Dear Ali,
Last weekend, I used my fingernails to pick crusted sweet potato from a baking sheet. Then I picked sweet potato from underneath my fingernails. I accidentally dropped wet socks in some dust as I moved the laundry from washer to dryer. I wondered why my fiddle leaf fig tree had lost every single one of its leaves. Too much water? Not enough? The dreaded ROOT ROT? For now, the tree remains in the living room: dead, dying or maybe (?) recovering. Weāll see.
I swept. Now the floorās dirty again. I peeled garlic (does everyone else hate this too?) and wiped toothpaste out of the bathroom sink. I folded jeans. I dusted surfaces. I avoided cleaning the shower (ranks alongside peeling garlic for āmost hated taskā). Why does the trash always need to go out? Why is it always dinner time?
Lately, Iāve been thinking about chores. They take up a lot of time, even just for the two of us. Aside from cooking and cleaning, thereās plenty of labor that goes into knowing what needs to be done. In this year of working from home, Iāve spent more time than ever keeping up the apartment. It matters whether the bed is made because the bedroom is also my office. If guests come, it matters whether our bathroom is sterilized because weāre still not sure how long the virus lives on surfaces. And also, Iām just vain. I like things to be clean.
Are chores an inevitable waste of time? Do they keep us from doing more at work, from studying harder, from being creative or having adventures? These are the questions I ask on my knees, scrubbing at the same spots on the kitchen floor. These are the questions I ask while vacuuming crumbs from between the couch cushions because we (although we know we shouldnāt) eat our dinner on the couch.
Other times, it seems like this work ā of maintaining, nurturing, taking care of what I have and making sure itās on offer to others ā is not only inevitable and necessary. Itās concrete. Chores happen materially, not digitally. Surely there must be some value in that.
And yet, some domesticity is a cross-over product: it even looks good online. For Easter, Iām making hot-cross buns. All that kneading and rising makes for excellent content. Some chores are pretty or whimsical, like potting flowers or making candles or whisking nectar for the hummingbird feeder. Some of these tasks border on cottagecore.
But the problem with most chores is that they arenāt cute. They go unrecognized by the powers-that-be. They are completed in old T-shirts and too-small gym shorts. They smell like bleach. They are yucky. Things are crusted and clogged. You can outsource the labor to someone else. But the labor will have to get done. We havenāt optimized ourselves out of dirt and grime, eggshells and spills, the fact that dust settles and shoes track in mud.
What would happen if I just stopped wanting a clean house? Is it *the patriarchy* thatās told me I should? (Though at least in this house, the patriarchy does a lot of chores too.) Did any āgreat mind,ā any poet or philosopher, ever have clean countertops or healthy houseplants? Or was that thinker too concerned with penning a treatise to care whether his floors were gritty and his coffee pot was silted and his dresser drawers were disasters?
Who knows about that guy, but Iām not him. I donāt think most of us are. Our higher ambitions in life, our ādreamsā and āidealsā and āpersonalities,ā coincide with the daily business of keeping clean and fed, of trying to do right by what weāve been given. Maybe making money and doing art and having fun and scrubbing the toilet are more alike than we imagine: Not separate endeavors, but swept up in the one big project of living in a messy world.
Love,
Kate
Book recommendation: My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Iām only partway through this novel, but I think youād very much like it ā thereās lots of insider New York City humor and recent-college-graduate angst that our earlier selves would identify with. A young woman tries to sleep for a year with the help of drugs prescribed by her terrible therapist. She doesnāt go out, she doesnāt eat much ā just watches Whoopi Goldberg movies. The book is very funny.
The book: My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Further reading: āOttessa Moshfegh Plays to Winā (Do we think Ottessa does chores? Iām not sure.)
Ranking: TBD! Iām only halfway through! (But the review symbol Iād use is, obviously, š“Ā )