Are men better at doing nothing than women? It certainly looks that way in my family, but that's not exactly a broad survey.
The opposite in my family.
My husband especially feels guilty if he’s doing nothing. We are both retired so we could do (almost) nothing all day long.
We both have a lot of interests, hobbies and do plenty of charity work.
On the domestic front he does all the shopping and cooking and I do the washing up, washing and cleaning. It works for us as it plays to our strengths.
I take lots of enjoyable breaks - like now on the Ship. He doesn’t so much and justifies himself if he does.
Are men better at doing nothing than women? It certainly looks that way in my family, but that's not exactly a broad survey.
It depends on what you mean by "doing nothing". Does "doing nothing" just mean "doing things I don't value" or does it mean "not contributing towards the general weal of the household"?
Is watching TV "nothing"? Reading a good book? Tinkering at a hobby? Taking evening classes because you're interested in something?
But further noting that it is the role, not the gender of the role-filler, that is the problem. I have to stop my paid work to do my domestic work, and vice versa, and there is always more work than hours in which to do it. Honestly, I'm exhausted, but it's been like this for decades and it's now just the water I swim in.
I'd second that, as another male who does most of the home stuff. But - the missus is unusually driven in terms of the time she spends outside the house (I assume 'at work', but hey... ) and I've fought against the feeling I had early in this setup that I needed to match that in terms of domestic commitment. I care up to a point, but I know where that point is.
Our situation has enlightened me regarding the suspect nature of much of gender essentialism - many of the ways of being an arse go with the role, not the gender.
Our situation has enlightened me regarding the suspect nature of much of gender essentialism - many of the ways of being an arse go with the role, not the gender.
Women are often accused of nagging. Actually, it's leaving shit all over the house that makes the housekeeper nag.
It's interesting that, as a single man, I am responsible for keeping my house clean. Yet I have no interest in this whatsoever. Is there something about caring for others that puts the pressure on?
I think it's different expectations. If you are more or less tidy than your partner, it will cause friction. If it were up to me, we'd be throwing an awful lot of stuff out, simply because it would then be easier to clean.
But it's not up to me, so I have to manage my expectations.
I think it's different expectations. If you are more or less tidy than your partner, it will cause friction. If it were up to me, we'd be throwing an awful lot of stuff out, simply because it would then be easier to clean.
But it's not up to me, so I have to manage my expectations.
(eta)
Yes, I could just nag and nag and nag until it either got done or the relationship collapsed. But since the latter is more likely, I'll take my lumps.
Being the primary caregiver means you think shit like "X (who is elderly, toddler, or has poor vision,) is goilng go trip over all that crap," and so you care--and nag. If you are in charge of the finances it will infuriate you if the rest of the family proposes to clean by just throwing out perfectly good stuff, and all the more if you're attempting to teach children about reusing and recycling. There's method to the madness, and reason to the nagging. How else can you meet your primary goals in the family?
I found that I hated myself more than I was hated when I nagged, and in any event, my nagging went entirely to waste. So I stopped. Every so often, in response to a question about either cleanliness or tidiness, I point to the piles of crap I'm not allowed to touch and shrug.
But I literally have a bazillion far better things to do with my time than pointlessly nag. One day I'll box up everything I want to save, put it in storage, and burn the house down. Until then, I have to live with myself.
I took the a different option--announced that I was no longer going to help anybody find their shit and/or prevent other people's shit from getting lost, unless I got good-natured self-aware "Yes I fucked up" acknowledgement AND COOPERATION from the person-in-desperate-need-of-keys/glasses/underwear etc. Then I followed through.
"Where's my shoes?"
"Where you left them, I suppose."
"Can you help me find them?"
"I could...."
"Would you please help me find them!"
"Do you know why they're missing?"
[slump of shoulders] "Because I left a pile of crap here and there and over there."
"Yep. Okay, I'll help you get started cleaning up" and an impromptu tidying lesson begins (aka "how to put your shit away in a fast and effective manner without losing your mind"), in the middle of which the shoes are discovered. Because it always goes that way.
Mind you, I have to be careful not to gloat and undo the lesson. And sometimes I just say, "Sorry, I have stuff I'm working on right now" and turn back to the computer.
