putzteufel ideology

[lobelia321]

Just before I have a cup of coffee, a few words about this flylady thing I've been posting about these last several days.

Last night I once again POLISHED MY SINK but for the first time, instead of the sense of mad elation I'd been having up to then, I felt sad doing it. There suddenly seemed to be something sad about according so much importance to the SINK. So I got to thinking.

When I first discovered the flylady thing, I thought, wow, great, and threw myself into it with my usual initial enthusiasm. I treated the whole thing with a whole lot of tongue in cheek. I called it the Stepford Club and myself the Stepford Bitch, and I compared my SHINY SINK to Orlando's SHINY YOU-KNOW-WHAT. (I'm not spelling this out here as there's no LJ-cut!) But having read a bit more deeply into the flylady site's pages, I'm starting to see its more sinister aspects. The problem is that the Flyladies do not have this tongue in cheek. They, in fact, have no irony about their housework at all. They actually do believe that housework will not only get your house decluttered but will also "bless your home" and "bless your family", even "bless the things you give away". It's as if women can't ever just clean up in order to get something clean, but that the whole domestic thing has to come attached to an entire ideology of domesticity. These women truly are the Stepford Wives!

The creepiest thing about the ideology of feminine domesticity (as exemplified by Flylady but by no means confined to them) is the sincerely-held belief (I repeat: sincerely held) that housework is about more than itself. And this is, of course, the work of all ideologies: the spreading of a veneer of value-added, of class and gender identity, of commodity fetishism and faux religion, over the bedrock of reality. So there seems to be a belief that by doing household chores you are contributing to the greater good.

Well, not even the greater good. It is actually a very selfish ideology as it is largely confined to the nuclear family. After all, tidying the house benefits mainly the people living in that house. And that will only ever be a maximum of, say, ten people, and on average probably three to four. It may also only be one single person but significantly, FlyLady doesn't pay much attention to women living on their own.

What I like, and what I am still determined to derive benefit from, is some of the straightforward hands-on advice: take 5 minutes! Take 15 minutes! Take "babysteps" (okay, corny name but sensible concept)! But an ideology comes attached to this which is spelled out on the actual website: if you do this, your "house will practically clean itself". This is nonsense, of course. Paying careful attention, one will see that all these minutes add up to an awful lot of minutes. (What initiated my sadness was the ominously named household Control Journal.) Now if you take household chores to be an end in themselves, then you don't care how much time you spend on it. But what if there were reminders of a more intellectual sort? Instead of 'Take 5 minutes to declutter the kids' clutter!', why not 'Take 5 minutes to learn 5 more Arabic verbs!' or 'Take 5 minutes to keep up with today's news!' or 'Take 5 minutes to finish excerpting that overdue library book on Ilya Repin!'

Okay, as things get more specific they get more tailor made, and perhaps I could somehow tailormake this system to serve my own needs (phineasjones suggested something along those lines in an earlier comment). But just thinking about these more 'thinking' alternatives, makes me realise how relentlessly absent the wider world is from FlyLady.

Fair enough, one might say. Why should a website about household cleaning include off-topic demands for self-education? I never expected the Closer Than Brothers yahoo group to furnish me with anything besides yummy dommy lotrips porn. But it does matter, I think, that so little attention is paid to anything else that might be important for women beyond dusting. There are cursory and rather dutiful-sounding nods to "payroll FlyBabies" (who have the misfortune of having to go and work) but there is no sense of the wider meaning of cleaning for women. There is a notion of 'dear husbands' and 'sweet darlings' that is not one step further from the 1950s feminine mystique, and a good few steps below Wilma Flintstone. It is sad to realise that in some ways very little seems to have been changed by the 1970s women's movement. And, scarily and sadly, pertains to quite a few women whom I know personally and others to whom I am related.

