A Tradition in Need of Tweaking—#SOL2022, Day 5

  

Once an idea struck for today's blog, I brewed a cup of coffee and sat down to write. Midstream of typing an alliterative title, I paused to do a quick search of the posts I've shared during the last ten years. Low and behold, multiple entries containing the phrase  Super Fun Cleaning Saturday appeared. Although the tradition continues, I'm growing more and more convinced our ritual could use some refreshing, so as a challenge I thought I'd play around with writing about this predictable routine through the professional lenses I'm exploring this month. 

Growing up in dusty, rural Texas, my grandmother was too busy raising four traumatized grandchildren to worry about housework. Keeping the laundry and dishes done trapped her in an endless cycle of unfinished chores for twenty years, and although the damning effects of patriarchy wreaked havoc in our home, I rejected the notion of a domestic goddess right from the start. My grandfather never lifted a finger to help with household responsibilities, and without ever uttering the words, my brothers and I were taught that only girls clean toilets, sweep floors, and vacuum the carpet. Oral language is an unconstrained literacy skill we carry with us for a lifetime, and often it's the words that go unspoken that shape us the most. 

My childhood home was cluttered, chaotic, and crammed full of complex human beings. At times, it bordered on unsanitary and unsafe. All of these things contributed to the anxiety I live with today, and although I am not a neat-freak by any stretch of the imagination, I did marry a man with a twinge of OCD, which means we perfectly compliment one another's neuroses. Chris is the complete opposite of the men in my family of origin, and I am deeply grateful his parents raised him to believe housework is a shared endeavor. He can wield a toilet wand better than any guy I know, and when Super Fun Cleaning Saturday rolls around, you can bet your bottom dollar he'll be bleaching the tub while I scrub grease off the stovetop. Our processes and approaches to cleaning may be a bit different, but we always do the work together. 

This leads me to consider how attacking domestic chores is a lot like writing a blog. Before you begin, you have to decide a few things. How will you organize your cleaning supplies? How will you structure and order the tasks? What music will you play to make the time fly by, adding a little whimsy to the drudgery? Like a writer making decisions about his or her craft moves and organization techniques, we must orient ourselves to the work if we want to be judicious with our time and produce an outcome that sparkles. 

In just a few hours, the smell of bleach and Mr. Clean will permeate our home. Rather than do a little cleaning every week, we put off the dreaded task until one of us cleverly comments, "Nasty people have moved in and messed up our house!" I'll tackle the kitchen while Chris toils away in the bathroom, and when it's all said and done we will relish the spoils of our labor. 

A colleague recently noted that Chris and I are now DINKs—an acronym that stands for "double-income-no-kids". We could afford to hire a house keeper if we wanted to, but I think I would miss the tradition immensely. The tweaks I'm considering are more about maintenance. We often do all the cleaning in one fell swoop instead of incrementally addressing spills and messes as they occur. The broom and mop rarely make appearances unless it's a Saturday designated for deep cleaning. I've been thinking about what James Clear describes as habit stacking, and I'm beginning to wonder if I would feel more liberated if I didn't let the problems pile up over time. For today, we'll endure a tradition we've come to equally despise and love. Atomic habits can be developed later. 😊