My apartment is kind of a mess. I’m consumed with editing and revising right now, and my usual morning routine–and most of my evening routine–is just being ignored. The Dude hasn’t been pulling his weight, either, and so dishes are piled up, the floors want for sweeping, and the bathroom needs swamping out. We’re going to need to do a blitz this weekend.
Now, putting aside the feelings I have about chores when I feel like I’m the only one doing them, I have certain tasks I don’t mind, and others I resent and avoid. Everyone does.
I hate doing laundry–mostly because we have to haul clothes to and from a horrible, crowded laundromat–and the Dude doesn’t really mind it, so that’s his chore. (It’s mostly his clothes, too, so that’s fairer than it might be.) I also really dislike vacuuming the couches, which the presence of three cats necessitates.
I like making the bed in the morning and doing the five-minute, nightly pick-up-and-put away drill at night. I really like tidiness, and things in their place. The Dude? Not so much. He makes piles: paper, books, stuff, other paper, junk, clothes, miscellaneous; and thinks that’s “good enough.”
Dishes give me mixed feelings. Did I cook for us? (I probably did.) Then I resent the dishes. Am I just keeping up with my own small mess from making lunch at home? Then dishes are just a chance to make things tidy again: fun! Weird, right?
I think it’s a time thing. I like concrete chores that I can complete in no more than five minutes, or maybe ten. Short bursts of activity that, when finished, look finished…at least for a few hours.
So (obviously), today’s FFT is about your chore preferences. Do you love to squeegee the shower door? Is folding towels meditative for you? And what chore do you hide from, or make deals to avoid? What have to delegated to your kids, your roommates, or maybe even your cleaning service? If you’re lucky enough to have the freedom to ignore some things, since you’ve only yourself to satisfy, what chores do you just pretend don’t exist?
Okay, I know this is weird, but I love vacuuming. SRSLY. I would come to all your houses with my Dyson and vacuum for free, if you’d let me. It’s like waving a magic wand—all the dustbunnies, hairballs, dirt, etc disappears almost as if by magic (esp. when compared to sweeping, which will never get things 100% clean). So satisfying.
But I’m afraid that like PhDork’s Dude, I am terrible at actually picking up after myself. Clothes draped over chairs, stacks of books and papers, junk mail piled on my entryway table. If I could hire someone to do one thing for me, it would be to just follow me around and pick up after me and put stuff in its rightful place, because I am really lax about doing that.
Since I live by myself, I can’t delegate any of it. I suppose I could hire someone to clean, but I am both cheap and uncomfortable with the elitism of hiring someone to pick up after me when I can do it myself.
I am totally weird in that I don’t mind gross chores, but I really suck at/hate organizing and picking up. So I’m happy (well, “happy”) to do dishes/bathroom/floor scrubbing/trash, but picking up and putting away is misery. I also suck at vacuuming (who sucks at that? seriously?), sweeping and mopping. I’d rather be on my hands and knees any day over mopping. I can’t really explain.
I hate washing the dishes. I’m also fairly incompetent at it because I am impatient, so frequently have to redo things when I go to use them next and find that they’re not even remotely clean. Sadly until the cats learn to do them, I’m stuck with it.
I quite like tidying and vacuuming, I have a super pet-hair vacuum that makes it much easier and less painful than it used to be. Tidy-wise, I tend to let things get into a state and then blitz the place, which is satisfying. I also have regular dinner parties/coffee and cake afternoons to force myself to clear up for visitors. I suspect I’d like it less if I lived in a bigger place though!
Actual cleaning I tend to just keep on top of as I go – bathroom, kitchen etc, although I am hopeless at the non-everyday things. My windows are revolting!
I dislike washing dishes because for some reason waterlogged, leftover food is just…really icky to me. I do most of the cooking anyway, so dishes are normally the boyf’s purview (sidenote: he’s told me that he doesn’t like being referred to as my “manpanion” because it reminds him of “manservant”. >_< Oh well). I feed the cats and do the litter boxes, neither of which I mind. I also do the laundry. For some odd reason, I find *sorting and folding* clothes to be very soothing and meditative but actually putting them into the dresser or hanging them up is extremely unappealing to me. I've never been able to figure that one out.