There is also absolutely no awareness (or acknowledgement of an awareness) of the psycho-baggage that comes with housecleaning for women. Jane Smiley did the best job I know of this when in her novel A Thousand Acres , she had the heroine obsessively clean the kitchen, down to cleaning out gunk in the oven door with a toothpick or somesuch while down on her knees -- which was a displaced activity to cleanse herself of the trauma of having been sexually abused by her father when a little girl. It is brilliantly written! And shows a great deal of insight into psycho-cleaning.
end_of_1000_acre_spoiler

This is not idle speculation. I know this in bones. I spent quite a few session of my therapy / counselling year before last discussing this very problem: how every time I do any housework, I felt my mother looking over my shoulder and how I couldn't even do any for fear of becoming a housewife like her. The counsellor asked me what made me feel worst about my house, and I said, it's all the stuff. This is, of course, what FlyLady is very effective at: getting you to get rid of stuff. So that website addresses a real need in me and a real cause for dismay. I want to get rid of the stuff; the stuff oppresses me psychically and practically. But I don't want the whole domestic ideology that goes with it!

I will definitely have to find some way of integrating this system of routines into my own idea of life. And while I used to shirk the cleaning by doing something else, I am now shirking doing marking and writing my conference paper by cleaning! So now I feel guilty about the cleaning where I used to feel guilty about not-cleaning! For the really determined, there is no barrier to the cycles of guilt the creative procrastinatrix can generate (as sheldrake has, indeed, oft pointed out).

Anyway, now I'm shirking drinking my cup of coffee by posting into LJ. There is a pile of marking sitting on the dining room table, and every sink and basin in the house is currently SOAKING IN BLEACH in order to BE MORE THOUROUGHLY SHINED.

God, I really need a good fuck, don't I?

Comments

[wolfine.livejournal.com]

I want to get rid of the stuff; the stuff oppresses me psychically and practically. But I don't want the whole domestic ideology that goes with it!

I'm right there on the knife edge with you!

And while I used to shirk the cleaning by doing something else, I am now shirking doing marking and writing my conference paper by cleaning!

As Shannon Wheeler wrote in his hysterical "Too Much Coffee Man" comic: "The key to productivity is to rotate your avoidance techniques." I just need to rotate mine a little bit faster.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

giglet put it best: "Your dirty sink will make Elijah cry."

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

an interesting analysis! though for me the value of housework is more problematic. yes, there is something inherently sad when this becomes one's whole world and, yes, it's heteronormative and selfish and all...otoh, i wonder how much of this is part of the trend to revalue domestic work and childrearing in the current fashion of layers and CEOs staying home to do "the most important job of all" :-)

and i am so very torn about that one. i find my work utterly undervalued (most of all by myself), but i also hate the thought of refocusing women back into the home.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

part of the trend to revalue domestic work and childrearing in the current fashion of layers and CEOs staying home to do "the most important job of all"
This is not a trend in the UK which has one of the highest proportions of women working in Europe and whose inhabitants work the longest hours in Europe (50-70 hours per week on average). I think here people in general cannot afford to stay home and not work so the ideology is less pervasive than it is in Germany, for example. I feel stifled when I visit there!

i find my work utterly undervalued (most of all by myself), but i also hate the thought of refocusing women back into the home.
This is the crux of it. And it is utterly a woman's problem. Men don't go on this same guilt-psycho do-i-work-or-do-i-clean trip.

But I can't believe that you see housework as an end in itself. It's just chores, they have to be got out of the way, and I wish I wouldn't cathect them so. I don't angst about brushing my teeth -- and housework is on the same level. If you have children, I find, you tend to be responsible for three households rather than one, so things get more out of hand. And possible, you get to be responsible for live-in-man as well. I just want the organisation without the ideology!!

How do you feel undervalued?

