Dirt, and the nature of clutter

When last I left you, I was expounding on my theories of natural parenting. So far so good. But, while I enjoy these practices greatly, and while I adore organizations like La Leche League and magazines like Mothering, they don't entirely address other feminist concerns. These include: women's sexual passages through life, the division of labour in the household, and the global struggle for women's and mother's rights. There may be more items I add to this list, as my feminist mothering awareness grows, but that's all I can think of for the moment.

Of this list, the item I have been pondering the most lately is the division of household labour. This is nothing new for feminists, or for me. As early as Grade 12 (I was 17) I learned in a Canadian Studies course in high school that, even among couples who divide household chores equally, things get majorly out of whack with the birth of the first baby. With this change, women end up taking on waaay more (think 75-90%) of the household chores.

Now, things like breastfeeding can only be done by the mother (unless you use a breast pump, which I wouldn't suggest for the first few months, until breastfeeding is well established), and sometimes a baby will only be comforted by mother (this usually happens when the mother is completely worn out and would really like the papa to take over); but generally speaking, every chore in the house could still be shared. However there is just one little problem - the papas generally don't see any of the chores that have to be done, or else they use their "work" (paid employment) to get out of doing anything more.

Such was the case when I had my baby. I live in Canada and have a cushy job with the federal government, so I got a paid maternity leave - a luxurious one year at 93% of my pay! (sux to be an American woman - they get barely any maternity leave!) This was wonderful, of course, and due to the efforts of many women (and likely some men) who came before me and fought for women to have paid maternity leaves. On the down side, however, it meant that I was practically federally legislated to do all the housework and babycare in the house, cuz after all, I was getting paid to do it (technically speaking) while if my husband did these chores, he didn't get paid anything (of course, he has a start up computer company, so he still doesn't get paid, but that's another story).

So this is one of the dichotomies with which I struggle: paid maternity leave = excellent, feminist achievement. Forced to do housework and babycare = step back for feminism.

To be fair to my husband, he does take care of baby for an hour or so most days so I can have some rest, and now that I'm back at work, he takes him to the daycare in the morning, which saves me from having a nervous breakdown. He also does cook 3-4 times a night, and washes the dishes and tidies the kitchen around the same amount.

However, he won't do any of the other household chores: laundry, tidying, cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming, sweeping the floors, washing the floors, rinsing out the cloth diapers, and so on, unless I nag him significantly. And I'm talking 5-10 reminders along the lines of "have you vacuumed the floor yet? No? How about now? Now? Now? Do you have time now? When do you think you'll have time? Tomorrow? The day after?" And when that is finally done my new nagging refrain begins: "I cleaned the bathroom so can you please scrub the tub? Not now? Okay, so when? Now? How about now? Oh, you don't think it's dirty? Oh, well, I think it is dirty - you see that dirt?" AAAARRRRGGGHH! (I would use some stronger four-lettered words here, but I think you can understand my frustration without them).

And then there's the clutter.

Clutter is an unfortunate byproduct of our adorable babies. They don't create it, exactly, it just kind of coalesces around them. Clothes, toys, food bits, diapers, papers, strollers, baby carriers, plastic bottles...the list of detritus that collects is amazing. Now, my husband thinks all the clutter is my fault; that if I just had a better system for organizing things, OR, if I just put everything away the second I put it down, there would be no clutter. Such a viewpoint obviously ignores the realities of mothering, but then he's much better at theory than practice.

For example, if I come home and my baby is shrieking cuz he's overtired (no, I don't really know what his "bedtime" is) I am immediately going to pull off his clothes, change his diaper, wash off his hands and face, and hustle him to the bed so I can nurse him to sleep. Then, I am going to breathe a huge sigh of relief, eat some food, prepare my things for work tomorrow, prepare his diaper bag, watch a bit of tv with my husband cuz I like his company (despite all the unkind things I am saying about his household work ethic, and then start my own bedtime routine. End result: a clutter of clothes in the bedroom, diaper bag stuff in the living room, and who the heck knows what else in every nook and cranny of the apartment.

So this brings us back to my original problem: how to deal with all that clutter. As mentioned, my husband thinks I generate all the clutter, so he won't ever EVER EVER tidy the goddamn stuff up (okay, I just had to swear there). So that leaves intelligent emancipated sweet feminist moi with the clothes to wash, fold and put away, the bathrooms to clean, the floor to sweep and wash, the diapers to rinse, the cooking and kitchen cleaning to do (most, though not all of the time) AND the clutter to put away. Plus I have a full time job. Phewf! And did I mention I'd like to write a few books too?

So WWAFMD??? (catchy acronym for "What Would a Feminist Mother Do?") Mothering magazine has not yet addressed this for me (at least not in the issues I've managed to read. As you can tell, I don't have a heckuva lot of free time available).

I have a few options, obviously.

1) Ignore it all. A good option and one that many mothers espouse. Problem is, I like to have a clean house, tidy floors, clean clothes, and tasty food to eat. Plus I like my baby to have food to eat, clean clothes, clean diapers and....you get the picture.

2) Hire out the work. I am starting to lean towards this option. I could have a housecleaner come and clean the apartment, and I could take the laundry to a laundromat and have them wash, dry and fold this. I actually did this last week. I was scandalised by the price, however. Three loads of laundry would have cost me $4.50 in my apartment's laundry room. Instead, I paid $34.50 for it to be done! You could have knocked me over with a feather.... But, by way of comparison, it would cost me nothing to clean my apartment, and I would pay about $70 for a housecleaner to come for two hours. As well, what about the ethics of hiring other (low skilled, often immigrant) women to do what I don't want to do? It's a dilemma.

3) Nag my husband to do more. In an ideal world, I would be an orderly person and I would set a schedule for the weekend. My husband and I would do the household chores between 10 and 1 pm on Saturday, get it DONE, and then have the rest of the weekend to rest. We would then share the chores that have to be done during the week (cooking, tidying, cleaning the kitchen). But I'm not orderly; I often want to do other, fun things on the weekend, and even if I tell hubby we should do housework at a certain time, I get busy around that time and don't remember til later that I was supposed to do cleaning then. And he, naturally, is not about to remind me!

4) There must be a number 4. Can't think of it, though.

Now you see, here is another dilemma. I have spent about 45 minutes working on this post when I should have been: drying and styling my hair so I look respectable at work tomorrow (today my hair sure didn't!), replenishing my son's diaper bag, rinsing his dirty diapers, eating dinner, organizing my things for work tomorrow, planning my clothes for tomorrow, tidying the living room, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the food bits up so my son doesn't eat them off the floor and, lastly, going to bed so I can be up early tomorrow and not late again for work and daycare drop off and work as I was today (my husband was away this morning so I did the drop off). Sigh. Life is full when you're a mommy. Now, the question here again is, WWAFMD???

Here's a kiss for all the hardworking mommies out there - Smooch!