[238/365] on the occasion of yelling with an afab friend about how much we hate washing the dishes

[cosmolinguist]

Having been socialized as a woman, it's ingrained in me that maintenance is essential work too. Reseting the systems of nourishment and hygiene, bringing into the house the things we need while taking away the things we don't so these systems be useful again whenever they're needed. Empty the dishwasher every morning, put the recycling out every fortnight.

And I have stuff I also do partly to save myself spoons: tuck chairs back under the table whenever they're left out, close the cupboard doors every time they've been opened...

I read once that traditional "men's" chores tend to be less frequent and more discreet tasks: mow the lawn, fix something around the house, etc. They have a beginning, middle and end which allows for good boundaries which means they spend the rest of their time watching sports on TV or whatever. "Women's" chores are all about reseting these systems: cooking dinner, doing laundry, childcare, etc. They're never done.

My mom used to despair that as soon as she'd mopped the kitchen floor, we got it dirty again. I used to despair that we were just living our lives and weren't doing anything unusual or malicious to mess things up for her.

We were both right.

It's hard.

I used to only see the resentment in these never-ending chores. Sometimes I still do resent having to make dinner when I just did that yesterday. I do laundry but I'm wearing clothes while I do it and at the end of the day take them off and put them in the basket and the horrible cycle begins again. Grocery shopping is such a hated chore for me, so every time the groceries are put away I feel a huge sense of accomplishment and abundance...and then pretty soon the fridge is empty again.

But I'm starting to sometimes find the possibility of satisfaction and maybe even the art in these cyclical maintenance chores too. It's not the same as that of doing a chore with a beginning, middle, and end. But it's nice to know that things will be where I expect them to be next time I need them, that the garbage bag won't be overflowing the next time I have something to put in it. There's a confidence to be had there, and Present Me can sometimes be so relieved and thankful towards Past Me that it feels like I've given myself a little gift that has traveled through time.

Comments

[silveradept]

The gendered distribution of labor does create a situation where one gender is mostly free but for projects, and the other is trapped in perpetual cycles of chores that never have anymore more than a temporary situation.

The satisfaction at having completed one of those cycles can be pretty nice, though, getting to admire the work while it is currently in the clean state.

[otter]

Reading along

[momentsmusicaux]

I get that kind of despair with food preparation mostly. Laundry to me feels like a machine I keep ticking over, and sometimes there's a lot in the laundry basket and sometimes there isn't very much. Maybe it's because there's an optimisation challenge with laundry: choosing which things to priotize, based on what we need to have clean soonest and the upcoming weather forecast. Whereas food is just decisions and hard work.

[solarbird]

YES. Food preparation is the worst. Not even the cooking, though I'm not fond of that - some parts less than others, it's not all terrible - but all the metal energy that has to go into all the meal planning and ingredients acquisition and all of it.

I finally got to the point a few years ago where Anna and I had some discussions and made a few changes. I'm still doing the overwhelming majority of the cooking but it's less, and more importantly, some of it is chosen in the form of a weekly box that arrives with the right ingredients all included and ready to prep. (Not ready to cook, I'm still cooking it all. But I don't have to care how many carrots I need and whether the garlic is going to be bad and and and and and and and and kill everyone.)

It helps. A lot.

I think this is part of why I've always liked baking, because really, those are all one-off projects. Even if it's basic baguettes, you don't have to do it over and over again.

[momentsmusicaux]

My solution to some of this was to have a meal plan - several weeks' worth of meals, which I'd just loop round. At the start of the week, I'd use that to plan my shopping list and then just cook what the plan said I'd cook. It removed the effort of decision-making, and a 4-week plan meant things didn't come round so often I'd be bored of them.

But I'm now living in a new place, not got used to the kitchen yet, haven't got supermarket routines yet, haven't got a store cupboard of ingredients built up yet, and also I'm trying new recipes with a slow cooker to reduce cooking effort. So it's not quite working at the moment.