I am a leaver of piles of crap. I tend to put things that are "current" in my brain in obvious places until I've dealt with them. And I remember where they are in relation to other things, so if I'm looking for the letter I opened the other day that needs dealing with, I know I stashed it on the mantelpiece under a figurine of a cat (for example).
This is fine until someone tidies my piles of crap away, and then I have no idea where they are. And nor do they, because they don't think in the same way, and get confused when I ask them where they moved object X to, because that's not the sort of thing they remember.
If my stuff was where I left it, I'd very rarely have a problem, 'cause shit doesn't get itself lost. Shoes, piles of paper, and other objects do not move under their own power.
(I'm still looking for some paperwork that got tidied two years ago. I know exactly where it was, and I know that a month later it had been moved. It's probably in a box with stuff that looked superficially similar, but there are many such boxes...)
We have two filing cabinets and a filing system that works as long as stuff is filed in the right folder. Stuff is rarely filed, and if it is, it gets stuffed in a random folder. Leading to the inevitable "Have you seen the x?" questions, and the equally inevitable "have you checked all of your random piles of crap?" answers.
Seriously, it shouldn't be difficult. Putting paperwork under ornaments is just creating work for the person who does the cleaning. You are telling them they are less important than that piece of paper.
Mind you, I have to be careful not to gloat and undo the lesson.
That's always worth remembering.
I'm getting better at saying 'yes, we ate 3 hours ago because you didn't come home from work, but yours is over here' without rancour. The situation messes up family life, but not as much as it happening anyway, plus a row. It's easier now the kids are older.
We have two filing cabinets and a filing system that works as long as stuff is filed in the right folder. Stuff is rarely filed, and if it is, it gets stuffed in a random folder. Leading to the inevitable "Have you seen the x?" questions, and the equally inevitable "have you checked all of your random piles of crap?" answers.
Seriously, it shouldn't be difficult. Putting paperwork under ornaments is just creating work for the person who does the cleaning. You are telling them they are less important than that piece of paper.
Thing is, "the person who does the cleaning" ought to be everyone. Still, unless there is blaming going on ("you moved my piles of crap!"), I think that last bit, "You are telling them they are less important than that piece of paper" is a bit over the top. The people I know who do this don't do it with deliberate attempt to annoy the shit out of people, though they do succeed. But it's true it's almost impossible NOT to come to the conclusion it's deliberate when one is very tired and confronts a hoarder's living room situation for the umpteenth time.
We've sort of got a compromise thing going on: I will not touch your piles of shit as long as they are confined to THIS area (shows) UNTIL things become absolutely unbearable (as in, the health department is coming over), at which point I will inform you before ruthlessly demolishing your piles--and thus you will have the opportunity to clean up your own shit first, if you so choose. And if you do NOT so choose, you lose any right to bitch about it.
I'm getting better at saying 'yes, we ate 3 hours ago because you didn't come home from work, but yours is over here' without rancour. The situation messes up family life, but not as much as it happening anyway, plus a row. It's easier now the kids are older.
After years (and years) of this, I finally decided that I needed to become the best person I could be, on my own terms. Things got a lot easier after that: I have no control over their behaviour, only control over mine.
Thing is, "the person who does the cleaning" ought to be everyone.
This presumes a lot. In reality, the person who does the cleaning is the person who can least stand the mess. If you're in a relationship with someone who is tidier than you (and we're not talking pathological levels of tidiness), it behoves you not to be a dick.
You're right. My statement was one of idealism, not one of reality. I'm the one who can least stand the mess in my family. My real-life statement making is designed not to correct the imbalance (as if!) but to prevent everybody else from making it even more imbalanced than it already is.
Things got a lot easier after that: I have no control over their behaviour, only control over mine.
I have no reason yet to suppose I can expect a shorter than average lifespan, and I still don't know if I'm going to live long enough to properly internalise that supposedly obvious piece of life-saving advice. Sounds like you're quicker on the uptake
It is interesting to consider how assumed gender roles might feed into the who-does-what dynamic of domestic duties.
