How to be a happy housewife
Housewife: The job description
There are some people who don't believe that housekeeping is a real job. It is hard for modern people to accept that unless your job is giving you ulcers, you have to leave your home to get to it (often with a heinous commute), and you work for some Napoleonic bastard, you can't really be working. Lots of people think being a housewife is reserved for uneducated women who either don't know what else to do or can't do anything else, and believe it's not much different than working at McDonald's in terms of respectability. Those who believe this are mistaken. Much of this job's respectability depends on what you put into it.
It is important that you understand what is meant when we talk about housewives. A woman who doesn't have any profession, stays at home but doesn't cook, rarely cleans, doesn't pay bills, or do anything at all to add to her household's quality of life isn't a housewife, she is the female version of THE LAYABOUT (see the section on "Choosing a spouse"). If she is a mom and staying at home to be with her children, that's a whole separate full time job and such a woman isn't likely to be laying about much.
Once we have excluded the female version of THE LAYABOUT from our definition, we are still left with a wide range of skill levels. At the bottom of the rung there is the woman who has no pride in any of the work she does, and consequently couldn't care less if guests must bring their own machete to cut a path from the front door to the couch, she might do some cleaning but either does it once every few months or does it more frequently but has a loose definition of "clean". She does just enough to keep herself from being labeled a human leech, and that's it. If you are reading this, I doubt this is the type of housewife you are aiming to be.
At the very top of the rung we have the woman who approaches her work with a fiercely manic energy and seeks the kind of excellence that is stifling to be around. She's the one who's likely to start a multi-million dollar business out of her home. She risks all her human relationships for her obsessive relationship with sterile cleanliness and for treating her house like a still life. Guests are often asked not to move a muscle once seated (shoe-less) in the living room for fear they may inadvertently move the air particles. If you aspire to being this sort of housewife, you do so at your own risk. You are very likely to end up not being a wife anymore, and will probably end up too crazy to be happy.
We will not be concerning ourselves with the extremes in this profession. So here are the basic responsibilities associated with this job:
CLEANING: this includes (but is not limited to) weekly bathroom cleaning, doing the dishes often enough to have dishes to use for meals, taking out the garbage before it has a chance to attract rodents, straightening up the whole house (putting away all the stupid junk that accumulates throughout the living spaces between cleanings such as magazines, paper scraps, dead batteries, used tissues, dirty socks, and shoes; before people start asking if you're both going back to college), sweeping and/or vacuuming floor surfaces often enough that you always remember what color your floors are really supposed to be, and dusting. If you do all (or most) of these chores once a week you will never be deeply embarrassed by surprise guests, and will have a comfortably clean abode. Unless you have a child, in which case you will need to either perform all these tasks many times a week to have the same level of tidiness, or just do your best and pray that all your guests give three weeks warning for visits.
COOKING: it is expected that you provide meals. It doesn't matter whether you cook fancy food or macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli, but whatever you cook it should not all be coming out of boxes. Almost every person who has access to packaged food will take advantage of these products occasionally to ease their routine. But it is highly recommended that you learn to cook if you don't know how (most towns have community classes, if you don't think you can teach yourself). Along with cooking comes the occasional fridge clean-out. This is one of the scariest responsibilities associated with the job. No one wants to do it, so it will almost certainly fall to you. Avoiding this task will only make it much less bearable. If necessary, use a respirator and surgical gloves as a barrier between yourself and the living mold subdivisions that have settled on last month's mystery casserole. You will feel much better if you also wipe the fridge interior clean after removing the liquefied leeks you never used two weeks ago.
HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT: this includes keeping the larder stocked, keeping track of what is about to break and making sure something is done about it, budgeting when necessary (although if you recently ran yourself into bankruptcy, you may want to hand this job over to your spouse), paying the bills (noticing when companies have over charged you and knowing what rates you pay for services is very useful), sifting through maddening piles of junk mail, and organizing cupboards and closets so that you actually know what's in them.
SOCIAL COORDINATOR: being home all the time naturally throws you into this role because you are actually there when people call to make plans. You take messages, make plans, cancel plans, and balance out week-end relaxation with social obligations (which almost every one has in great abundance unless you are anti-social) You must keep track of every one's birthdays, (including those of your husband's twenty-four first cousins) and will be responsible for buying, writing, and sending cards for all necessary holidays.
WASHERWOMAN: it is lucky for every modern housewife that she no longer has to hand scrub each garment on a metal washboard and rinse them in the brown-water creek across town. Never the less, of all of her jobs, this one may seem to be the most arduous, boring, and endless. (Because it is.) In this casual time in our history it is acceptable to wear not-quite white whites in public, but wearing yesterday's meal in public will not only make you a social leper (except in homeless circles) it may actually prevent your husband from being able to keep his job which is not in your best interests.