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

well, both ideologically and economically, what i do at home&with the kids is not considered "work" (by me or others). i don't teach MWF, so I talk about my days off. it's even worse for me, b/c even my own work (i.e., writing) is considered in my family play, so that i really only work a couple of hours a week (and my yearly salary of less than $5000 testifies to that!) even though though i do all the housework, cooking, childcare, do my professional writing and teach.

i think the worst part of housework for me is that it is never ending. i grade a stack of paper--it's done. i write an article--i have sth to show for. even cooking yields a result (even if my work of 3 hours gets eaten in 5 minutes) but housework erases itself as soon as it's done.

i'm actually pretty OCD about cleaning and straightening and used to use it a lot to avoid work...while dissertating my house was spotless...it also took me 8 years!!!

economically i feel undervalued, b/c i do not only not make money, but as of now i have no security nor any means to get one, i.e., i am complettely financially dependent on my husband now and dependent on private funding for retirement.

which brings me to the first point. i have no statistics, but i wonder if the large number of women staying home in the US is basically borrowing from their retirement; in other words, since it is pretty much all private here, you can decide to not do it, so that i wonder how many families that are barely making enough with one income are not saving for both of them but are spending prety much the entire paycheck, whereas in most european countries the security net isquite a bit tighter [yes, as i tell my students, freedom in the us means the freedom to starve to death!!!]

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I want to reply to this in depth but it's late and I had little sleep last night as my father-in-law had to leave at the crack o'dawn. More anon!!

Can't you get another job that's not university-related?? Or do long-distance tutoring?? You need an income!!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i guess i could, but i really like teaching, and as long as the kids were real little, i enjoyed the flexibility. i mean, part time jobs are not sa common, i think, as they are at home...even high school teacher (which would be like the logical choice) is an all day job which means kids in extended care (and they already go to school till threee) and i don't really want that just to make some money...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I see the point but I was thinking about your earlier dilemma about not having your own income and being dependent. I mean, you could just go, hey, who cares? And not mind. If you can get by on one income, after all, then it's not an immediate practical concern. In my case, we are faced with imminent one-income situation (if I get made redundant) and that is a horror scenario, as we barely manage on the two incomes we have, and if we now go down the private education route, we'll have to remortgage the house yet again.

I supppose I was only a stay-at-home mother for six months, during my second son's maternity leave, and I discovered that it is not for me. It drove me stark raving bonkers.

Iknow what you mean about flexibility. I love that about my academic job! But in a way, you only get it when you're full-time or permanent because, as you say, part-timers get shoved around and have no say and no holiday entitlement and no clout at all.

Keep looking, though!

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yes. i feel like you articulated some things that have been rattling around in my head. the idea as housework as an end in itself is exactly what was wrong when i was doing flylady. the real point, it seems to me, is to clear the housework from the radar. take care of it so that it doesn't get in the way of the important things. and it's true that it becomes more enjoyable as it become easier, but... that should be a handy bonus, not a goal.

you asked what an 'ADD person' is - i meant a person with attention defecit disorder. which i have recently been told i have. and when i began reading a book called ADD-friendly ways to organize your life, i realized that flylady was built in exactly the same way as the systems suggested in the book. except where this book provides guidelines and structure, flylady tells you what to do. which may also answer your other question - i think there is a happy medium, yes. i'm finishing this book now, getting ready to give it a shot.

all this said... i think the ADD aspect is also a lot of what made flylady a minor miracle for me. the way she manages time was a revelation. but i did adapt it as i went a long. my 'control journal' was a list of daily to-do's in my palm pilot. practicing my singing and searching for jobs were on those lists. so. yeah. there's good, there's bad, and i hope there's some happy place in between.

i originally brought this up in this post

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I read your other post and it's very interesting. You say this worked for you re ADD but I think it's also very helpful for depressive-prone types like me (and I was in therapy for 1 1/2 years and think it is very good to have both system and roots, as you say). I think it's the email system in part (someone nagging you and telling you and reminding you, like mini-post-its all over the house -- and perfect for people like me who are libidinally attached to their computer) plus it is, as you say, the SHINY SINK. The SHINY SINK (and I am obsessing about that sink) is truly at the heart of it and it gives you something to glom onto. It's a concrete symbol as well as a practical beginning to getting the kitchen tidy.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Very interesting, btw!