Generally speaking, very few people actually like cleaning up after others, even as we grudgingly accept cleaning up after ourselves (let's assume). My hypothesis is that females are pressured early on to see tidying up as a thing to be good at, which can end up meaning that the homeostasis of a space is tidy by virtue of being willing to clean up messes. Whereas males who want to by tidy¹ tend to lean more towards just not making messes to start with, to minimize cleaning requirements.
When people share a space, the boundary of who is responsible for a mess gets blurry, such that many things can feel like "cleaning up after someone else". This was a persistent dynamic in my marriage, wherein my ex-wife would blow into a space leaving debris everywhere, then would have to spend significant time afterward cleaning up. Then she would have to be mindful about her feelings about how much more time she spent tidying. And, correspondingly, I would have to be mindful about my feelings about having to clean up a kitchen made far, far messier than I ever leave it when it's my turn to cook.
Ultimately, it helps to just try to visualize ourselves as "forces for good" and if seeing something needing tidying to tidy it for the sake of the greater good. But feelings are what they are, and they're not always fair.
¹ Let's just ignore, for the sake of civility, the many, many spoiled individuals who happily "let" the space be cleaned up for them.
Things got a lot easier after that: I have no control over their behaviour, only control over mine.
I have no reason yet to suppose I can expect a shorter than average lifespan, and I still don't know if I'm going to live long enough to properly internalise that supposedly obvious piece of life-saving advice. Sounds like you're quicker on the uptake
Although statistically you can expect a shorter than the average woman's lifespan.
...so the missus might be left muttering to herself about 'that dead bastard who never would leave off trying to control me'? Yeah, that's not outside the realms of possibility.
In my family, I have more free time. My wife has the tough job and the long hours. So our house is a mess, because I am very untidy and we have two dogs. We have, after 16 years, progressed to the stage where I do most of the housework and the meals. But it has taken a long time, both for my wife to get used to not doing the work, and for me to pull my shit together and actually do stuff. The house remains a mess, and I reckon my wife would like it to be cleaner. Maybe I'll do a proper job one day... I make so many promises to myself that I've learned to ignore them.
In Screwtape, CS Lewis remarks that when a man is being helpful he avoids doing something, for a woman it involves taking action. Out of this different attitude much suspicion and discord has grown.
While I'm wary of generalisations, recent comments here would fit in with Lewis' perception.
I am a working woman effectively living alone (occasional lodger). I observe in myself traits re housekeeping etc that are typically described as male. It took me years to stop beating myself up about this, reminding myself I work long hours at a stressful job and perhaps hoovering is not my priority. So I’d support the idea a lot of this is role dependent. It took me years to get a cleaner, because I felt I shouldn’t - rather than because I couldn’t afford it - but it immensely improved my quality of life.
This presumes a lot. In reality, the person who does the cleaning is the person who can least stand the mess. If you're in a relationship with someone who is tidier than you (and we're not talking pathological levels of tidiness), it behoves you not to be a dick.
I find that the Mrs and I prioritize differently when it comes to cleaning / tidying. She prefers things to look tidy (so views a pile of papers moved into a drawer as an improvement.) I prefer things being put away to be a result of being organized (just shoving things in a drawer is actively bad to me, because it implies an organization that hasn't happened.)
We do it with socks. I want to leave odd socks out waiting for their friend to come through the next wash (because for me, the sock drawer is a place for pairs of socks, and only pairs of socks). She wants to put them away, to get them out of sight. For socks, we seem to have compromised on a "lone sock" compartment within the sock drawer. This meets her desires, and is worse for me, but tolerably so. I don't think this scheme extends to the general case, though.
You sound like me and my mother. I have a messy house as far as surface appearances go, but impeccable (well, not really, but still) drawers. She had a neat house with absolutely intolerable drawers and cupboards.
No doubt Freud would get a ton of meaning out of that.
You sound like me and my mother. I have a messy house as far as surface appearances go, but impeccable (well, not really, but still) drawers. She had a neat house with absolutely intolerable drawers and cupboards.
No doubt Freud would get a ton of meaning out of that.
Freud had far too much to say about what's in other people's drawers.
