In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Shorter Rena Corey: Back to the kitchen, ladies! Our liberation was in the mop bucket all along!

zuzu

No, seriously. And it’s just too haaaard to try to get men to pick up the slack, so those 70s feminists must have been wrong about the drudgery! And Rena’s just the kind of contrarian rebel who’s gonna get in the face of a dead woman and tell her what for!

The problem with our liberation from housework is that it left no one at home to create such a haven. My generation of women threw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were — and now we’re scratching our heads and wondering what’s missing.

I’m sure we all remember that the guys were supposed to pick up the slack. But that idea really didn’t seem to catch on, did it? Yes, we all are acquainted with a Mr. Mom or two who can watch the kids, do the laundry and bake a mean batch of brownies, but those guys are the exception. Study after study has pointed out that, although men are helping more around the house than they did a generation ago, women are still the ones pulling the “second shift” after coming home from a full day at the office.

And for some reason, be it genetics or societal brainwashing, 40 years of liberation has not changed the fact that the female of the species is most often the one who cares about matching towels and well-equipped kitchens. Case in point: My husband and I rented a furnished house for the summer once from a confirmed bachelor. His kitchen had three — three — corkscrews, a couple of martini shakers, a well-used (read dirty) microwave and not a heck of a lot else. The stove didn’t even work properly. And don’t get me started on the bathrooms (a word to the wise — do not sit on a toilet seat without first inspecting it for cracks). My husband, incidentally, thought the place was just fine. Though I hate to come across as a biological determinist, despite decades of attempts to reeducate men, you simply cannot make one of them care about how the towels are folded.

So there you are, Betty — despite your best efforts to raise our consciousness and liberate us from the broom and dust mop, there are renegades among us who insist on liking housekeeping. Oh, I don’t enjoy the minute-to-minute minutiae of the job, any more than someone in the corporate world enjoys time-wasting meetings or bureaucratic directives. But I like the results — a refuge for everyone to come home to, with a nice meal on the table and clean linens (well, most of the time) on the beds. My home is my little kingdom where, on a good day, with a lot of organization and a little bit of elbow grease, things run as smoothly and peacefully as I wish the big outside world did.

Whoohoo. You really showed Betty Friedan, you did, there, Rena. Next up: why chastity and modesty is rebellious!

Via.

60 thoughts on Shorter Rena Corey: Back to the kitchen, ladies! Our liberation was in the mop bucket all along!

  1. I’m female, and I’ve always been a slob. Matching towels? Well, they get swapped out at the same time, so there’s probably matching amounts of bacteria n’ stuff on ’em…vacuuming is done when I look down and realize my apartment came w/ a beige industrial-type rug, not a grayish-brown shag carpet.
    Oddly enough, a male friend of mine has a nearly spotless place. He’s been doing the bachelor thing for years now. Go figure.

  2. female of the species is most often the one who cares about matching towels

    Wait, I’m supposed to care about *matching* towels?

    And does anyone really like housekeeping? I just think some people prefer to have things ordered and under control. And let’s face it, if you can’t control other aspects of your life, why not try and control the dust bunnies? (I don’t think dust bunnies function inside the patriarchy, right?)

  4. Yep. That’s it. Feminists, pack it in. You had your 40 years to overcome stereotypes and ingrained patterns of behavior developed in the 10,000-years-plus of civilization. You cannot overcome mismatched, unfolded towels, so back to the kitchen with you!

    Whew! Glad that’s over with. Someone make me a sandwich.

  5. there are renegades among us who insist on liking housekeeping

    Um. Seriously? I absolutely love housekeeping–especially when someone else does it for me.

    So is she saying that women will always feel unfilled if they don’t own the housework? As in–if I win the lottery I won’t even hire a staff to do my housework because I am genetically programmed to need to do it?

    Or is she saying that we have to do it because men have insisted on behaving badly and won’t pick up our slack? And even if they do pitch in, they just will never quite attain our standard. And the world is just a chaotic place when kitchens aren’t properly stocked and towels don’t match?

