Housework update
First the update, then a few responses to the comments on why I think this matters.
Friday, T reported spending 2.5 hours on housework — 45 minutes cleaning the kitchen, 45 minutes on laundry, 30 minutes mopping the kitchen and bathroom (unfortunately we have light colored tile floors that look dirty 10 minutes after you finish cleaning them), and 30 minutes sorting the papers on his "launch pad" shelf. He also spent 45 minutes cooking. I spent 30 minutes cooking (I started the chili cooking in the crockpot in the morning) and about 15 minutes doing laundry and miscellaneous picking up (taking out the recycling, cleaning up after the cat, bringing in dishes from around the house). I also spent 30 minutes cleaning up my desk and the area around it. (Is that housework? I don’t really think so, but it’s certainly comparable to T’s cleaning his launch pad.)
Saturday, T spent 1.25 hours cleaning — half an hour in the kitchen, 45 minutes in the bedroom and family room, and about 15 minutes cooking. I also spent about 15 minutes cooking (we had pancakes for breakfast, but went out for dinner), and about 15 minutes picking up and doing laundry.
Today, T spent 45 minutes cleaning — 15 minutes in the kitchen, 30 minutes doing the bathroom, and about 15 cooking. I spent about 15 minutes cleaning and doing laundry. We spent about 20 minutes together shopping, and about half an hour moving furniture around in the boys’ room.
So why do I think it’s worth paying attention to this? Certainly I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, any more than I track every cent I spend all the time. But I think both are worth doing for short periods of time.
First, it does draw attention to the division of labor. I’ll admit that I’m feeling self-conscious to see that T is doing more household work than me, even on the weekend. In my defense, I’ll say that I was taking care of the boys when T was cleaning. I also think I may do more of the 30 seconds here and there type stuff, picking up socks and dirty dishes when I see them. (But I’m also realizing that I may be giving myself too much credit for doing that.)
Second, I think that most people don’t have a particularly realistic sense of the "cost" of a certain level of cleanliness. If you don’t realize that having a house that is "guest-clean" at all times requires 2 hours a day of cleaning, it’s easy to beat yourself up for not achieving that standard, to think that you’re lazy or inefficient. Part of effective time management is knowing how long a task actually takes.
Third, in response to Jennifer’s comment, I do think it’s possible to make changes when you realize how long things really take. You might institute a family rule that everyone only gets clean towels once a week, and people who leave their wet towels on the floor have to deal with the consequences. You might decide that it’s really important to you to mop the kitchen every other day, but that you’re willing to only vacuum once a week (or vice versa). Or you might decide that you’re willing to hire a housecleaner.
If anyone else decides to track this for a while, please let me know. I’d love to see what this looks like in other households.
March 20th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Did you read the Sunday NY Times article – business section, on why there are so few women partners in law firms? The last three paragraphs of the article are where the money is. The partner talks about the fact that law firms are changing and allowing flex time, etc. but that the life/expectations at home re: gender roles, house cleaning, shopping, childcare have not and that’s where it has to start to begin real change. I thought of you as I read it.
March 20th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
So, inspired by your other post, I started a chore-time tracking at my own home.
I was also quite surprised by how it broke down, considering that my own housekeeping standards are generally considered quite low by even my friends…
Friday –
Me:
(worked all day) total: 3 hours, 40 minutes
45 minutes on dishes (finding them from all over the house, putting them into dishwasher, scrubbing pans etc, cleaning up the sink from all the gunk that accumulates when dirty dishes are thrown in sink.)
15 minutes scrubbing down counters, microwave, stove before cooking.
35 minutes making dinner (potato soup and spinach salad)
10 minutes scrubbing down counters and stove from after dinner mess
5 minutes making grocery list/meal planning for next week
1 1/2 sorting laundry, pre-treating, hauling laundry down to car from 3rd story walk-up for laundromat run next day.
20 minutes “helping” 4-year old pick up toys
magikdad:
(day off) total: 5 hours, 15 minutes
45 minutes picking up living room and dining room
10 minutes dusting living room
10 minutes packing lunch for me
20 minutes making breakfast (Scrambled eggs and toast)
30 minutes getting oil changed and car washed
1 hour entering bills into Quicken
15 minutes filing bills
30 minutes scheduling eye doctor appointments
5 minutes scheduling meeting with realtor
25 minutes vaccuming living areas (not bedrooms)
20 minutes stripping beds and putting on new sheets
45 minutes driving to post office in BFE to get package that they couldn’t drop off because we don’t have a lobby in our building (the frustration of this is unending…)
March 20th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
continued:
Saturday:
Me:
(day off work- 1/2 day school)total: 9 hours, 15 minutes
Note: to be fair, I did do homework while waiting on laundry during some of the laundry time. But I wouldn’t exactly call that leisure, since I was stuck at the laundromat with a 4 year old waiting on clothes.
4 1/2 hours laundry (includes driving to laundromat, folding and putting away upon return)
2 hours grocery/sundries shopping (includes driving and putting away)
1 hour weekly food prep (i buy in quantity, then cut and store in portion sizes.)
25 minutes family work (cards, letters, emails, phone calls, sending out pictures – not traditionally a chore, but it IS very time consuming.)