We do it with socks. I want to leave odd socks out waiting for their friend to come through the next wash (because for me, the sock drawer is a place for pairs of socks, and only pairs of socks). She wants to put them away, to get them out of sight. For socks, we seem to have compromised on a "lone sock" compartment within the sock drawer. This meets her desires, and is worse for me, but tolerably so. I don't think this scheme extends to the general case, though.
Let me recommend the Socktopus. One sock into which you tuck the tops of all the odds until such time as their mate appears. I currently have 91 pairs and 27 odd.
And today I went through some 6 months backlog of a food magazine and harvested such recipes as I might actually make.
And those, typically, are about as much as I can manage against the slow tide of chaos: little forays in an unwinnable war.
All my socks are the same brand, and all have horizontal stripes. I wear any combination of colours that takes my fancy. When I volunteered at a school the children sometimes commented - and I always said , "I have another pair like this at home". When you're retired and a volunteer you can get away with things that would be frowned on when employed.
We do it with socks. I want to leave odd socks out waiting for their friend to come through the next wash (because for me, the sock drawer is a place for pairs of socks, and only pairs of socks). She wants to put them away, to get them out of sight. For socks, we seem to have compromised on a "lone sock" compartment within the sock drawer. This meets her desires, and is worse for me, but tolerably so. I don't think this scheme extends to the general case, though.
Let me recommend the Socktopus. One sock into which you tuck the tops of all the odds until such time as their mate appears. I currently have 91 pairs and 27 odd.
And today I went through some 6 months backlog of a food magazine and harvested such recipes as I might actually make.
And those, typically, are about as much as I can manage against the slow tide of chaos: little forays in an unwinnable war.
You sound like me and my mother. I have a messy house as far as surface appearances go, but impeccable (well, not really, but still) drawers. She had a neat house with absolutely intolerable drawers and cupboards.
No doubt Freud would get a ton of meaning out of that.
Freud had far too much to say about what's in other people's drawers.
So I wear socks as pairs and then put them in the laundry basket. Then I put them in zip bags sorted by colour themes, and wash them. Then I put them on the heated airer, in pairs. Except that I then find that a number, and not a small number, of them have no partners. Inexplicable.
I wonder if Mrs Marcos ended up with a lot of shoes because someone else couldn't work out anything else to buy her for Christmas? That's what happened to me and socks (thanks Mum). Maybe she also couldn't bear to throw any out until she'd worn holes in them and fixed them again at least once. If only charity shops took socks, I could free up some space - anyone need a few pairs, lightly worn, no known parasites or fungus?
I know I am slightly obsessive about socks. Mainly I wear white, sometimes black. However they must be a matching pair, even if the small details are on the heel where no one else will see them. Getting dressed can take a while....
You're allowed to just bag them up and send them to the clothing bank for recycling...
I suppose clothing - and clothing expectations - are also gendered. A man can wear the same business suit to work every single day for 50 years, and potentially the same style shirt and same tie, and same shoes too. All my clothes fit in a very few drawers (pants, socks, black t-shirts, not-black t-shirts, jumpers and trousers, and running kit), plus a foot or so of hanging space for my suit, my authorial jacket, a couple of shirts and half a dozen ties. When a drawer gets full, I purge it. I have everyday boots, walking boots, posh shoes, and a couple of pairs of running shoes. And that's about it.
And for the most part, no one cares what I'm dressed in, only that I'm dressed. No one comments on what I'm dressed in either, unless it's wildly inappropriate for the occasion. I understand that for the ladies of the house, it is different. (For the record, I have never commented on what a woman is dressed in unbidden. I also avoid commenting on what a woman is dressed in bidden, because that way lies madness.)
Sidebar regarding mateless socks: Does no one else use sock rings for keeping pairs together? My mother first started using them when I was around 10 or 12. She got them in six colors—two for my father, two for my brother and two for me, so it was obvious at a glance whose socks were whose. I've used them ever since. Socks go in the drawer in the rings. I take the ring off and put it on my dresser when I put the socks on, then when I take the socks off, the ring goes back on and into the laundry they go. I haven't had a sock without a mate in over 40 years.
Habit can overcome a variety of impediments. I speak from the experience of my college and law school days.
But to acquire the habit you've got to repeatedly do the thing you want to be a habit. It always feels like a Catch-22 to me.