  7. “Though I hate to come across as a biological determinist, despite decades of attempts to reeducate men, you simply cannot make one of them care about how the towels are folded.”

    A lot of men care about things getting clean and neat, just not enough to do it themselves. This usually goes double for a guy who might be able to con a woman into doing it for him.

    And when it comes to absurdly nitpicky things like literally how the towels are folded, how many women actually give a damn when left to their own devices?

  10. The only reason I care about how the towels are folded is that they fit better in the cabinets folded one way rather than the other. And has no one told this Rena woman that matchy-matchy is so OUT?!? *snark!*

    I am as much of a slob as my husband is. We are both packrats, and neither one of us actually LIKES housework, so large parts of it go undone on a regular and lingering basis. Unfortunately, I am the one more bothered by clutter and/or dust, so I give in and take care of those things more regularly. And truth be told, much of the clutter IS mine. At least, the really visible stuff is. But my husband cheerfully does the dishes (since I do most of the cooking) and vacuums the carpeting (since I hate the sound of that infernal machine). So SOME progress has been made.

    Honestly? I’d rather go back to work as a secretary for doctors than be solely in charge of keeping the house spotless and stocked. Talk about mind-numbing!

  11. I like my apartment to be as clean and nice-looking as the next person, but I’ve never lost sleep over whether or not the bed was made (because it never is). I have bigger things to worry about.

    “A lot of men care about things getting clean and neat, just not enough to do it themselves. This usually goes double for a guy who might be able to con a woman into doing it for him.”

    This could not be more true. My mom is a total mess-cat and it has driven my father insane over the years, but has he done anything about the state of the house himself? No. In fact, in most cases he only contributes to the mess because in his mind it simply isn’t his job to pick it up. If the house was already spotless maybe then he could be bothered to pick his shoes up from the middle of the floor, but since it isn’t, it doesn’t seem to occur to him to do anything about it.

  12. If men can’t be taught to care about housekeeping, my husband must be a robot. I knew there was something weird about him wanting to cook and wash dishes so much.

    In all seriousness, this kind of nonesense is what let’s so many men off the hook. “See, women enjoy cleaning, and since they like things done in a certain way, I (a man) would be better off not doing anything rather than risk doing it wrong.” Caring for a home is important, and the results can be satisfying, for BOTH sexes, and ALL members living in that home.

  13. I like a clean house just as much as the next person. There is something to be said about a “haven” BUT that doesn’t mean my XX chromosome makes me more capable of implementing said “haven”. Mr. N3rdchik is much more capable in that department – for whatever reason.

  14. Wanda Sykes had a bit in one of her comedy central stand-up specials where her man announced that all his underwear was dirty – to which she replied that, then, he better do his laundry, because hers was all done, but she would be more than happy to lend him a pair of her lacy ones to tide him over.

    Of course, her delivery made it hysterical, but her approach seemed perfectly logical.

    Nothing wrong with negotiating who does what for both, and nothing wrong with choosing to like (or prefer) some aspect of housekeeping. But Rena Corey went wrong when the only choice was to do nothing or do everything.

    Of course, she lost me when she announced that she couldn’t train men to fold towels properly. I like my shirts folded a certain way, so I fold all our shirts, because my partner could care less as long as he can find them. He waters the plants because if I am in charge of them, we end up with dried arrangements whether we were supposed to or not. Pretty much everything else, we split up more or less evenly.

  15. Though I hate to come across as a biological determinist, despite decades of attempts to reeducate men, you simply cannot make one of them care about how the towels are folded.

    This is a GOOD thing. If men cared, they’d tell you you were doing it wrong, and would pout every time you did it your way. (BTW, the correct and thus, only, way is to fold them in thirds, lengthwise, and then in quarters. The tag must always be on the inside.)

  16. Caring for a home is important, and the results can be satisfying, for BOTH sexes, and ALL members living in that home.

    The results *are* great. It’s just that Corey’s claiming that because she likes the process of getting those results, that feminism is wrong.