[giglet.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the new work (cathect)! Yes, you articulate very well a big part of the problem I have with Flylady.

But... Routine work is boring and to me, vacuuming is not just about vacuuming, even though I wish it was. Adding another, positive meaning to it is one of the tricks that makes Flylady work -- and I don't think that's a bad idea. I know that I've cheerfully done absolutely gross, grueling work for free when I was motivated by a noble cause. If idealism helps me overcome the layers of avoidance that keep me from laying hands on the vacuum cleaner (ever), then I'm willing to do it.

Where, though, are the websites on feminist housecleaning?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Indeed, where oh where are they??

And chores are teh bore. They are. This is why I have never before done them. Because am lazy bint. And you're right: the FlyLady injects a sort of hectic mania into it that gives it a purpose.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

P.S. cathected and cathexis are two of my favourite words. I rant about them at intervals of a few months. :-)

[melusina]

Thanks - people are always recommending that I try the Flylady stuff to get a handle on the clutter/mess at my house, and whenever I've looked at the site, I've found it kind of creepy, for all the reasons that you articulate so beautifully here. You're right, she does have some good ideas, but the ideology that's wrapped around those suggestions is disturbing. . .

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am amazed at all the people who have visited FlyLady! It seems to be one of those things everyone knows about! I'd never heard of it until last week. And what you say: good ideas but creep-o-rama.

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

Well, praise be. Your FlyLady ardour was frightening me. I pictured you hustling into your lace-up shoes and full makeup for a before dawn Home-Blessing session before a Crisis-Clean and a reorganisation of your Control Journal. Not that I was laughing, really. I found the site appallingly fascinating in ideological terms, and a horrible symptom of the total lack of economic remuneration for this form of 'women's work'- leading to such depths of quasi-religious investment in the Shiny Sink.

I shall continue to regard my dingy sink as a feminist issue, and while I'm regarding it, I don't have to clean it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Well, I'm glad I'm still good for something , if only to frighten my Flist.

With the twat your icon is sporting, btw, you could suck up and spit out whole sinks without blinking once.

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

*blinks*

Twat Vacuuming, now there's a thought. I must go off and enter onto a whole new blessed relationship with my most intimate parts.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I've had my brief flirtation with flylady, and taken two things on board:

- going through the flat every so often, throwing a predetermined number of things away (for this reason I save almost-empty bottles of shampoo in case I'm running out of tat)
- 15-minute slots for housework.

But I stopped doing it when I realised that, in all probability, the whole site was aimed at the sort of person who -- I'm stereotyping here -- doesn't have much intellectual / creative / pro-active life, and would end up reading a book or watching TV (not writing pr0n, freeze-framing Jude Law, flipping through art books) if they weren't doing housework. That sounds terribly snobbish of me, but you know what I mean. And as a single woman living alone, I regard writing pr0n as More Beneficial than housework. Though survivors of my cooking may differ.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You are neither snobbish nor wrong, alas!! I was horrified by one email, a "FlyLady testimonial" wherein a "mom" proudly proclaimed that hers was a "book family" because she gave each of her children one book every birthday.

Yes, you read correctly. One.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

Oooh! So by the time they leave home, the kids might have as many as twenty books! How will they find time to read 'em all?

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm definitely with you here. I'm finding the Stepford-wife-ish part of it increasingly oppressive and annoying. I have a feeling that I'll be using the e-mails for a while to get myself into a routine, but at some point, will have to devise my own system to make sure I give value to the things that matter to me.

I already know that I'll keep the 15-minute cleaning bursts- it's been a revelation for me that I can get a lot done in such a short time, rather than intimidating myself by designating an entire day on some project.

I think that my control journal- which I haven't started yet- is going to quickly morph into my own to-do list broken down into bite-size pieces. Instead of a bubble-bath, I'll write porn or make music.