I have detailed the duties any respectable housewife would attend to. However, there are many other chores you may be responsible for depending on circumstances and willingness. The job description continues (below) with the more negotiable responsibilities:
LANDSCAPER: if there is a yard you will most likely be the one responsible for it's general maintenance such as watering, weeding, and cleaning it up. The yard is one of those areas that has much to offer you besides your husband's gratitude that he doesn't have to get up an hour early every other summer morning to water the yard he only gets to sit in on Sunday; it can offer you a creative outlet. It can supply you with cut flowers for decorating your house, vegetables and fruits to pick fresh for dinner, and it can become a sanctuary which almost everyone who scrubs toilets needs once in a while. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I encourage everyone who has a yard to explore all it's possibilities, because even if you haven't got a lot of money, you can create the most magical space on earth with it.
PEST CONTROL OFFICER: you may get your husband to usher dangerous spiders out the back door at three in the morning, but who is going to confront the villainous creatures when he's at work? Perhaps you're lucky and are surrounded by chivalrous neighbors who are always brimming with eagerness to catch that wasp in your kitchen, or trap that pesky mouse, but it is much more likely that you will have to tend to the unsavory challenge of pest control yourself. There are many weapons out there at your disposal, but be careful what poisons you resort to because if a spray can kill a spider instantly, it can't be good for you either. There are many creatures you may be forced to wrangle with in this job. Just to prepare you emotionally, here are a few you may have to face: mice, spiders, ants, cockroaches, roly polys, rats, wasps, bees, flies (of every size and shape), mosquito hawks, mites, and in some unfortunate regions scorpions.
FAMILY GOODWILL AMBASSADOR: whether you like it or not, you will be your family's representative in your neighborhood. Ideally you will cultivate positive relationships with the people surrounding you so that you can develop a network of support for you and your children (should you have any). This may be difficult in neighborhoods where no one stays home besides you, the elderly, and the agoraphobics (neither of whom spend a whole lot of time outside). Such a situation may make you feel like you're living in a lonely ghost town. If this is the case, take advantage of the emptiness and blast a lot of Neil Diamond as loud as your stereo can play it because the elderly generally can't hear very well, and the agoraphobics will probably be reluctant to knock on your door to complain. If your neighborhood is known for it's shoot outs, you may wish to make connections very carefully, especially with the local police. The most admirable approach to take in this situation is to either try to improve your neighborhood, or move to a place where you will be safe.
There are many other things a housewife does, but most of the other activities she's associated with are way too fun to be considered duties. Activities such as decorating the house, creating photo albums, and figuring out all kinds of new ways to spend money that hasn't yet been made. These activities are perks of the job rather than responsibilities.
There are some people who don't believe that housekeeping is a real job. It is hard for modern people to accept that unless your job is giving you ulcers, you have to leave your home to get to it (often with a heinous commute), and you work for some Napoleonic bastard, you can't really be working. Lots of people think being a housewife is reserved for uneducated women who either don't know what else to do or can't do anything else, and believe it's not much different than working at McDonald's in terms of respectability. Those who believe this are mistaken. Much of this job's respectability depends on what you put into it.
It is important that you understand what is meant when we talk about housewives. A woman who doesn't have any profession, stays at home but doesn't cook, rarely cleans, doesn't pay bills, or do anything at all to add to her household's quality of life isn't a housewife, she is the female version of THE LAYABOUT (see the section on "Choosing a spouse"). If she is a mom and staying at home to be with her children, that's a whole separate full time job and such a woman isn't likely to be laying about much.
Once we have excluded the female version of THE LAYABOUT from our definition, we are still left with a wide range of skill levels. At the bottom of the rung there is the woman who has no pride in any of the work she does, and consequently couldn't care less if guests must bring their own machete to cut a path from the front door to the couch, she might do some cleaning but either does it once every few months or does it more frequently but has a loose definition of "clean". She does just enough to keep herself from being labeled a human leech, and that's it. If you are reading this, I doubt this is the type of housewife you are aiming to be.
At the very top of the rung we have the woman who approaches her work with a fiercely manic energy and seeks the kind of excellence that is stifling to be around. She's the one who's likely to start a multi-million dollar business out of her home. She risks all her human relationships for her obsessive relationship with sterile cleanliness and for treating her house like a still life. Guests are often asked not to move a muscle once seated (shoe-less) in the living room for fear they may inadvertently move the air particles. If you aspire to being this sort of housewife, you do so at your own risk. You are very likely to end up not being a wife anymore, and will probably end up too crazy to be happy.
We will not be concerning ourselves with the extremes in this profession. So here are the basic responsibilities associated with this job:
CLEANING: this includes (but is not limited to) weekly bathroom cleaning, doing the dishes often enough to have dishes to use for meals, taking out the garbage before it has a chance to attract rodents, straightening up the whole house (putting away all the stupid junk that accumulates throughout the living spaces between cleanings such as magazines, paper scraps, dead batteries, used tissues, dirty socks, and shoes; before people start asking if you're both going back to college), sweeping and/or vacuuming floor surfaces often enough that you always remember what color your floors are really supposed to be, and dusting. If you do all (or most) of these chores once a week you will never be deeply embarrassed by surprise guests, and will have a comfortably clean abode. Unless you have a child, in which case you will need to either perform all these tasks many times a week to have the same level of tidiness, or just do your best and pray that all your guests give three weeks warning for visits.