I do all the dish washing in my house, I don’t love it but it’s a trade off in exchange for the BF doing all the laundry which I HATE with a passion.
Also: grocery shopping.
I hate “doing work,” but chores in which the end result is a markedly improved living situation are probaly the most satisfying: cutting the grass, cleaning the bathroom, scrubbing up the kitchen, vacuuming. I hate more administrative crap such as taking out the garbage, shoveling snow, raking, and sorting the mail. Now that I think about it, maybe the items on those two lists are sort of similar, so perhaps my reasoning is faulty, but whatever.
When I was a kid, we kept my border collie outside and in the garage in a doghouse, partly because my dad was deathly allergic and partly because he had an old-timey no-dogs-in-the-house lifestyle preference which I appreciate and plan to adopt if/when I get a dog. As a result, she deuced all over the yard, so whenever I annoyed my little sister to the point where she squawked, my dad had a ready-made punishment chore available. He called it “picking up dog bombs,” and let me tell you, it sucks to haul around a shovel and a flashlight scooping up dog shit in the dark.
BTW, which one of you do I have to bribe to separate my paragraphs around here? I yam cumpooter illiterit.
I love ironing because it is zen, and I love house painting even more, because it’s even more zen than that.
Also, seconded about mopping. I’d rather just use a rag on my hands and knees. Cleaning the kitchen this way is ok.
But the bathroom – holy shit – don’t go into my bathroom.
can you use the anglebracket br anglebracket tag?
I hate the cat litter. That’s technically my SO’s chore, but because he often travels during the week, I get stuck with it more often that I like. Sweeping also drives me nuts (we have mostly hardwood floors with area rugs that need to be worked around, and lots of weird nooks and crannies that dust gets caught in (old building, old architectural details).
Here’s some ideas that make chores a little more bearable for me:
1) The 15:15 rule – Set your cell phone/timer to go off at 15 minute intervals. The first 15 minutes, just clean/vacuum/do dishes/whatever without getting distracted or sidelined. When the timer beeps, stop the chores and relax/read/internet for 15 minutes. When 15 minutes is up, start all over again, as many times as you feel is necessary. I like this system because I seem to get much more done when I concentrate and work uninterrupted for 15 minutes than when I just float from one thing to the next, getting distracted along the way.
2) Pet hair on the couch – get a 3M Fur Fighter. It works just as well, if not better, than the vacuum, weights next to nothing and is handheld, and there’s no cord to trip over. The pads are also washable/reusable to an extent, although they’re not designed that way (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/test-lab/3m-fur-fighter-couch-tested-blogger-approved-065916).
3) TeuxDeux – (http://teuxdeux.com/list) I list a few things that need to get done everyday (I use this for work, too), and click to cross them off as I work. There’s something immensely satisfying about checking things off as I go.
4) FlyLady – I don’t follow FlyLady’s advice perfectly, as I find the daily task lists and emails to be pretty overwhelming. I do follow a few basic FlyLady tenets: make sure the kitchen sink is empty and clean before going to bed each night; give the bathroom surfaces a quick wipedown as I get ready in the morning (nothing too involved, just clean up toothpaste spots, hairs, etc); spend a few minutes every day clearing flat surfaces of paperwork (tabletop, counters, end tables).
I’m pretty bad at keeping up with the non-everyday chores, like Es said above. My windows are also revolting! Gonna have to add that to the weekend list.
I don’t even own an iron…
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vyckie D. Garrison, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Friday Fun Thread: Best Chore/Worst Chore http://bit.ly/hHQK2A [...]
I love doing laundry! Having ensuite laundry in an apartment is a HUGE thing for me, and I’m really lucky to have it in my current place. Maybe it’s because I’m a wee bit clothes-obsessive, but I quite enjoy putting clothes in the machine, washing my delicates by hand, hanging stuff to dry, ironing, hanging and folding the cleaned clothes… the whole rigmarole. Love it.
