anotheranon | the domestic glass ceiling and flat place crises

Man, when I come back, I come back with a vengeance! This will be snipped for brevity so I won't swamp y'alls friends' pages.

During the week I've run into multiple posts referencing this article about feminism and domesticity, and various strategies for women to assure they don't end up doing all of the housework (assuming the hetero marriage/long term cohabiting model). I include the link for completion's sake but I'm more interested in the "on the ground" experiences of some of the bloggers.

BitchPHD advocates vigilance to the point of aggressive sarcasm if need be, while Amanda at Pandagon decided arguing is not worth the angst and does the housework herself. Better yet, Majikthise points out that housekeeping standards are unrealistic, and should be allowed to slide.

I think all of these arguments have some merit, depending on the people and situations involved. I also see that on the subject of housework, there's no real way to win, there are just degrees of losing - all this stuff still has to get done, by someone, and hiring housekeeping services (which we did do in the past) are only a stop gap - things still have to get done in between times.

I gave my own situation some thought. When D. and I are both working it's a fairly equitable situation, divided up by ability and inclination. Me: everyday cooking, laundry, some of the bathroom, scoop cat litters, grocery shopping, create "to do" list for D. D.: most other cat maintenance (feeding/litter change/kitty oat planting), wash dishes, dusting, toilets, event/holiday/long cooking, computer maintenance (in a dual-techie household, this qualifies as housework). Both of us: vaccuuming/mopping as needed (though he's better at it), the "hairball rule" (whoever sees it first cleans it up). Whoever cooks does not do dishes. If it's exclusively one person's mess, the other isn't responsible.

However, D. is not currently working and I've heard it from more than one quarter that he should be doing ALL of this. I was lucky - D. was raised by a feminist mama in a a household where men/women didn't view dishes or vacuuming as women's work, but more as general "things that have to get done", and he's never balked when I've asked him to do things. But I was myself hesitant to ask him to help out until fairly recently (the past 2 years or so).

Part of it is upbringing; my parents had a very traditional "gender split" of housework, my mom doing all the inside stuff and dad doing yard work (except popping popcorn and grilling, which were a "man things" in my family). Even when she was working and he was at home, she didn't let him do any housework because he "didn't do it right". Because of this, it simply didn't occur to me that I could ask for help.

Another part of it is my control freak-streak: I want certain things done MY way (especially the laundry), and messiness tends to bother me before it D. notices it - I figure if I'm the irritated party, I should be the one to take care of it.

The other part of it is that I tend towards clutter, and a lot of the "stacks" around the house (fabric, books, art supplies) are exclusively mine. Not only can he not clean up my fabric stash to my satisfaction, to demand it would be terrifically unfair.

Occasionally one or the other of us has a "flat place crisis" (meaning, the clutter has covered every flat surface so there's nowhere to put anything down) and go on a cleaning marathon. Our F.P.C.s don't always coincide and D.s are always harsher than mine (launch him on a room in the morning, you'll have a room fit to appear "Architectural Digest" by afternoon) but it gets the job done.

For reasons of sanity I'm trying not to stress over housework as much as I used to, unless we have company. I want the bathrooms and kitchen clean enough so I'm not afraid to use them, but I'm terrible about letting the stacks pile up.

I'd be interested to hear how other couples/households divide up housework. I'm especially curious to hear from same-sex couples, who are less likely to deal with "men's work/women's work" issues.