Hi, I’m S-Mama, and like many women, I was programmed from early childhood to believe that everything always has to be in its place, and the whole house has to be spotless.
You too?
Good to know.
Except — it’s not, actually!
Where does this “need for everything to always be flawless” even come from in me, and, I believe, in other women too?
Women vs. the Windmills of Housework
For a long time, housework was the first thing I did the moment my day began.
Even back in my master’s, in those first signs of living independently, it always mattered to me that the apartment we lived in “looked decent.”
Whenever I gave up on going to the reading room and decided to write from home instead, before I’d even sit down at the table and open my laptop, I’d have to quickly tidy up — pretty much the entire apartment! First I’d tidy, clean, load and unload the machines.
Everything, at every moment, had to be ready for a surprise inspection by a cleanliness authority that didn’t even exist.
And I acted as if I were caught in this irrational fear that this very authority would revoke my license to be independently competent, because I “wasn’t taking good enough care of the house.”
And then noon would roll around (or, well, sometime around there), and only then would I finally start dealing with the things that actually mattered — my studies, work, the blog…
And not only could I barely manage to finish anything meaningful, I also realized I was spending my most productive hours of the day, when my mind was freshest, on “mindless chores.”
foto by Marqan
Actually, the first time I truly realized I had a problem was while listening to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, which has an entire chapter devoted to housewives, who spend their whole lives on housework, especially the fight against dust. And in the end, they’re the ones who lose! (Something like a distinctly female version of Don Quixote.)
Dust is eternal. Women are not.
Simone writes that according to psychoanalysts, the mania for maintaining a home is a form of sadomasochism — it’s characteristic of manias and vices that you start, of your own free will, to want the thing you don’t actually want; because the manic housewife despises dirt and dust as a kind of evil conspiring against her, and fights it by constantly wiping it away, effectively accepting the very state that keeps her outraged. (De Beauvoir 2010, p. 540)
In other words, even though we don’t love cleaning, we accept that state as part of who we are, because we hate dirt even more.
Damn womanhood, and its learned social roles!
The realization hit me so hard — that I am, in fact, one of a million women fighting a battle that was doomed from the start — that I started sobbing right in the middle of the street.
My days passed in a blur of invisible labor, work that goes unnoticed by everyone else in the house, is never paid, and eats up time you could genuinely be spending on something else.
That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be that woman.
On the other hand, back when I lived with my parents, I was the first one who never actively noticed the amount of work behind an always-clean house, a ready lunch, clean and ironed clothes.
But then, I suppose, you grow up, become your own person, and start taking on all those things that eat up both time and energy.
And how do you do them?
The exact same way you watched everyone else do them, your whole life.
Like some invisible chip switches on in your head — it’s your turn now. It’s simply assumed you’ll continue that well-established chain.
So now what?
Of course, change doesn’t happen overnight.
It took a lot more time before I could unpack certain things in my own head, analyze the learned behaviors passed down for generations from woman to woman, and realize that by watching my mom, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, that’s exactly what I’d learned — that nothing matters more than a clean house, and everything in its place.
And no, I don’t blame any of them for it.
But yes, I want that centuries-old chain to finally be broken!
The worst part of all is that I’d unconsciously, slowly started passing that same behavior on to Sofka — and that I absolutely do not want!
Somebody has to break it.
When does cleaning become a problem?
Nobody wants to live in a pigsty, that’s clear.
But nobody’s life should be reduced to slavery to a duster either (unless you’re getting paid for it, in which case, fair enough).
The trap of housework is that it’s genuinely never-ending — the laundry basket will never be empty, no matter how many times a day you do a load, there will always be dishes, always crumbs on the floor, and don’t even get me started on the dust on the shelves and in the dark, hidden corners behind the furniture.
Once I became aware of these learned behaviors, it was time to start changing them.
And then I realized that whenever I needed to do something I didn’t feel like doing, or something I had an irrational fear of even starting (writing a paper, a new blog post…), I’d lose myself in housework instead, just so that by the end of the day I’d have the satisfaction of feeling like I’d “at least done something useful.”
Apparently my favorite form of procrastination isn’t scrolling social media, endless YouTube, or shopping on Amazon and the like — I clean.
Simone is rolling in her grave, I know.
How do you “get off” the duster?
The moment I realized I was overdoing the cleaning, and that it was really a kind of escape from myself, a way of drowning myself in meaninglessness, I knew it was well past time to actually act. Otherwise I’d become exactly what I didn’t want to be — a slave to my own home.
In my case, there’s a particular catch: I chose to work from home, and that’s the work model that genuinely suits me best. To be able to do my paid job without losing myself in unpaid housework, I had to find a solution, and fast.
Once you become aware you have a problem, action follows.
Slowly set the duster down at a safe distance, brew your coffee into a to-go cup, pack your laptop in your bag, put the dog on a leash, grab your keys and mask, and run outside before the vacuum cleaner wakes up.
When I’m not home, I can’t clean either.
For starters, “fleeing” and physically removing yourself from housework is the most effective first step toward “recovery.”
When the weather’s nice outside, that’s easy to pull off. But when the weather isn’t cooperating, there are plenty of cafés. Cafés aren’t a permanent solution, though, since you obviously can’t sit there through a full workday without blowing half your paycheck.
And you can’t run from the problem forever either, because the whole point is to actually change the learned behavior.
It would be ideal if you could permanently escape household duties, without ever looking back. But that’s not really realistic in the long run, is it?
The next step, once you’re finally ready to come back within the walls of your own home without immediately grabbing a brush and rag the second you walk through the door, is good time management.
For example, at first I “allowed” myself a window from 7:30 to 8am to “clean up and tidy whatever I can,” and at 8 I’d stop and move on to actual work.
And it genuinely helped.
As my self-therapy progressed, I started spacing out the cleaning sessions more and more, so I no longer need the “by 8am” rule — I now run on a new schedule, with rules I actually stick to:
- You don’t have to do it all yourself! (the world won’t end if the dishwasher waits for Marko to get home from work)
- Split the tasks across several days rather than insisting everything gets done in one go (for example, I wash whites on Mondays, colors on Thursdays, vacuum on Fridays)
- Cleaning is strictly forbidden on weekends (the dishwasher is the only exception)
And so far, this system works!
I’ve changed my priorities — time spent with family and friends comes first, work comes second, and a spotless house comes tenth.
And believe it or not, the world hasn’t stopped turning, even though not everything is always flawless and in its place.
No inspector has shown up to punish me for my apartment not being tip-top at every possible moment!
Let’s be honest, of course I haven’t fully broken the chains of housework slavery, but they’re loose enough now that I get to be outside them more often than trapped inside them.
But I’ll get to full freedom eventually, sooner or later.
Warmly,
S-Mama
*Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is probably the book that’s had the biggest impact on me and how my thinking has developed over the past few years.
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