cleaning by gender
Oct. 10th, 2007 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishPandagon commenter Jeff Fecke nails it like Digby:
I’m a slob. And I prefer things neat to dirty. But I live on my own, and that means that I let things get dirty. Guess why? Because as a boy, I was never told that my value as a human being was directly tied to how neat I kept my house.
This is almost exactly right. Growing up, Mom and Jamie and I did weekly (or maybe biweekly?) house-cleaning, featuring vacuuming, dusting, and bathrooms divided in some fashion. I usually dusted and sometimes vacuumed. I never did the bathrooms, with the result that I actually had to rely on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uilos to teach me how to clean a bathroom some years ago. (Yes, that is rather deeply embarrassing.) But keeping a clean house was never really made my responsibility. I was delegated to. I never owned those tasks. They weren't a part of me. Verdict: vacuuming is done when people are coming over (so, about once every three months), because that's what prompts me to notice the hair-between-the-toes (not really anything else, just the hair); bathroom is cleaned when I remember to (every month or two); and I think I dusted once when I got tired of having dusty bookshelves.
I was, however, told that my value as a human being was directly tied to how neat I kept my room-- not clean, per se, but neat. (Like most kids I had a perpetually messy room. Draw your own conclusions.) This is why, when you come to my house, you see very little in the way of clutter. Because god forbid I allow anyone to see Stuff, Just Lying Around And Being Untidy.
If I’d been told as a child that a dirty house reflected poorly on me as a man, I probably would be cleaner, but more neurotic about it. And that wouldn’t be a positive thing. And it isn’t a positive thing for the women who are dealing with it, because they were told, in so many ways, that a clean house proved their worth. Gee, I wonder why men don’t see dirt the way women do?
I’m a slob. And I prefer things neat to dirty. But I live on my own, and that means that I let things get dirty. Guess why? Because as a boy, I was never told that my value as a human being was directly tied to how neat I kept my house.
This is almost exactly right. Growing up, Mom and Jamie and I did weekly (or maybe biweekly?) house-cleaning, featuring vacuuming, dusting, and bathrooms divided in some fashion. I usually dusted and sometimes vacuumed. I never did the bathrooms, with the result that I actually had to rely on
uilos to teach me how to clean a bathroom some years ago. (Yes, that is rather deeply embarrassing.) But keeping a clean house was never really made my responsibility. I was delegated to. I never owned those tasks. They weren't a part of me. Verdict: vacuuming is done when people are coming over (so, about once every three months), because that's what prompts me to notice the hair-between-the-toes (not really anything else, just the hair); bathroom is cleaned when I remember to (every month or two); and I think I dusted once when I got tired of having dusty bookshelves.I was, however, told that my value as a human being was directly tied to how neat I kept my room-- not clean, per se, but neat. (Like most kids I had a perpetually messy room. Draw your own conclusions.) This is why, when you come to my house, you see very little in the way of clutter. Because god forbid I allow anyone to see Stuff, Just Lying Around And Being Untidy.
If I’d been told as a child that a dirty house reflected poorly on me as a man, I probably would be cleaner, but more neurotic about it. And that wouldn’t be a positive thing. And it isn’t a positive thing for the women who are dealing with it, because they were told, in so many ways, that a clean house proved their worth. Gee, I wonder why men don’t see dirt the way women do?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-11 05:26 pm (UTC)Are these people who have witnessed you cleaning my stove? :)
Seriously, though, I've not heard any of that. Maybe they recognise that it's a pretty backhanded compliment. Or maybe as a boy I'm not supposed to care about how clean my place is and it just magically happens to be clean without any effort on my part. (This is, incidentally, not wholly untrue. Any clean-ness in the kitchen tends to be a result of disasters that require a thorough scrubbing, like the time the sink flooded and required me to mop the floor. And keeping public areas neat comes naturally; see above.)