Letters to the Editor
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Compromise and clean!
Dear Cary,
A solution my husband and I came up with was to hire someone to clean our house for us. We don't fight about who did or didn't do this or that anymore. We make it a priority in our budget to do this because it's a part of taking care of our family. We each work two jobs and when we finally have time to be at home, we would rather spend it together relaxing or doing something fun instead of fighting over who cleans what.
It seems like you both agree on one thing: you both hate to clean. Why not start there and work on a solution together?
Lola Kern
Consultant for Internal Energy Plus
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I hate to clean and so does he . Are we crazy
I say have a yardsale once in a while and get rid of some of the mess,but keep the stereo so you can put on some sixties or seventies rock and roll and turn it up as loud as you like it and clean to the good bass beat.It works for me! You aren't crazy but you can also get crazy with a few glasses of wine while you clean. I have friends who use this method but I don't use it because I worry about getting bombed and plugging up the vacuum with kiddy socks and toys. I had some really rich friends who built an extra room in their house just for their children to play in and all the toys had to stay in that room in toy chests . Their house was spotlessly clean all the time even though both husband and wife worked full time at seperate jobs but what set me back about this couple is that they didn't subscribe to any newspapers or magazines so whenever I would visit them I was bored to death because they had no original or new ideas to talk about. All they talked about was making money, saving money, and the joys of being republicans . I'd rather be crazy in an unclean house rather then be like them. Good luck in your search to find a solution to your problems!
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is he really "willing" to clean?
Get a maid. In fact, tell your husband that if the house bothers him so much HE can hire a maid. It's not your job just because you have a damned uterus.
When and if he leaves, make him take the kids. He'll see what a treat it is cleaning up after them all the time just because you have a uterus.
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OMG
I can't believe it. I turn my computer on 17 hours(!) since the last time I looked at this thread and people are STILL going at it!
Come on people, it's just a couple of people in a dirty house (oh, and of course the dishwasher issue).
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Paying for cleaning
A lot of people have suggested paying for a cleaning service, stating they do it themselves (even giving up other things in the budget to afford it), and have taken issue with my saying that A. it exploits poor, low wage workers for the sake of the affluent getting to be lazy and B. that it's easier and C. that it will solve the problem the LW is having.
I disagree with all of these assertions. First of all, like the dishwasher issue, it is incredibily elitest to assume that EVERYONE (who is this 'everyone"?) has the extra money in their budget for a professional cleaning service or maid. They most emphatically DO NOT. Even with two incomes, most families could not afford the $65-$100 PER WEEK that a serious professional cleaning would cost. (Independent cleaners don't charge much less, they just get to keep more of the profit, and you lose the safety of having them bonded and insured. I know of people who were burglarized by housecleaners!) Even if you could get by with having someone every two weeks (but this wouldn't really solve a bad slob problem), it would cost $200 a month. For a lot of people, that's half the groceries or 1/3 of the health insurance premium or the gas money (with gas at $3.29 and climbing!) -- and all for something you can easily do yourself.
It is one thing to farm out such work if you are simply busy (i.e., the on-call brain surgeon, etc.), but theoretically COULD and WOULD clean your own home. But the LW and her spouse are seemly incapable of cleaning or keeping things orderly. The cleaning service would just be a bandaid on the the festering sore. If they run out of money, or someone gets laid off, then the problem will come back, worse and uglier than before.
This is like saying "I don't want to learn how to read -- I can just hire people to read things to me! or watch TV!" There are basic life skills that adult human beings need to know how to do for themselves. You may be able to afford to pay someone to wipe your own ass, for all I know, but that doesn't make it a good idea, and being unable to wipe your own ass insures you are not a fully functioning adult.
The elitism in these suggestions (just pay hundreds for a cleaner! everyone has a dishwasher!) indicates so many Salonistas live in a pampered, gated, upper-middle-class fantasy world where you can have anything you want if you just pony up the cash for it....because presumably there is always cash or a credit card or your parent's deep pockets. Wake up! that's not how life is for most American families.
I have a dishwasher now, and I fully appreciate the convenience (along with the other great convenience, having your own in-house washer and dryer, something else not everyone has). But like others, for many years I did not have this, and washed dishes by hand (really not the monstrous task it is made out to be). I'm old enough to have grown up in an era when a dishwasher was a luxury, and pretty much everyone knew how to wash a dish or pan. I do wonder about the future life competency of children who grow up never knowing how to do something as simple as wash a dish, who think "everybody has a dishwasher....everyone has someone to clean the house (who is poorer and darker skinned)", because then it becomes normal to be a slob who can't take minimal care of their own place.
It is a bit like those science fiction stories, where people in the future end up not knowing how to fix or maintain the machines that make their lives possible, and end up extinct.
The LW and her husband need to wake up and grow a pair of spines, and get to work cleaning up. Using jobs or children as an excuse for living like a pig is ridiculous -- plenty of normal people have jobs and kids, and still live in (reasonably) clean environments.
When they have control of this problem, and know they are disciplined and competent to take care of this aspect of life, ONLY THEN can they make a CHOICE of whether to farm part of it out to professionals or not. But to do it now, when they are living in chaos and squalor, will only ensure that they do nothing to change themselves at a fundamental level.