Renegade My Ass!

Via Feministing comes a story about a girl who found liberation and happiness through 6 kids, a husband and..... housekeeping.

Ohhh- she thinks she's being a rebel by hanging clean towels and buying matching bedspreads.

No, seriously, she does.

I tell a lot of personal stories here, mostly to illustrate points and to show how it really is. I figure if I feel this way, I can't be the only one. Today is no exception.

I am a slob. I'm a giant, messy creative slob. I have piles of papers, bits of jewelry making stuff, paints, cookbooks, clothing, scraps of fabric, brushes, whatever in every corner of my house.

I make stuff. I write, I paint, I cook, I sew. What I don't do very often is clean. I hate cleaning. The only time cleaning has ever been the least bit satisfying to me has been when I was paid for it (I was a hotel maid in high school and work now when I can cleaning other people's houses on the weekends to supplement my income).

This shouldn't be a big deal, it's my house after all. But I have a uterus and a child. These two things combined are supposed to make me preternaturally destined to like a tidy house. They don't. Until things start to smell or I start tripping over crap- I can't be bothered to clean. I have way too many other things to do.

I didn't grow up like this. I have an OCD mother who got more than a little Mommy Dearest on me pretty regularly. We weren't allowed to leave the house unless it was immaculate, right down to color of hangars in our closets. She didn't have much of a life outside of work and cleaning. She didn't have time to read or write. She didn't spend much time with friends. She did spend a lot of time with a box TSP scrubbing grout. And she spent a lot of time yelling at me about the state of the house (not my brother- me).

Now, I may have escaped the obsessive cleaning disorder- but I didn't manage to escape the shame of having a messy house. For years I would reschedule visits from friends or make insane cleaning runs in order to be able to let people who love me into my space without them seeing how I really live. I don't mean the quick tidy that you do as a normal person, I mean the obsessive type.

Then, I realized what I was doing. I am trying to quit. People come to visit me because I am awesome, I cook really good food (last week's impromptu dinner party for 6 included the comment "Are you like super-chef?") and I am kinda fun to hang with. They are not coming over to judge how well I dust. Well, some of them aren't.

A year or two ago I was dating someone who we'll call A. (Hi A!) A spent about 3 or 4 nights a week at my house, eating dinner that I cooked and bought, sleeping in sheets that I washed, and using the bathrooms that I clean. I think in the entire course of our relationship- he did the dishes twice- ever. He also did the cooking maybe 4 times and I did the cleanup after that.

One night towards the end of our relationship he started bitching about the pile of dishes in the sink. My response was- "You eat here enough- go fucking wash them". He didn't wash them, he just bitched about the mess while eating my cooking.

So for Ms. Corey, who thinks she has become a renegade with a dustmop- the real renegade will just stop cleaning. Seriously- our self-worth seems to be tied into how well our house is presented (bullshit) instead of who we are. I am no housekeeper. But I do make a damn fine spinach and pear salad with raspberry vinaigrette. I can also make you a purse or a necklace or a painting or an essay. But I don't want to make your toilet clean, at least not unless you pay me my going rate of $20 per hour. I'd rather have the cash than the satisfaction of a sparkling toilet bowl and no more hard water stains.