  17. I don’t think she’s actually saying she likes the process so much as she’s saying she appreciates having her home feel like a haven, and she’s willing to do the housework in order to have that experience. Which is fine, of course; no one is saying she can’t nest all she wants. It’s the generalizations – the assumption that all men are pigs and all women, by our very essential physiology, want things just so.

    If housework is so valuable, why do we have to convince a whole class of people to do it for free and accept second-class citizenship along with the job?

  18. Though I hate to come across as a biological determinist, despite decades of attempts to reeducate men, you simply cannot make one of them care about how the towels are folded.

    Actually, it’s pretty easy to teach them. My mum taught me how to fold towels so you’re not going to pull all off the shelves when fetching one and how to fold shirts so you don’t have to iron them anymore. I have now successfully passed on those skills to my significant other. Avoiding more work is a pretty good motivation to pick up housekeeping skills.

  19. I honestly don’t see how liking a home clean and neat (and the towels matched) is connected with success or failure of grassroots feminist efforts. I’ve known (and dated) guys who love doing housework and known women who are slobs. What’s with the faux essentializing here? I agree with the comments above that childhood education and nurture are the problem here (as in “that’s women’s work”).

  21. My mom is a slob. Now that my dad is retired, he really has the time to be the neat freak he was born to be. He used to get after my mom about it, and she got really tired of his nagging – it almost broke up their marriage. The funny part is never do I even remember ONE toy on the stairs or ONE dirty pile of laundry ANYWHERE in my parents house (except my room). It’s all what you are used to and socialized to think other people should care about. Mom was raised by a single mother pack rat so cleanliness – not a high priority.

  22. In my experience with both roommates and partners, the housework gets done by whoever has the lowest tolerance for mess/dirt. And then that person resents the other. Since I have a very high tolerance, I tend to be the lazy, resented one. I mean, even when I tried to be the one to occasionally clean the bathroom, by doing it much much earlier than appeared to be needed, I usually got beaten to the punch. And other kinds of cleaning would happen without me even noticing, because who knew someone cared if that got done? This, understandably, has caused quite a bit of friction with various roomies and partners over the years. I have found two different solutions: one, find a roommate with the same level of tolerance, and live in a disaster (and this is hard, since it can be really hard to match tolerance levels in all areas. I did her dishes sometimes, since I don’t think dishes should be left in the sink for more than about three days, and she vacuumed more often, and it was about equal).

    The other solution is the one I have now. I have a paying job; my husband the neat-freak does not. Thus, he does 98% of the cleaning. There is still a small amount of friction over the “how do you seriously not notice that you left a trail of red pepper pieces from the stove to the table” and the fact that I don’t notice (and therefore express appreciation) in the least when he cleans the bathroom, since it goes from clean to clean in my view, but overall we’ve reached a good agreement.

    Unfortunately, I think this balance might be upset after this parasite leaves my uterus to live in the real world and require feeding, diaper changing, and the like. Since the total quantity of work necessary will increase, I’ll be expected to take on a larger share. Which means that my husband will be less content to clean up after me, and I’m going to have to really work on training myself to notice mess.

  24. Why’s she pissed at us for not marrying a man who can do housework?

    When you’ve made bad choices, it’s so much more comforting to pretend that there weren’t any other choices. People who put the lie to that are enraging.

  25. But I like the results — a refuge for everyone to come home to, with a nice meal on the table and clean linens (well, most of the time) on the beds. My home is my little kingdom where, on a good day, with a lot of organization and a little bit of elbow grease, things run as smoothly and peacefully as I wish the big outside world did.

    It’s all so true. I also like the results while not liking the tasks so much, which is why I married a man who was happy to put a nice meal on the table and clean linens on the beds and keep things running smoothly. Feminism for both of us, and a happy little kingdom. So, Rena Corey is an idiot, huh?

  26. Side note: I like being “chaste” and “modest”. Does that make me a bad feminist?

    Only if you’re chaste and modest because you think it’s how a lady must be in order to deserve respect, and only if you think it should be required for everyone.

