RELATABLE CONTENT
notes on housekeeping
While I’m SURE there are people out there who have figured out some sort of “maintaining a neat house populated by mostly humans under the age of 10” methodology, I am not one of them. I am eternally behind. Behind on laundry. Behind on dishes. Behind on clean countertops!
In Momfluenced, I have a chapter about (among other things) my desire for beauty (to feel it, to witness it, to embody it), and wrote this about spending a day fully invested in keeping (a weird word, no?) an orderly home.
I’m capable of creating beauty. I’m capable of hiding plastic toys away in bins and endlessly wiping down countertops. But I can’t see past the mind-numbing work that goes into it. And the monotony of that work doesn’t often equate to the momentary feeling of calm produced by neatness and order. The bud vase of violets will only be pretty if the streaks of toothpaste have been scrubbed from the sink, if the dark-yellow urine spots sprinkled across the toilet seat by a first-grader with poor aim have been scoured. And if I take a picture, then what? Who will see the fruits of my labor if I don’t post it on Instagram? If I don’t (or even if I do), who will care?
My thinking on clothes chairs, organization, care work, laundry fairies AND laundry mountains has shifted and deepened so much since I wrote the above passage, but one thing that hasn’t changed is my firm understanding that cleaning and daily home maintenance is a largely Sisyphean task so I felt fucking SEEN by this Instagram post.
Cheers to your countertop crumbs! May their existence be proof of you choosing to spend your time doing something else in place of wiping them into oblivion. And cheers to this pink cardboard crown which has been chilling out on my kitchen counter for so long that surely it is now legally entitled to squatters’ rights.
I like the firm words of Sophie Brock: housework is not mothering. I was shit at housework before I became a parent, and I'm still shit now. But it bears no relation to my worth as a mother.
Good perspective! I'm working on separating my identity from the material aspects of my home, telling myself it's just a place filled with stuff. I'm not where I want to be on this, but so far it has been freeing. I feel less bothered by the mess — just like the other five non-mom humans I live with.