Well, in my case, the habit had been insisted on by my mother, so that by the time I got to college (and could stay out late drinking), it was already well-ingrained.
@Robert Armin, if you go to That Merchandise Site that shares a name with Wonder Woman's tribe and search for "sock rings" or "sock locks," you should see what I'm talking about.
Comments
The opposite in my family.
My husband especially feels guilty if he’s doing nothing. We are both retired so we could do (almost) nothing all day long.
We both have a lot of interests, hobbies and do plenty of charity work.
On the domestic front he does all the shopping and cooking and I do the washing up, washing and cleaning. It works for us as it plays to our strengths.
I take lots of enjoyable breaks - like now on the Ship. He doesn’t so much and justifies himself if he does.
It depends on what you mean by "doing nothing". Does "doing nothing" just mean "doing things I don't value" or does it mean "not contributing towards the general weal of the household"?
Is watching TV "nothing"? Reading a good book? Tinkering at a hobby? Taking evening classes because you're interested in something?
I'd second that, as another male who does most of the home stuff. But - the missus is unusually driven in terms of the time she spends outside the house (I assume 'at work', but hey...
Our situation has enlightened me regarding the suspect nature of much of gender essentialism - many of the ways of being an arse go with the role, not the gender.
Women are often accused of nagging. Actually, it's leaving shit all over the house that makes the housekeeper nag.
But it's not up to me, so I have to manage my expectations.
(eta)
Yes, I could just nag and nag and nag until it either got done or the relationship collapsed. But since the latter is more likely, I'll take my lumps.
But I literally have a bazillion far better things to do with my time than pointlessly nag. One day I'll box up everything I want to save, put it in storage, and burn the house down. Until then, I have to live with myself.
"Where's my shoes?"
"Where you left them, I suppose."
"Can you help me find them?"
"I could...."
"Would you please help me find them!"
"Do you know why they're missing?"
[slump of shoulders] "Because I left a pile of crap here and there and over there."
"Yep. Okay, I'll help you get started cleaning up" and an impromptu tidying lesson begins (aka "how to put your shit away in a fast and effective manner without losing your mind"), in the middle of which the shoes are discovered. Because it always goes that way.
Mind you, I have to be careful not to gloat and undo the lesson. And sometimes I just say, "Sorry, I have stuff I'm working on right now" and turn back to the computer.
This is fine until someone tidies my piles of crap away, and then I have no idea where they are. And nor do they, because they don't think in the same way, and get confused when I ask them where they moved object X to, because that's not the sort of thing they remember.
If my stuff was where I left it, I'd very rarely have a problem, 'cause shit doesn't get itself lost. Shoes, piles of paper, and other objects do not move under their own power.
(I'm still looking for some paperwork that got tidied two years ago. I know exactly where it was, and I know that a month later it had been moved. It's probably in a box with stuff that looked superficially similar, but there are many such boxes...)
Seriously, it shouldn't be difficult. Putting paperwork under ornaments is just creating work for the person who does the cleaning. You are telling them they are less important than that piece of paper.
That's always worth remembering.
I'm getting better at saying 'yes, we ate 3 hours ago because you didn't come home from work, but yours is over here' without rancour. The situation messes up family life, but not as much as it happening anyway, plus a row. It's easier now the kids are older.
Thing is, "the person who does the cleaning" ought to be everyone. Still, unless there is blaming going on ("you moved my piles of crap!"), I think that last bit, "You are telling them they are less important than that piece of paper" is a bit over the top. The people I know who do this don't do it with deliberate attempt to annoy the shit out of people, though they do succeed. But it's true it's almost impossible NOT to come to the conclusion it's deliberate when one is very tired and confronts a hoarder's living room situation for the umpteenth time.
We've sort of got a compromise thing going on: I will not touch your piles of shit as long as they are confined to THIS area (shows) UNTIL things become absolutely unbearable (as in, the health department is coming over), at which point I will inform you before ruthlessly demolishing your piles--and thus you will have the opportunity to clean up your own shit first, if you so choose. And if you do NOT so choose, you lose any right to bitch about it.