  27. Though I hate to come across as a biological determinist, despite decades of attempts to reeducate men, you simply cannot make one of them care about how the towels are folded.

    I can’t help wondering about the adaptive value back-on-the-veldt of a desire for neatly folded towels. But no doubt an amateur evolutionary psychologist will be along to explain it in a minute, possibly including details of an experiment where they gave towels to baby chimpanzees, and the females ones laundered them, but the male ones dipped them in

  29. I’m with Em – clearly I’m male, and my male partner is actually female.  I’ll have to let him-or-her know!

    I only fold towels because they fit in the closet better.  If left to my own devices, I’ll do dishes about two days after I’ve run out of dishes.  And I only vacuum if I can actually see that the carpet needs vacuuming.  This all understandably drives my partner up the friggin’ wall.

  30. I agree with the comments above that childhood education and nurture are the problem here (as in “that’s women’s work”).

    This reminds me of something that happened to my younger brother. He was playing with a boy who lived across the street and my mother went in to the room and told my brother that his friend was going to have to leave soon because said brother had chores to do, specifically, cleaning the downstairs bathroom. Neighbor boy thought it was hysterical that a boy had to clean a bathroom

  31. I have spoken about my slobbery before (no, I still don’t know how I managed to get marinara sauce on a 15-foot-high ceiling while cooking). There’s a reason we have cleaning people come in twice a month.

    My (step)mother is on the other side — she is a neat freak to end all neat freaks. She vacuums every day. She doesn’t like wallpaper, because she suspects there may be dirt forming underneath it that she can’t get to.

    Of course, the reason she’s like this is that her mother used to literally beat her unless she cleaned “correctly,” and now it’s a habit. Somehow, I can’t see child abuse as a valid way to judge that “women are naturally neater.”

  32. a boy had to clean a bathroom

    Bathroom cleaning is ideal for males. Almost no clutter to pick up and put away, no fussy dusting, no vacuuming (assuming tile floor), just detergent and water cleaning. You can even use toxic substances to clean the mirror and the tub/shower. Basically, it’s like washing a car, but inside the house.

  33. I could not care less about fucking matching towels. And what is this thing she called folding? We keep our clean laundry in a Glad bag until we use it.

  34. I have spoken about my slobbery before (no, I still don’t know how I managed to get marinara sauce on a 15-foot-high ceiling while cooking).

    Mnemosyne, marinara sauce just gets frickin’ EVERYWHERE; it’s one of the truisms of cooking. There’s a reason I wear black while making that stuff… 😉

    I’m sorry to hear about your step-mother. That is taking “neat freak” (HER mom) to its pathological extreme. 🙁 Does she realize that’s the reason she has an issue with extreme cleaning, or no?

  35. I’m sure we all remember that the guys were supposed to pick up the slack. But that idea really didn’t seem to catch on, did it?

    Yeah, somebody’s got to do it. Back to the dishes with me.

  36. My standards are just that the house not be so gross that it is seriously unsanitary nor so cluttered that I am embarrassed to have people come over. I have always struggled a bit with my clutteriness, and I tend not to clean things until they really visibly need cleaning (which is kind of too late, I know). And now I have a girlfriend who is WAY worse than me with the clutter, it actually drives me crazy that I often cannot find a single bare surface to sit down and write a note out on.

    Our solution: Hire someone to come in once a week and clean — what we can afford is not enough for total white-glove spotlessness in every single corner, but definitely achieves acceptable levels of not-gross. And the biggest bonus to my mind is that it makes my girlfriend pick up her crap once a week, because she does acknowledge that the floor/table/sink/etc won’t get cleaned if the housekeeper can’t get to it for all the clutter.

    It means scrimping on some other things to afford the cleaning services, but it is oh-so-worth-it in terms of achieving peace and harmony in the home!

