Spring Clean in the Summer
Carla Gunn
Published in Facts and Arguments, Globe and Mail, July 7, 2006
It’s summer. Time to tackle spring-cleaning. It crosses my mind that since I am off work for a few weeks, the magnets on the fridge with slogans such as “A clean house is a sign of a wasted life” will not serve as talismans against the disapproving looks of soon to arrive summer guests.
I start with the barefoot grime by the couch. I wipe and wipe. Now there are two glaring white spots. I am faced with a dilemma: either I stop cleaning this instant or I'll have to wash the entire wall. I resign myself to the latter but find myself in a foul, brooding mood as though every stain I remove from the fridge is reappearing in the form of a dark cloud over my head.
It’s not that I view housework as loathsome or as a waste of time. When I am not feeling a time crunch, I enjoy cranking up the music and grabbing a mop. The filthier the house, the greater the satisfaction, as I can immediately see the difference I am making with each pass of the vacuum and wipe of the cloth. And when the house is finally immaculate, I, more than anyone, revel in the aesthetic appeal. Not being distracted by clutter and grime enhances my ability to fully immerse myself in both work and play.
The trouble is I, like so many Canadians, rarely find myself with spare time. Even now that I am on vacation as I work at tidying and dusting and mopping, I feel as though I should be doing other things - like spending time with my children.
Much later as I sit on the deck with a cup of coffee, I dream of our upcoming vacation in an oceanfront cottage. During these reprieves from modern demands, life is simplified. It then occurs to me that one of the reasons these getaways are so liberating and revitalizing is that cottage dwelling is much more compatible with a busy lifestyle: there are considerably fewer household chores.
It then strikes me that I have been mindlessly accepting housework as a necessary evil. But does it really have to be?
In the 1940s and 50s, a woman’s primary occupation was the care and maintenance of the house. Many women ran it as efficiently and competently as many do businesses today. Because there was a person dedicated to its fulltime care, the home’s requirements and contents expanded to fill the time available to its keeper.
My life is much different than that of my forbearers. Women now have more choices as to how to spend their time…or do they? Could it be that women like myself who have chosen to work outside of the home have thrown away the choices living in the twenty-first century purports to offer us by crippling ourselves with expectations from an era we thought was long past? When I don’t spend hours each week cleaning the home, I feel like I’m living in utter squalor. On the other hand, when I do spend the time required to feel like the mistress of my domain, I am nagged by the sense that I am neglecting other more important responsibilities - like spending time with my children. Why is it that I’m damned if I don’t and damned if I do? Where’s the choice in that?
Later, I map out my time requirements during the normal work year. The data clearly quantified what qualitatively I already knew: if I factor in all of the time demands for the stuff that truly makes my life fulfilling and meaningful, the amount of time I have left over for housework is miniscule. I can’t afford a full-time housekeeper, I don’t want to relinquish my work, so what’s the solution?
Could part of it lie within the house itself? Could it be that my present-day home is, in actuality, maladaptive - the lingering by-product of a bygone era? Since my lifestyle is incompatible with that era, could I not make home-related choices that better reflect my present-day time constraints?
Later that day, my partner and I mull over the possibilities that are suddenly revealed when we frame the housework problem as a problem with the house and not a problem with its keepers. We brainstorm ways in which we could model our home after the cottage.
How about getting rid of things like shelves full of china and knick knacks, thereby cutting down on dusting? Why not hang up towels and reuse them? Could we not leave clean dishes in the dishwasher and stack dirty ones in a container under the sink thereby cutting out the unloading task? Why don’t we simply put all of the cutlery in a big jar on the counter instead of arranged in drawers which constantly need to be neatened? Why so many showers for the children? Why the cultural obsession with cleanliness when the research clearly indicates that we need exposure to germs and bacteria in order to train our immune systems to react appropriately? Why make beds? Aren’t carpets impractical considering we don’t have time to vacuum? Couldn’t we just sweep up once in awhile like we do at the cottage? And what’s with the raised sill at the bottom of every door frame? How about a sill-less one so that dirt could be swept right out the door?
This exercise was in itself liberating. I am now entertaining the possibility that I am enslaved by the messy social paradigms housed in my own mind. .
This summer it’s time for some spring-cleaning of an entirely different kind.
Carla Gunn lives in Fredericton, N.B.