Conversely, I hate doing the dishes, and like Es upthread, I kind of manage to suck at it and end up having to re-do stuff. So I guess it kind of evens out…?
I freaking love grocery shopping and cooking. Hate the dishes and bathing the kids.
I *love* grocery shopping. I don’t even think of it as a chore.
Mopping and vacuuming the stairs, I would happily never do again.
I love grocery shopping and don’t mind doing the dishes. I absolutely *hate* house painting and find ironing and vacuuming annoying
Like Lee, modified Fly Lady was very good for my cleaning habits. Although I still let it all go sometimes – I had friends to dinner on Wednesday and had to clean for about 4 hours in preparation for this. I live in a small 1-bed flat.
I hate doing laundry. But we moved last fall to an apartment that has a small, inefficient dryer that takes forever to dry even small loads. The increased waiting time and waste of energy of running the dryer for hours and hours to accomplish very little finally pushed me into being more dedicated to air drying our laundry. For some odd reason the challenge of trying to use the dryer as little as possible has made laundry more bearable.
I read “The Politics of Housework” by Pat Mainari right when my (male) partner and I decided to move in together. As I was raised in a house where girls (by which I mean ME) were taught to clean and boys were taught to mow the lawn, I was very vigilant about chores.
So we totally were like “I’ll do X Y and Z and you do A B and C” before we even officially lived together. But it all fell to shit. Because we’re both enormously messy. In fact, I’m so messy that my messiness bled into Partner’s tendency for fastidious tidiness, which I feel moderately guilty about.
But because I was taught to clean by Old Polish Ladies and was socialized to truly believe that cleaning was my responsibility, I clean the things that he can’t see to clean–like the bathroom. He cannot clean the bathroom, because when he’s done “cleaning” it it’s just as dirty as it was before. Same thing for kitchen counters and so on.
He cooks and does pretty much ever other domestic task, except for laundry (which I tend to do but he occasionally helps).
Have you ever seen that movie “Mona Lisa Smile,” where there are husbands at Harvard Law and they have their Wellesley Graduate Wives staying at home cooking and cleaning and helping to type their husbands’ papers? That’s kind of what our relationship is like. Except I’m the husband grad student and he’s the wifey domestic partner.
Also, I was a housecleaner for many years, so my taste for domestic cleanliness was worn away by cleaning for other people. Speaking of: Becky, I don’t think you need to feel guilty or elitist for hiring a housecleaner, as long as you pay him or her (let’s be honest: probably her) well. I liked my job, and I liked that I worked for a woman who honestly thought that cleaning was important. Of course the politics of her issues with me cleaning were complicated–she thought it was important because she was a wife, and it was her job to clean house for her husband. But things like cleaning and cooking–traditional lady-things–are so frequently dismissed as unimportant, when they’re really really not. And I think that hiring someone to clean your house (of course, if you can afford it) isn’t problematic–any more problematic than hiring someone to do your taxes, or fix your car, or pave your driveway.
Cleaning and domesticity are very interesting feminist subjects for me, probably because I was a housecleaner for so long.
@Cimorene: Thanks for letting me off the hook, conscience-wise! I guess I’m just really bothered by the optics of “white lady paying (almost always) non-white lady to clean for her”, and maybe I’ve also internalized the notion that housework is demeaning, and that’s why I’d rather take it on myself than ask someone else to do it for me.
But yes, you’re right that I shouldn’t think of it as different from hiring someone to do other work. There is a very good cleaning cooperative in Brooklyn that ensures that the housecleaners who belong get a fair wage and receive all the income from the job (unlike a lot of cleaning services that exploit undocumented or non-English-speaking workers). I’d use them if I ever gave in and got a cleaner.
Oh I hate cat litter too!
@bluebears: Have you tried baking it rather than frying it? Not only does it turn out lighter and flakier, it’s healthier for you too.