  38. Bathroom cleaning is ideal for males. Almost no clutter to pick up and put away, no fussy dusting, no vacuuming (assuming tile floor), just detergent and water cleaning. You can even use toxic substances to clean the mirror and the tub/shower. Basically, it’s like washing a car, but inside the house.

    This is why I (female) like cleaning the bathroom. My (male) SO hates it. He loves to vacuum though. And he’s better at dealing with clutter than me.

    So whats this about bathroom cleaning being ideal for males? More generalizations about housework and gender.

  39. I think making the male clean the bathroom is just sensible–they make most of the mess in there (at least they have in my experience) , what with all the hair they shed and shaving/grooming mess and (excuse the graphicness) splash-back. Ew.

  40. Yeah, I’m with MJ. When I start doing more housework, I’ll probably take on the bathroom cleaning. I don’t do the clutter-cleaning thing, since it requires decision-making.

  41. One time when a younger friend I was mentoring happened to be visiting the apartment I shared with two other roommates. As we usually kept our bedroom doors open during the summer, my friend immediately assumed I had a female roommate because one room was extraordinarily well organized and neat. It took me almost 10 minutes for me to explain to him that this particular roommate was actually a male.

    As for household chores, I second Dr. Confused’s experience that housework gets done by the person with the lowest tolerance for dirt/sloppiness. We attempted to head that problem off by assigning specific tasks each person was assigned to do. Unfortunately, it didn’t always go according to plan as two of our roommates were medical residents who used their long and constantly changing work schedules to leave things undone much to the consternation of my “neat” roommate. Though I also spoke up about this, my higher tolerance meant that I was not as aggravated about it as he was. Though I would self-identify as a slob, the messiness was limited to disorganized piles of computer parts, books, and journal article printouts kept within the confines of my room so it did not affect my roommates.

  43. Can we please start using tasers to discourage the misuse of biology in general and genetics in particular? It would be so much fun.

  44. Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone cares how towels are folded. And dating in L.A., it’s commonplace for single men to proudly invite you over for a homemade meal, particularly if they’re over 30.

  45. So whats this about bathroom cleaning being ideal for males? More generalizations about housework and gender

    Yeah, I wasn’t even going to try to figure out what Hector was going for there…

    (My brother got to clean the bathroom because he had bad asthma and so dusting and vacuuming weren’t really his thing).

  46. Hhhmm, let’s see how Corey might feel about blacks returning to the massa’s kitchens:

    “Black folk, you’ve had 200+ years of freedom and self-determinism and let’s face it, y’all were doing a whole lot better under slavery. Wasn’t it better when you had folks who cared for you, provided you shelter and guaranteed jobs? What’s all this about doing for yourselves when you know you were better off with someone making all of the decisions for you? You have crime, bad neighborhoods, and rampant unemployment and incarceration – yeah, yeah, I know that there are some of you who actually can take care of yourselves and got you some edumucation and think you’all are equal to us, but all in all, this liberation schtick isn’t working out too well for the rest of you. So c’mon back to the fold where y’all can be happy singing us some Negro spirituals as you pick us some cotton…”

    Corey’s premise for liberated women returning to the kitchen makes about as much sense as blacks wanting to return to slavery…

  47. what with all the hair they shed and shaving/grooming mess and (excuse the graphicness) splash-back

    I don’t know…my bathroom can get pretty disgusting. I have hair down to my butt (I can almost sit on it) and it gets absolutely *everywhere*. My brother hated sharing a bathroom with me b/c of the hair. (I hated sharing a bathroom with him after he got a job, b/c he was a mechanic and didn’t seem to care that the shower was literally *black* with oil and grease.) Plus, I’m a messy toothbrusher, I hate changing the toilet paper roll, and I tend to get makeup everywhere. Add in the cat hair, and aren’t you *shocked* that I’m single and live alone? (*grin*)

    Upside of living alone is that no one cares about the mess. Downside is that you have to clean it up yourself.