COOKING: it is expected that you provide meals. It doesn't matter whether you cook fancy food or macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli, but whatever you cook it should not all be coming out of boxes. Almost every person who has access to packaged food will take advantage of these products occasionally to ease their routine. But it is highly recommended that you learn to cook if you don't know how (most towns have community classes, if you don't think you can teach yourself). Along with cooking comes the occasional fridge clean-out. This is one of the scariest responsibilities associated with the job. No one wants to do it, so it will almost certainly fall to you. Avoiding this task will only make it much less bearable. If necessary, use a respirator and surgical gloves as a barrier between yourself and the living mold subdivisions that have settled on last month's mystery casserole. You will feel much better if you also wipe the fridge interior clean after removing the liquefied leeks you never used two weeks ago.
HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT: this includes keeping the larder stocked, keeping track of what is about to break and making sure something is done about it, budgeting when necessary (although if you recently ran yourself into bankruptcy, you may want to hand this job over to your spouse), paying the bills (noticing when companies have over charged you and knowing what rates you pay for services is very useful), sifting through maddening piles of junk mail, and organizing cupboards and closets so that you actually know what's in them.
SOCIAL COORDINATOR: being home all the time naturally throws you into this role because you are actually there when people call to make plans. You take messages, make plans, cancel plans, and balance out week-end relaxation with social obligations (which almost every one has in great abundance unless you are anti-social) You must keep track of every one's birthdays, (including those of your husband's twenty-four first cousins) and will be responsible for buying, writing, and sending cards for all necessary holidays.
WASHERWOMAN: it is lucky for every modern housewife that she no longer has to hand scrub each garment on a metal washboard and rinse them in the brown-water creek across town. Never the less, of all of her jobs, this one may seem to be the most arduous, boring, and endless. (Because it is.) In this casual time in our history it is acceptable to wear not-quite white whites in public, but wearing yesterday's meal in public will not only make you a social leper (except in homeless circles) it may actually prevent your husband from being able to keep his job which is not in your best interests.
I have detailed the duties any respectable housewife would attend to. However, there are many other chores you may be responsible for depending on circumstances and willingness. The job description continues (below) with the more negotiable responsibilities:
LANDSCAPER: if there is a yard you will most likely be the one responsible for it's general maintenance such as watering, weeding, and cleaning it up. The yard is one of those areas that has much to offer you besides your husband's gratitude that he doesn't have to get up an hour early every other summer morning to water the yard he only gets to sit in on Sunday; it can offer you a creative outlet. It can supply you with cut flowers for decorating your house, vegetables and fruits to pick fresh for dinner, and it can become a sanctuary which almost everyone who scrubs toilets needs once in a while. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I encourage everyone who has a yard to explore all it's possibilities, because even if you haven't got a lot of money, you can create the most magical space on earth with it.
PEST CONTROL OFFICER: you may get your husband to usher dangerous spiders out the back door at three in the morning, but who is going to confront the villainous creatures when he's at work? Perhaps you're lucky and are surrounded by chivalrous neighbors who are always brimming with eagerness to catch that wasp in your kitchen, or trap that pesky mouse, but it is much more likely that you will have to tend to the unsavory challenge of pest control yourself. There are many weapons out there at your disposal, but be careful what poisons you resort to because if a spray can kill a spider instantly, it can't be good for you either. There are many creatures you may be forced to wrangle with in this job. Just to prepare you emotionally, here are a few you may have to face: mice, spiders, ants, cockroaches, roly polys, rats, wasps, bees, flies (of every size and shape), mosquito hawks, mites, and in some unfortunate regions scorpions.
FAMILY GOODWILL AMBASSADOR: whether you like it or not, you will be your family's representative in your neighborhood. Ideally you will cultivate positive relationships with the people surrounding you so that you can develop a network of support for you and your children (should you have any). This may be difficult in neighborhoods where no one stays home besides you, the elderly, and the agoraphobics (neither of whom spend a whole lot of time outside). Such a situation may make you feel like you're living in a lonely ghost town. If this is the case, take advantage of the emptiness and blast a lot of Neil Diamond as loud as your stereo can play it because the elderly generally can't hear very well, and the agoraphobics will probably be reluctant to knock on your door to complain. If your neighborhood is known for it's shoot outs, you may wish to make connections very carefully, especially with the local police. The most admirable approach to take in this situation is to either try to improve your neighborhood, or move to a place where you will be safe.
There are many other things a housewife does, but most of the other activities she's associated with are way too fun to be considered duties. Activities such as decorating the house, creating photo albums, and figuring out all kinds of new ways to spend money that hasn't yet been made. These activities are perks of the job rather than responsibilities.
Labels: happy housewife, job description