I was trying to think of a chore I LIKE all the time or a chore I HATE all the time, but couldn’t think of any. I mostly like doing laundry but sometimes it gets overwhelming to be washing for 4 people – including 2 who still crap themselves and/or throw up on a regular basis. And I like cooking in theory but find the whole process of planning a meal/shopping for ingredients/cleaning up afterward to be exhausting.
Sweeping! I really enjoy sweeping. It’s fast and easy and makes a visible difference.
I truly detest taking out the trash and cleaning out the fridge. For some reason old food is just the most disgusting thing I can imagine and even THINKING about the smell makes me gag a little. Luckily my husband has a strong stomach and is happy to do those chores. He also loves vacuuming, even the stairs, which is definitely one of my least favorite things.
@Suzanne – agreed! There’s nothing I always love or always hate. I do like cooking and grocery shopping, generally, but find it to be such a time-consuming hassle these days that I wish someone else could do it for me. My manpanion and I actually recently argued about whether a vacation you have to cook for yourself is really relaxing. Cooking is such a hassle at this point I don’t find it as much fun.
@BeckySharper – I agree with Cimorene. And, I wish I had a cleaning cooperative near me! I’ve been contemplating hiring someone recently but have been uncomfortable with how the distribution of wages and labor may go.
@Suzanne – I forgot to mention that I also agree on vacuuming the stairs. Perhaps I may need to get a smaller vacuum for that purpose but there has to be a better way. It’s such a pain!
BearDownCBears just made me laugh and gag at the same time.
I was raised to do a lot of the “girl chores” well. Partly because I was a girl, but partly because we lived on a farm, and I was the youngest and as such less able to do more physically challenging work.
Washing dishes for 7 people several times a day for a decade growing up makes me so phobic about dishes I can barely wash out a cup without issues. So my spouse does the dishes, and we made a deal never to live without a dishwasher.
I love baking, but mostly dislike cooking, though I can do it adequately without a lot of stress (see above, cooking for large family).
My spouse and I really enjoy organized clothing in the closets, and have taught the kids to hang everything the same direction on hangers, and all the similar types of shirts together.
I *adore* mowing the lawn when I can physically do it. I have loved it since I was old enough to mow as a young teen. Our electric mower has always made it fairly peaceful to mow, and seeing what I’ve accomplished, along with the smell of cut grass is wonderful
I detest cleaning the house. I can do it well, and do it mostly in spurts every few weeks, but my spouse and I take turns. Basically, whoever gets overwhelmed with the dirt starts cleaning. I am the organizer however, I set up how things are organized for the kids, the house, etc. Then everyone else helps keep things put away.
I detest paying the bills. Don’t know why, I was raised with my mom running everything financial to do with our family farm.
@Cimorene – I had a male housecleaner as a kid, but I know he got a hard time from his coworkers, and I know one of my mom’s friends wouldn’t hire him after my mom recommended him because she wouldn’t trust a strange (black) man in her house.
I too don’t always love or hate anything. I mean, I love to cook, adore feeding people, and moonlight as a personal chef. But the grind of getting dinner on the table seven days a week can make me hate cooking sometimes. I’d be thrilled to throw a dinner party anytime, but sometimes making spaghetti for a four year old seems like too much hassle.
I don’t mind laundry, which is good because my husband is death to clothes. I though it was one of those learned helplessness male-getting-out-of-chores things until I realized his mother and sister also can’t do laundry to save their lives (or, more to the point, my bras or couch cushions). I don’t mind dishes if I keep up with them, but if I miss a day and the they pile up at all, I can’t bear them. The task is exponentially bigger when there’s more than one meal’s worth.
I’ve been teaching my four year old to clean bathrooms. I figure if I can instill a belief that the person who most often misses the toilet is responsible for cleaning the floor, then I will earn back feminist karma points that I lose by being a stay at home mom.
I just came up with a new least favorite chore: navigating the terminally ruined Gawker Media websites.