  48. Wow. I want to know which feminist put a gun to that woman’s head and told her she wasn’t allowed to like housework. (Was it you, Jill??) Poor Rena Corey. I mean, it must be hard to be so egotistical and self-conscious at once, that you feel personally affronted by a social movement because it said All Women In the World don’t have to follow your own personal example.

  49. I remember when we first got married my husband told me I was hanging his shirts wrong. His mother always had them facing the same way, while I just put them neatly on the hanger. No problems with which way the shirt faced.

    My immediate answer was “so?” and he quickly realized it didn’t matter which way his shirts hang in the closet. That and he helps a lot more with laundry.

    He and I do disagree about how to fold towels, but that just comes down to how they fit in the cabinet. But since we can cram them all in no matter which way they’re folded, I’ve quit worrying about whether or not they’re perfectly neatly stacked.

    He is steadily learning to do more housework. I have a high mess tolerance, as does he, but he consciously knows that just because I work at home doesn’t mean I do all the housework. That doesn’t always translate to him doing his share without being reminded, but at least he does sometimes go through and do a ton of cleaning. And he’s getting better about it overall.

  50. Hector, that’s how I fold towels too. And I do have matching, or at least coordinating, towels. Because I really, truly, love having a neat and clean house. I don’t even mind getting it that way. And not once, not ever, has anyone threatened to take away my feminist card.
    I do admit it can be hard to be a really neat married-to-a-man feminist. Because I care a whole lot more then he does (we’re about the exact same as Dr. Confused and her husband). But in my head, and sometimes in our marriage, I’m fighting whether I just need to let it go and clean because it matters way more to me and he really does actually do quite a bit (dishes, laundry, occasional vacuuming, anything else I ask him to help out with) or whether this is a feminist issue and he’s been socialized not to see dirt and see it as his problem more then I have.
    Two things are helping me get over this. 1) hearing from people like Dr. Confused who articulate, in perfect detail, how my husband sees dirt and housework. If more people are having the exact same conversation about “how could you possibly not notice the trail of pepper from the counter to the fridge”, AND their genders are reversed, it might just be him. And, 2) remembering that I was raised in a feminist home where my dad stayed home and most of the cooking was split but he’s much neater and we all had family clean-up time. So it is unlikely that I internalized a strong message that “women-folk do the cleaning”. It’s probably just that I’m obsessive in general.

  51. Yeah, I wasn’t even going to try to figure out what Hector was going for there…

    I was responding to this stereotyped comment, by saying that cleaning bathrooms does not violate the male stereotype: Neighbor boy thought it was hysterical that a boy had to clean a bathroom

  52. I clean far more than my (male) roommate, but I’m more observant than he is, and have a lower mess tolerance (which is definitely saying something). The way I look at it is, I run the place, and he just lives here. 🙂 (That’s funnier if you know his mother owns the house we live in, and he lived here for two years before I moved in. Oops!)

    I don’t live with my boyfriend, but we’ve talked about it extensively and already figured out that ifwhen we do live together, we’ll probably divide the household chores on a chore-by-chore basis. That is, I’ll likely do all the laundry, for instance, while he’ll take care of sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming, since doing floors wracks the hell out of my back. Since I’m also disabled and work full time (that means not enough energy and/or time to do all that slow, energy-draining manual labour), and he’s currently out of work, I’ve also contemplated hiring him to move in and run the place for me. I know it’d get done to a meticulous standard and we’d both be better off.

    I know for a fact that most of the problem with guys who don’t clean well is, surprise! the patriarchy. Because the patriarchy dictates that it’s not important for boys to learn to do housework, and since nearly all the men I know grew up with either sisters who got the brunt of it, or doting, essentially nonfeminist mothers who never made them do any chores that they would have made their daughters do, nobody ever taught these guys how to really clean/do laundry/grocery shop, and nobody made them do it on a regular basis, so they never got in the habit. (My roommate’s mother still brings him groceries, and he’s been living ostensibly on his own for years, and, up until the point where we got laundry machines in the house, she’d take his wash back to her house to do it.)