After years (and years) of this, I finally decided that I needed to become the best person I could be, on my own terms. Things got a lot easier after that: I have no control over their behaviour, only control over mine.
This presumes a lot. In reality, the person who does the cleaning is the person who can least stand the mess. If you're in a relationship with someone who is tidier than you (and we're not talking pathological levels of tidiness), it behoves you not to be a dick.
I have no reason yet to suppose I can expect a shorter than average lifespan, and I still don't know if I'm going to live long enough to properly internalise that supposedly obvious piece of life-saving advice. Sounds like you're quicker on the uptake
Generally speaking, very few people actually like cleaning up after others, even as we grudgingly accept cleaning up after ourselves (let's assume). My hypothesis is that females are pressured early on to see tidying up as a thing to be good at, which can end up meaning that the homeostasis of a space is tidy by virtue of being willing to clean up messes. Whereas males who want to by tidy¹ tend to lean more towards just not making messes to start with, to minimize cleaning requirements.
When people share a space, the boundary of who is responsible for a mess gets blurry, such that many things can feel like "cleaning up after someone else". This was a persistent dynamic in my marriage, wherein my ex-wife would blow into a space leaving debris everywhere, then would have to spend significant time afterward cleaning up. Then she would have to be mindful about her feelings about how much more time she spent tidying. And, correspondingly, I would have to be mindful about my feelings about having to clean up a kitchen made far, far messier than I ever leave it when it's my turn to cook.
Ultimately, it helps to just try to visualize ourselves as "forces for good" and if seeing something needing tidying to tidy it for the sake of the greater good. But feelings are what they are, and they're not always fair.
¹ Let's just ignore, for the sake of civility, the many, many spoiled individuals who happily "let" the space be cleaned up for them.
Although statistically you can expect a shorter than the average woman's lifespan.
While I'm wary of generalisations, recent comments here would fit in with Lewis' perception.
I find that the Mrs and I prioritize differently when it comes to cleaning / tidying. She prefers things to look tidy (so views a pile of papers moved into a drawer as an improvement.) I prefer things being put away to be a result of being organized (just shoving things in a drawer is actively bad to me, because it implies an organization that hasn't happened.)
We do it with socks. I want to leave odd socks out waiting for their friend to come through the next wash (because for me, the sock drawer is a place for pairs of socks, and only pairs of socks). She wants to put them away, to get them out of sight. For socks, we seem to have compromised on a "lone sock" compartment within the sock drawer. This meets her desires, and is worse for me, but tolerably so. I don't think this scheme extends to the general case, though.
No doubt Freud would get a ton of meaning out of that.
Freud had far too much to say about what's in other people's drawers.
Let me recommend the Socktopus. One sock into which you tuck the tops of all the odds until such time as their mate appears. I currently have 91 pairs and 27 odd.
And today I went through some 6 months backlog of a food magazine and harvested such recipes as I might actually make.
And those, typically, are about as much as I can manage against the slow tide of chaos: little forays in an unwinnable war.
Holy shit, you're the Imelda Marcos of socks.
I suppose clothing - and clothing expectations - are also gendered. A man can wear the same business suit to work every single day for 50 years, and potentially the same style shirt and same tie, and same shoes too. All my clothes fit in a very few drawers (pants, socks, black t-shirts, not-black t-shirts, jumpers and trousers, and running kit), plus a foot or so of hanging space for my suit, my authorial jacket, a couple of shirts and half a dozen ties. When a drawer gets full, I purge it. I have everyday boots, walking boots, posh shoes, and a couple of pairs of running shoes. And that's about it.
And for the most part, no one cares what I'm dressed in, only that I'm dressed. No one comments on what I'm dressed in either, unless it's wildly inappropriate for the occasion. I understand that for the ladies of the house, it is different. (For the record, I have never commented on what a woman is dressed in unbidden. I also avoid commenting on what a woman is dressed in bidden, because that way lies madness.)
/sidebar
But to acquire the habit you've got to repeatedly do the thing you want to be a habit. It always feels like a Catch-22 to me.
@Robert Armin, if you go to That Merchandise Site that shares a name with Wonder Woman's tribe and search for "sock rings" or "sock locks," you should see what I'm talking about.