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Housework Is Honorable Work
“Laundry,” by shutterstock.com
I have folded this same towel hundreds of times. And that floor, I’ve swept it more times than I can count. My dishwasher has endured load after load, always with the exact same dishes loaded in the exact same way. I know every nook and cranny of both toilets in my home, including the spot where the pee always puddles (I have 5 kids after all). And surely, if it were possible, my vacuum would be tired of being run over the same floors day in and day out.
Yes, there can be a mundane repetition to housework. It bores many and we’ve certainly demeaned housekeeping and homemaking. We treat it, in the words of Cheryl Mendelson, as “unintelligent drudgery.” Ask any woman who is not yet married, but who is not still a child, if she looks forward to keeping house for her family one day. We can all likely guess her answer. Militant feminism has made sure of it.
Headlines often refer to housework in negative terms. Some of the ones that popped up in a quick Google search included:
“Chore Wars” and “Dirty Little Secret,” both negative puns.
Our culture presents keeping house as a nuisance rather than necessary and wonderful work. What a shame.
And not only does the way we talk about housework demean and degrade the work itself, it also demeans the one who does it. If there is so little value in cleaning and caring for a home, then surely only the lowliest would be found tending to such things. There is a battle over who does the work at home. But it’s not a fight over who wants to do it, but rather a fight over who has to do it. It seems like no one wants to.
But there is more to housework than simply doing what needs to be done so that everyone has clean, wrinkle-free clothes in the morning and a clean mug in which to pour their coffee as they run out the door.
One of my absolute favorite books about keeping house is called Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. In it, she details both the art and science, as she calls it, of housekeeping by detailing cleaning, laundering, sewing, cooking, record keeping, and more. But she also describes, in the most vivid language, the true and beautiful value in keeping house:
Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents, and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else. (p.7)
When we approach housework as simply something that needs to be done, it becomes sterile and so does our house. And I don’t mean sterile in a good, clean, sanitized sort of way. I mean it in a barren, empty, cold kind of way. When there is no heart behind the work and no love in the chores, keeping house fails to create the warm and comfortable home we all desire for ourselves and for our families. You’re simply cleaning up a house rather than cultivating a home.
What makes housework honorable is that it comes from a place of love that develops into a place of comfort. The work of your hands isn’t mechanical. Instead, it is meant to create an atmosphere of vitality, rest, joy, affection, and love. It is meant to create a home. And a home is more than just a facility for sleeping and eating and storing your things.
Sally Clarkson, her book The Life Giving Home, describes a home as “a space that supports vibrant, joyful, productive living and supports growth of body, soul, and spirit.” (p.xv)
A place like that can only be developed by intentional and dedicated work of the hands, from the heart. A place like that won’t spring up by accident amongst people who argue over who is going to do what because each views the work before them as boring and unintelligent, or worse, unworthy.
Housework is honorable because it honors the people who reside within the home. The reason I fold that same towel as many times as I do, and why I continue to wash those dishes for them to be dirtied and washed again, is because I love the people who live here. I cook meals I know they enjoy so that their nostrils are filled with the inviting aroma and so their bellies are full of what they enjoy. I want to honor them.
How people feel in my home matters. It impacts their individual lives and it extends outward to the world around them.
What our culture could use right now is a positive view of domestic work. And not just a positive view, but a high view. Home is important. The atmosphere of a home is important. Order and beauty and warmth and joy in a home do wonders for our minds, for our health, and for our hearts. And work like that, work that can impact people so deeply, is significant, honorable work. We would all benefit from viewing it and treating it as such.
Published in General
Seriously, @jessibridges, this essay has struck such a chord in me that I am now reconsidering my decision to not renew my annual membership. Thank you for taking the time to commit your thoughts to paper, so to speak.
@jessibridges moves merch!
Are you listening, Ricochet PTB?
Indeed, a beautiful and profound description of the Love that is embodied in creating a Home. Our modern culture has diminished and, in fact denounced, this virtuous vocation. The psychological health and development of children is directly linked to the sense of security, organization, love and attention available to them via parenting and home stability. What career could be more noble or rewarding?
Re: the roles men play, and cleaning up after cooking: My Dad who was not much of a cook, used to watch Julia Child cooking shows, and would try to recreate her dishes on nights that Mom would work late. Us kids hated that night, because the food was rarely palatable, and the kitchen was always a disaster. Later in life, in his third retirement, Mom would prepare foods, (and upon reflection,) she would clean up from food prep, and he always cleaned up dishes afterwards.
In our household, I do 98% of the cooking, and always try to clean as I go. I guess, just like Mom. In my family tradition, you cook to show your love, and you cook with love. My wife typically tries to tidy after meals, but this task is often shared too.
There is more I could share, but the bottom line is that your post is a powerful reflection that family and home are critical and important. Thank you for so clearly revealing that.
Yes, wonderful essay! My related, but flip-side essay from 2013 was not nearly as beautifully executed, but the headline did get noticed by James Taranto for Best of the Web (Questions No One is Asking):
https://ricochet.com/159393/archives/what-feminists-really-want-for-their-daughters-a-maid/
I don’t listen to him regularly but I’m definitely a fan. And thank you so much for all of your kind words!
