Not Exactly a Domestic Goddess

I’m decluttering my apartment. I’m plugging away at it in between doing my taxes and beta reading, both of which I’d rather be doing.

Doing housework has never been one of my favorite activities. But I’ve learned to do it and do it well. I just tend to put it off. These days, I’m seriously considering hiring someone to clean my apartment every few weeks. Only thing is, I’d feel obligated to clean the place before the cleaner arrived.

As a child, I admit I was a bit spoiled when it came to helping around the house, but there’s a reason for that. When I was two years old, I was terrified of the vacuum cleaner. If Mom wanted to vacuum the living room rug in peace, she had to draft someone to take me for a walk.

By the time I was eight, my parents were fairly certain I had gotten over that nonsense. So, early one Saturday morning, Mom flipped the switch on the vacuum cleaner, turned it over to me, and pointed me in the direction of the living room. Within minutes, I had toppled a couple of lamps, knocked my little brother into the magazine rack, and scared the cat out of three or four of her nine lives.

“Do it yourself before she kills us all,” Dad hollered, extracting Mopsy from his shredded trouser leg.

Unfortunately, my father’s instinct for self-preservation condemned my mother to doing most of the housework forever.

When I was thirteen, my parents decided I was old enough to start helping out around the house on a regular basis. But, by that time, I was beyond rehabilitation. I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of housework. Mom complained that I dusted around knickknacks and doilies and failed to vacuum the corners of the living room—or any room.

My incompetence annoyed Mom even more when it came to keeping my bedroom picked up. She claimed the place looked like an explosion at a rummage sale. “How can you tell the clean clothes from the dirty ones?” she frequently asked. Sometimes I couldn’t. I also suspected that I held the town record for having the most overdue library books. I had a habit of shoving them under my bed. They stayed there until the librarian reminded me that the books were due back weeks ago.

When Mom couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore, she cleaned my bedroom. Coincidentally, she usually did this right before we were expecting guests. Throughout my adolescence, Mom had a recurring nightmare in which a guest took a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom, stumbled into my bedroom, and disappeared forever.

[Note: A slightly different version of this mini-essay was posted on Blogger in May 2005.]

My Parents Are to Blame for This

[Note: As short as this post is, I’ve incorporated material from two previously published essays (Tucson Citizen, July 1987; Themestream, January 2001). The revised Themestream essay eventually will be posted in its entirety on another (sorry about that) site. Until then, here is a preview.]

Give me a task, and I’ll do it well, unless, of course, it involves some sort of housework.

And there is a good reason why. As a toddler, I was terrorized by Mom’s vacuum cleaner, a baggy brown behemoth that roared through the house two or three times a week. When Mom wanted to run the vacuum cleaner, she had to conscript a relative to take me somewhere—anywhere.

My parents couldn’t figure out why I was so frightened by the darn thing. Who knows? (I certainly don’t.) Maybe the noise drove me crazy. Then again, one morning the machine came dangerously close to sucking up the cat. Maybe I thought it would get me next.

My histrionics, I mean hysterics, drove Mom and Dad a little crazy. Mom hoped it was just a phase I was going through. Even then, she looked forward to the day when I could start helping out around the house.

That finally happened when I was eight, and it lasted about ten minutes. I was no longer afraid of the vacuum cleaner. However, on my first try, I lost control of the machine, crashed into the china cabinet, demolished two table lamps, and knocked my little brother into a magazine rack.

“For Pete’s sake, Mary Frances,” Dad yelled, “do it yourself before she destroys everything.”

Unfortunately, Dad’s instinct for self-preservation condemned my mother to doing most of her own housework forever.

Cinderella, Snow White, and the Elves (Yes, Elves)

Way back when I worked full time, a coworker told me about a research paper she had written for a college class. I don’t remember the name of the class—something to do with child psychology, most likely. Her subject was fairy tales.

I’ll call my coworker “Susan,” although that wasn’t her real name. Susan interviewed several women while researching her project. She asked each woman what her favorite fairy tale was when she was five years old.

According to Susan, whatever your favorite childhood fairy tale was, that’s how you thought your life was going to turn out. In other words, if your favorite fairy tale was Cinderella or Snow White, your five-year-old self figured you’d grow up, meet a handsome prince, and live happily ever after.

Right.

Unlike my friends in kindergarten, I wasn’t impressed by Cinderella or Snow White. I liked the story about the elves and the shoemaker. I thought it was really neat that the elves helped out the tired shoemaker and his wife by making shoes while the couple got a decent night’s sleep.

I guess my preference meant that, when I grew up, I thought I would find someone to do my chores for me. Chores like cooking and cleaning for example.

As it turned out, that did happen. Sort of. Other Half retired many years before I did. So, while I worked full time, he did most of the housework.

But no longer. Now that I’m retired from full-time work, Other Half figures that he’s retired from doing just about anything around the house.

So I do it all now. And I’ve accepted that. But I’m also beginning to suspect that the shoemaker took advantage of the elves.