30 minutes – vaccuming and dusting bedrooms
30 minutes – cleaning bathroom
15 minutes – washing kitchen and dining room floors
5 minutes – putting dishes away from dishwasher
Magikdad:
(worked) total: 1 hour, 20 minutes
15 minutes loading dishwasher
15 minutes cleaning up sink, counters
30 minutes making dinner (mac & cheese with broccoli)
20 minutes “helping” 4 year old pick-up room
March 21st, 2006 at 1:03 am
Mop every other _day_? Do people do this? Outside hospitals?
I’m looking at going back to school in the fall, with some trepidation, and that’s not usually how I look at school. But I already feel spread thin, and it’s hard for me to tell how realistic this is. On one hand, I’ve been living in depressoland (the husband’s disability-level depression is mildly contagious) for the last three years, and your standards do get a little warped when you’re congratulating an adult, and eventually yourself, for taking a shower. I’ve also not wanted to put A. in fulltime daycare; I usually don’t take her in till 11ish, and the husband picks her up around 4, and then they come home and interrupt me for a while. So the amount of work I have to do before I can sit down and work is mad and giving me some very deep lines in my forehead.
I don’t know. It might be that I’ve got time to do serious academic work. Or it might be that I’m hallucinating, and that I’m just damn busy taking care of child, home, food, & fin/legal for a family, & putting out the occasional fires when the husband gets sicker.
(Which makes now the perfect time for married men to discover and pursue me. Oh, I miss Wendy Wasserstein.)
March 21st, 2006 at 8:43 am
Blogging about housekeeping
Elizabeth over at Half Changed World has a neat idea. She and her husband, who seem to share a similar domestic arrangment to Beloved and I as far as working / staying home with the kids, are keeping track of how many hours they spend on housework in…
March 21st, 2006 at 12:43 pm
No – I mop once a week, at most. Alot of the reason the housework posted above is massive is that MOST of our housework is done on friday and saturday, as I regale you with the much lighter sunday version of housework.
me:
(day off of freaking everything!!!) total: 1 hour, 55 minutes
1 hour making blueberry pancakes (yum)
15 minutes halfheartedly attempting to put books away
10 minutes making lunch (pb&j and oranges)
30 minutes packing magikboy’s lunches for the week
magikdad:
(day off) total: 2 hours
2 hours making fajitas for dinner
March 21st, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Having a washer-dryer in the house made such a huge quality of life difference.
We use one of those racks that has three bags so you can sort the clothes by color as you take them off, so it literally only takes about 5 minutes to grab a bag and throw it into the machine. The only part that’s really still tedious is folding.
Moxie commented on her blog a bit back that with it now costing $2 a load for the pay machines in her apartment building, it was now cheaper for them to take their laundry to the pay-per-pound wash and fold service than to do it themselves. If we didn’t have a machine in the house, I think I’d look for such a service.
I’m reading Never Done, Susan Strasser’s history of housework, and she points out that laundry was by far the most brutal household task pre-electricity and running water, and that there was a fairly well established system of commercial laundries before washing machines got cheap enough for individual families to own their own.
March 21st, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Hubby and I both work full time and I’m pretty sure our division of labor is not totally equitable. On a weekly basis we do:
Me:
1 hr-a load of my laundry, a load of the toddler’s laundry (sometimes it’s all one load)
2 hrs- cleaning up the kitchen and unloading dishwasher
1.5 hrs-picking up around the house
2-3 hrs-grocery shopping
7-8 hrs-cooking and packing lunches
Him:
2 hrs-his laundry (he has less drycleanable clothes, and lots of exercise related clothing)
2 hrs- cleaning up the kitchen and unloading dishwasher
2.5 hrs-picking up around the house
.25 hrs-taking out the trash
1 hr-bills and filing
We have a housecleaner that comes once every two weeks so our daily picking up of the house and quick cleanup of the kitchen after dinner is enough to keep it looking presentable. The interesting thing about my list is that the things that tip the balance are grocery shopping and cooking. I have to admit though that cooking is a hobby of mine and so the 9-11 hours a week I spend on it is largely enjoyable. I could probably spend less time in the kitchen, but my 2.5 year old helps me with most of the cooking so most things take twice as long than if I were doing it myself. For example, if I prepare sauteed greeens I have her strip all the greens from the tough stems while I chop garlic. I usually have her help swish the greens around in a water bath and then she puts them in a colander to dry. If I did this myself, it would probably take 10 minutes. With her, this is usually 30 minute process that includes changing her shirt and wiping excess water off the counters, floors, and stepstool. In the spirit of multi-tasking, this has evolved as a way for me to spend quality time with her while enjoying my hobby.
March 21st, 2006 at 2:27 pm
After reading my post. I have to add that 9-11 hours of shopping and cooking is what I do only on weeks where I cook meals for the whole week. When I cook, I tend to make big portions of freezable things where possible. This way, if we are away for the weekend or I don’t feel up to getting out and doing a lot of grocery shopping, I can supplement our meals with a lot of things from the freezer. I think I would have to say that on average, it probably works out closer to 6-7 hours a week. I should also add an hour to my husband’s side for cooking since he fixes our daughter’s breakfast most mornings.
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:32 am
You guys should try using http://www.chorebuster.net/
It automatically and fairly shares chores amongst all the members of your family.
Chores are given a ‘hardness’ level, so that everyone does the same total amount of work, regardless of the actual number of chores they do.
🙂
R
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:33 am
oh, and it’s FREE 😉