You write,
Unfortunately, this is not at all true in my case. Yet I find myself to be the official homemaker. It is difficult.
Absolutely! I love housework. I love making the family meals, cleaning the kitchen, organizing the fridge and cupboards, making the brightwork shine. The stuff I don’t like, I hate.
This is a fantastic essay! Thank you for articulating it. I also had five children (with my husband) and he had learned as a young boy that doing dishes, and sweeping floors are NOT just women’s work. But, since I was the one who stayed home all day, and he went off to a paying job all day, I did most of the work. However, he supported me in helping our children learn that the home we lived in belonged to all of us, and that children’s chores were important and necessary. Those children have all grown up now and recognize that life is filled with monotonous work that is necessary—paid and unpaid– and they’re glad they learned this at home.
In my post-childrearing life, I’ve been a teacher, and it is deeply distressing to figure out the chaos that so many of my students live in because no one is keeping house where they live. The one really important thing I learned from being a kid who did work, and from being the mom of my own abode: Homemaking is career of showing love. Your family is much calmer, happier, and healthier in a clean and orderly house. The size, the cost, the furnishings—none of those are as important as being reasonable well-kept. It creates a relaxed loving atmosphere where the family can relax and think about relationships.
Would we even be having this discussion if doing housework gave a person the same endorphin rush that playing a favorite video game does?
The only way I know to raise housework up a bit is music.
It’s so much easier with happy music playing.
I will “retire” in a few weeks (at 53 1/2) and am looking forward to doing exactly this. Had we been blessed with children, I would have stayed home as my mother did. I figured I’m just taking that time on the back side, instead. Everybody keeps asking me what am I going to do and won’t I get bored? I just keep thinking, I wonder what their houses look like?
Thank you, @jessibridges for a wonderful post.
Oh, it took me a looong time. I started out believing the feminist myths. And my mother was a great model of a homemaker, but she wasn’t so good at teaching it. I’ve joked that both my parents were so competent, they preferred doing everything themselves rather than delegate to their seven children. Before we had our own laundry machine, my mom would awaken at 4 am and trudge the family’s laundry down the street to the corner laundromat using all the machines there (because no one else was using them at 4 am!) and be home with clean and folded laundry before anyone else in the family was even awake. My dad was famous for not even letting us tune the TV! (boy, if that doesn’t date me. . .)
We were married fourteen years before our first was born. I didn’t even start to contemplate these issues until then. But, I believe “nesting” is the natural inclination for most women, especially once the kids come along. Both my kids are “adult” age and living at home (welcome to the 21st century age of COVID), so I’m still homemaking for them. But, I’ve found I actually enjoy it now. It’s not just the clean and tidy aspect (well, I could be better at tidy) — it’s the service. Homemaking has become an outgrowth of deepening faith and the belief that we’re here to give away our lives in service. “No greater love than this. . .”
Also, have you ever noticed that the feminist message is the way to be a fulfilled and accomplished woman is to — wait for it — be more like a man? It’s Professor Henry Higgins’ dream come true, without the fair lady.
This is true, and there’s also the corollary that men are unnecessary at best and awful/not fit for civilized society at worst. So I guess the chicks are supposed to become the dudes and the dudes are supposed to…what? Just fade away, I guess.
You are so right!!! I did not understand until I bought a vacuum cleaner with a clear bucket how very soothing cleaning can be. (I love to vacuum now, though many people find that strange.) Folding the towels, making the beds, doing the laundry… All noble, good, necessary tasks that nurture both us and others.
Excellent! Thank you for sharing. It’s always encouraging to read others who aren’t buying the feminist lies.
Yes! We work hard to make sure my kids understand now that work isn’t always fun and new and exciting. But it’s necessary and worth doing.
Oh yes! I recently discovered an Instagram account where she gives cleaning recipes and one is to use powdered Tide, bleach, and hot water to wipe down walls and floors and counters. It’s so weirdly satisfying to dump the dirty water down the drain when I’m all finished!
Hey WC…just read this and enjoyed the discussion. Have we really been hanging around Ricochet that long?? I was struck by the cast of characters in the comments. Many blasts from the past.
My parents used a shockingly elaborate system of charts, gold stars, lists, incentives, pay scales, tables of equivalence, weekly/monthly/yearly chore assignments, doublespeak, nagging, points accrual, and allowances to train and cajole their daughters to do housework. I have always been so task-oriented though, that from a very young age I just wanted to know what I had to get done in order to go back to reading a book.
Oh yes! That’s why I like using the carpet shampooer – it’s heavy work but I love seeing the dirty water.
Wow, that was a blast from the past! Some great people on that thread no longer on Ricochet. Just one more reason to hate 2020.
@LoisLane, I do some of my best thinking and conversing with G-d while vacuuming!
You guys are so inspiring! I work really hard to provide distractions. It’s like I’m afraid of my thoughts, but that’s not true.
I don’t find housework inspiring the way a walk around the neighborhood can be.
I’ve been a bit irritated by my inability to find joy in silence. Maybe I should start acclimating myself to it.