    It’s too bad the kind of feminist conscious-raising we currently have wasn’t in vogue 30-35 years ago or so; these guys could have really benefitted from an egalitarian upbringing. (“Yes, Jimmy, you need to know how to pick out good produce. What are you going to eat after you move out? You can’t live on Kraft Dinner all the time…”)

  53. My towels don’t match and I don’t even care!

    I guess I’m just not a real woman after all.

    Oh my God, me neither!

    *sobs inconsolably, tears up feminist card in a fit of rage*

    You’ve done me wrong, Women’s Lib. You’ve done me wrong.

  54. I’m sorry to hear about your step-mother. That is taking “neat freak” (HER mom) to its pathological extreme. 🙁 Does she realize that’s the reason she has an issue with extreme cleaning, or no?

    She realizes it (she’s the one who told me that she used to get punished) but she’s 100% opposed to any psychological treatment, ever. Apparently being involuntarily committed as a teenager in the early 1960s is enough to put someone off psychologists for life.

  55. Here’s the irony: though I am a horrible horrible slob who’s been known to leave rotting food under the bed (no, really, I am worse than a frat boy), I have and like having matching towels.

    The urge to decorate and the urge to clean are not the same thing.

  56. I’m with Mnemosyne… I would love to have matching towels (we’re a little broke right now, so they are not exactly on the priority list) and I do love to decorate, but I cannot possibly describe how much I hate to clean. I hate it with a passion and do it as little as humanly possible with two children, three cats and two adults living in a house. My husband definitely has a lower tolerance for mess than I do, but he’s so unpleasant about it that I will usually get up and help. Ugh. I hate cleaning. I do love coming home to a clean house though.

  57. Yeah, one of the things I did when I had some money in my pocket was buy nice, matching towels. Not that it really matters since I don’t leave them out in multiples, and I don’t have sets in terms of washcloth plus handtowel plus bath sheet, but I have matching thick Turkish cotton bath towels.

    It helped that I had a roommate who worked at Bed, Bath & Beyond and got a great discount.

  58. Corey must have read some feminist books that I have not read because I cannot recall a single book that said that said it was a great idea to live in utter filth and somehow doing that makes you a feminist. She is absurd and ridiculous to assert that women are better at maintaining the home because of some unknown biological factors. She should just hire someone to do it if she and her partner cannot come to an equitable agreement regarding the housework. Alternatively, if they cannot reach an agreement she should get rid of her husband and use the money he spent to hire someone. Problem solved.

    And the bit about matching towels and how they are folded- that’s just funny. Who really cares how you fold your towels?

  59. I am so not a real woman. My standards for housework are “do we have any dishes? do I have clean underwear?” (right now the answer to this one is “no”, and I’m trying to convince myself to do laundry) and “is anything actually growing mold?” Mere clutter does not bother me, only gross things.

    We had a lot of fights in my house until we wrote up a chore rotation. Nobody *really* wants to do the dishes, but with four (until recently, five) people living here, it really does have to happen twice a day or else it winds up a wreck that screws up the kitchen for a week. I, a female, am definitely the messiest on in the house, and a male and a female housemate are vying for neatest — she does dishes more, he vacuums. I am completely baffled by anyone who thinks they can use already-defined categories to separate messy people from neat.

    I haven’t yet figured out a way to do preventative laundry, and my boyfriend, the sneak, has stopped enabling me by doing my laundry along with his. If I married him, do you think he’d be a better wife than he is now? 😉

  60. Yeah, one of the things I did when I had some money in my pocket was buy nice, matching towels.

    Heh. When my ex and I split up, one of the first things I did (after he took almost all the furniture) was to blow some money on nice, moderately expensive home furnishings.

    When he came over to pick up some of his remaining belongings, he promptly stuck out his lower lip and asked why I hadn’t ‘fixed the place up’ when he was living there. He had the residual decency to be embarassed when I said “Because you would have had a fit at my spending the money.”

    It’s very easy not to notice or care about things (housework, towels) when you know damn well somebody else will take care of it.

Comments are currently closed.