Time is Finite, Part 1: Why Your House Looks Like Crap

[zingerella]

 Welcome everyone to my new life-management series. I intend to periodically, as time allows, explain why many of us feel inadequate most of the time. Today's topic is housekeeping.

Did you know that six hours of housework per day may reduce your risk of breast cancer? It will also result in your having all the laundry done and folded, the carpets

Comments

[sabotabby]

I clearly needed to read this.

[zingerella]

My mom had someone come in to clean starting when I was very little-I think even before my brother was born, so I would have been around two-despite being, at that time, not employed outside the home. She had one toddler and two dogs and interests outside housekeeping, and having someone do the big chores once a week helped her to stay on top of things.

She's semi-retired now, and she still has someone come and do the cleaning every other week.

So if it was okay for her, starting in the mid 1970s, then it's probably okay for us, too.

[zingerella]

Yes, exactly: if you love cleaning, sure, by all means, do it. Just understand that it takes time-even the things we love doing take time-and that the time you spend cleaning your oven or whatever is time you cannot spend doing something else. Make the choice consciously and with conviction.

[audrawilliams]

"Assuming you don't bring work home, or work late, or work for CUPE."

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

[ginny_t]

This was good to read. I pretend to cheerfully admit that I'm a terrible housekeeper, but I still remember an off-hand remark my mother made ... wow, 12 years ago. Whee.

Now that I am a fat cat civil servant getting the hard-working Ontario taxpayer dollar working for Ontario families that need a break in these tough economic times, I am contemplating things like a laundry service (but so many of my clothes I air dry) and a periodic house cleaner. Because I'm an adult, and sometimes adults do that.

[zingerella]

You know what? Hiring someone to do the cleaning is being a good housekeeper. Keeping house, to my mind, means maintaining your home in a manner congenial to the way you prefer to live. If you personally honestly don't mind a bit of dust, and you don't mind whatever guests you have seeing the dust, then you're successfully keeping house. If you do mind dust and have someone in to do the dusting, then you're successfully keeping house. Hiring someone to cook meals for you and putting them in the freezer, rather than doing your own cooking, is being a good housekeeper, if you hate cooking and can afford to outsource it