Coming Clean On Housework

Yesterday’s blog about housework inspired my Bigsister to send me this article she wrote for 

The Archer, a community newspaper serving East Finchley.

 

There being nothing remotely interesting in the Facebook archives for 18^th May, I have stolen and reproduced it here entirely without her permission.  

 

Although as it’s already appeared in print in a newspaper (and its website) I’m fairly certain I’m ok vis-à-vis plagiarism and copyright.

 

COMING CLEAN ON HOUSEWORK

By Diana Cormack

A recent report comparing the various effects coronavirus has had on men and women revealed that women have borne the brunt of housework during the pandemic.  No surprise there then as all previous articles about housework seem to have told us that anyway.  What has surprised me is seeing no mention of those women who have cut down drastically on what they do about the house since lockdowns began.  I happily to confess to being one of them, as are many of my friends.

Of course, necessary tasks such as toilet, bathroom and kitchen cleaning can’t be ignored, but I can now look at dust gathering on the furniture and let it be.  After all, nobody will see it except me and my husband.  In fact, he probably won’t notice it and, if he did, would never be motivated to remove it so I have learned to do the same.  He does do all the hoovering however and I have learned not to point out any bits which he may have missed!

But, with the approach of spring, will I feel I must join in the annual cleaning fest as our ancestors did before us?  My paternal grandmother did, even though she took her views on housework to the grave.

Grandma died in 1970 at the age of 82. Among her effects was a poem which she had kept for many years.  I believe she cut it out of the Radio Times decades before the feminist movement hit the headlines.  Although Grandma never expressed them, she must have secretly shared the writer Mary Knight’s views on housework.  This was long before vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dishwashers were the norm, yet reading it I realise just how much I take after my grandma!

 

A PSALM OF HOME LIFE

(For the Other Listeners who find the Household Talks oppressive)

 

Tell us not in mournful numbers

How to keep our houses clean:

When to leave and seek our slumbers,

How to fill the hours between.

 

Life is real! Life is earnest!

Spotless homes are not its goal;

Who dusts, and then to dust returnest,

Leaves no rest for sole or soul.

 

Not enjoyment – surely sorrow

Is their destined end and way

Who so plan that each tomorrow

Is the same as yesterday.

 

Housework’s long, and time is fleeting,

Must our wives, though stout and brave,

Go on bottling plums and beating

Carpets to the very grave?

 

In the world’s broad field of battle

This seems a depressing strife.

Be not like dumb driven cattle!

Get some pleasure out of life!

 🧹🧹🧹

My reply was to send her this

 

 

Plus sa change plus sa meme chose; as my old friend Paula used to say.