's plenty to keep my mind busy. I made a vow to myself long ago that I wanted my life to have a feverish quality about it: to be as involved as possible through mind, body and soul in pursuing what I enjoy and what I believe in.
I think of myself as a woman finally on the blazing path to realizing her dreams, but still pulled back now and then by the nitty gritty details of life: serious illness and death among friends and family/relatives (six already this year). Somehow, the serious and sad parts are easier for me to accept than the mundane details of housekeeping.
It is my good fortune I hooked up with a progressive-thinking man who is not a neat freak. I just don't want too much clutter and dust! Is it because I'm a woman, conditioned by society that it's the woman's job to upkeep the home?
Even though The Second Sex was written over a half century ago, I think that Simone's views on housework and other topics are still pretty much as true today as when she wrote them. It is what I observe in some, but not all, relatives and friends. Impatient and ignorant reviewers on amazon.com will say she's boring and outdated, but I don't agree.
On housework:
"...woman's work within the home gives her no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it does not open out on the future, it produces nothing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as it is linked with existent beings who reach out beyond themselves, transcend themselves, toward society in production and action. That is, far from freeing the matron, her occupation makes her dependent upon husband and children; she is justified through them; but in their lives, she is only an inessential intermediary."
I like to keep in mind her words: "in order to find a hearth and home within oneself, one must first have found self-realization in works or in deeds". For myself, it is more important to invest my time nourishing my mind and body than to spend time making my home look physically beautiful.
Dust bunnies will never rule my day! %-0
* * * *
At worst, a house unkept, cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
-Rose Macaulay, prolific poet and novelist
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