@beardowncbears: have you tried ca.gawker.com? The new format is so bad I’ve been using the Canadian and UK URLs to get the old format. Not sure how long that will last, tho.
@Avogadro: OMG, you will so be raking in the feminist karma points with that, as well as doing a great service to humanity. My three otherwise extremely intelligent little brothers spent the first 18 years of their lives pissing all over the bowl, the floor, the seat, etc. because they just did not give a fuck—had they actually been made to clean up after themselves, they might have learned to aim better. Instead, my stepmom and I only used one bathroom in a four-bathroom house because the others were like giant pissoirs.
I’m uptight about the kitchen and bathroom being clean at all times. If so much as a drop of something spills on the kitchen counter, I have to wipe it up right.that.second. Even if my boyfriend tells me not to worry about it. Though this doesn’t extend to putting dishes away. I’ll happily wash them – and, as I’ve lived without a dishwasher for years, that’s usually by hand. But then they sit in the rack until I use them again the next day, and the next. I *despise* putting them away only to pull the same dishes back out the next day. Same goes for putting clothes away, though I dislike the look of clean clothes in my hamper or on my floor. Otherwise, I rather enjoy doing laundry – we have machines in our house, and I love the smell of fresh, clean clothes.
Other jobs I hate: anything having to do with cleaning floors, e.g., sweeping or vacuuming. I’ve been known to go months without sweeping my floors.
@Av0gadro: Stay at home moms earn feminist karma points and don’t you forget it!
@BearDown: Oh, I don’t know, a nice light extra virgin olive oil for sauteeing…
I like shoveling snow. I like the quiet of a snowfall and saying hi to all the neighbors. I like cutting the grass too. Not so crazy about the litterboxes, but they *are* my cats, so…And I find laundry satisfying because it feels like I’m actually accomplishing something. Mr MM handles bathrooms and vacuuming. Our house is in constant need of dusting. I feel guilty every time I read a book in which a character fondly remembers his/her childhood home that always smelled like lemon-scented furniture polish.
Having just come back from a day’s teaching riding, I was thinking about this thread and the difference between home and horse chores. I find mucking out stables strangely zen, and sweeping the yard. I wonder if it’s because it’s harder physical work so I get that ‘good tired from exercise’ feeling?
@ Es,
I second that observation. I still find it strange that I would rather muck 6 stalls than clean up after Aging Dog once.
I really hate doing chores full stop.. growing up in a house with lots of kids and being one of the elder ones I started doing chores from a young age, and found that even when my younger brothers and sisters were the age that I started doing chores they did not.. Yes I still have issues.
Since I live with my SO I have learnt to overcome some of my hesitation and feelings of hate, because he helps out and we generally both share the chores. I’m more in tune with the quick whip around at night and packing the clean dishes away. He’s good with the food prep and making the bed.
That said, I don’t mind doing things like the cars (checking water, oil, tyres, brake fluid, cleaning them, etc).
@Becky – if you wanted to vaccuum my place, I’d gladly have you round. Would your arms reach?
@Mackey: My arms might reach…you’d just need an adaptor so I could plug in my Dyson vacuum cleaner. It makes vacuuming so much more fun. Dysons are expensive, but I bought mine a few years back with the $300 I got when George W. sent us all a tax rebate to buy himself some popularity. I refer to my Dyson as “President Bush”—because he gave me the money, and because it’s the only thing that sucks as long and hard as his presidency did.
I love shoveling snow. I enjoy grocery shopping and cooking, but I don’t really see them as chores.
I’m indifferent to taking out the garbage, but I hate taking out the recycling because, every two weeks, we have to tiptoe down the stairs with it and sneak it into someone else’s bin because, for complicated Brooklyn reasons, we don’t have curbside recycling at home.
I hate laundry. It takes too long and it’s thankless.
I do like doing dishes. I don’t know why. It’s relaxing. I get a ton of thinking done. I also like cleaning my bathroom and mopping.
I like mucking out stalls, also relaxing, good zen time.
I hate organizing stuff, like my desk and tables and such.