There really needs to be a feminist version of this for those of us who can't live with mess and clutter, but don't want to regress to 50's housewives.

I do have some sympathy for "stay-at-home Moms," because among my friends and aquaintances, those women have given up a certain amount of financial gain and security because they feel it's important to be with their children. And shouldn't feminists be applauding this? I thought the whole point was to give women choices, and not bash them if they made a choice someone else might not.

After my experiences with the whole career thing, I'm quite a bit less enthusiastic about it than I was ten years ago. I'm a lot more interested in being accountable mostly to myself, having a more flexible schedule and adopting a Sri Lankan orphan or two. :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling that I'll be using the e-mails for a while to get myself into a routine, but at some point, will have to devise my own system
Yes, I'm thinking this. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater because the being-nagged has been very effective. And it's sort of fun to get the emails although I do now delete the ones that keep coming round and have made a filter for the FlyLadyMentors ones. Also, I'm in different timezone and it's annoying to wake up in the morning to read the email 'Go to bed!' But it's the own system that's key here. I'm thinking that if we can use this Stepford nagging thing to get ourselves into the swing (and I do like the idea that we need 28 days to establish a new habit! Nice'n'slow.), then we can at one point branch out and just keep doing it on auto-pilot.

Already I am putting away dishes quite promptly! And making the bed fairly automatically! *pats self on back*

(Note: disturbing moment: this morning I scoured the bathroom windows while still standing under the shower. The windows are right next to the bathtub. I used a steel soap pad!!! Then I sprayed the window!! All while still standing under the shower. Okay, that's by the by.)

I can get a lot done in such a short time, rather than intimidating myself by designating an entire day
I, too, find this a wonderful revelation. I, too, have in the past designated days, or even just 'one hour', and I could never get through that kind of time.

my control journal- which I haven't started yet- is going to quickly morph into my own to-do list
I'm thinking that mine might morph into a catch-all for all my lists. I am a chronic listmaker. It is one of the mainstays of my procrastinative life. I already feel disturbingly drawn towards the 'control journal' but I fear that precisely for this reason it may not be the thing for me. Otoh, maybe it will be. Embrace the lists, perhaps?!

Do you like the idea of Office in a Bag? I do!

But I don't want to schedule everything. I resist scheduling the writing of porn.

There really needs to be a feminist version of this
Oh, absolutely! Although part of me wonders whether the cheesy ideology isn't also part of the package. It's a great pity that it is, but perhaps it inevitably is?

I do have some sympathy for "stay-at-home Moms," because among my friends and aquaintances, those women have given up a certain amount of financial gain and security because they feel it's important to be with their children. And shouldn't feminists be applauding this?
I have a lot of mixed responses to this one. I know that my own response is shaped by having two housewives in my immediate vicinity, my mother and my sister, and that their choices disturb me, especially my sister's. I also tend to believe, as a principle, that it is weird for any person to stay at home and that it is only ideology that makes them do it, not real choice. E.g., if women felt confident in state childcare systems and if such systems were affordable, they wouldn't perhaps worry about needing to do the childcare all themselves, and if the ideology of 'it's best for children to be at home with their mothers' did not exist, many women's so-called choice might also change.

I tend to believe that in a democracy dependent on taxes it is good for people to contribute to taxation by working, to be citizens. I'm very in favour of state national health services and state pensions and subsidised childcare and excellent state education -- and all those things can only be sustained if everybody pitches in and pays taxes.

So that is mainly where I am coming from. I know this stance is difficult to uphold when talking to actual women who chose to stay at home; I tend to shut up when around them.

I'm against the approach that feminists should be applauding or not anything. I'm not so sure what's happened to feminism, anyway; at one point it was 'horrible frumpy stay at home mums', and then it was 'housework should be paid', and then it was 'embrace the feminine'. So all of that's historically contingent as well.

contd in part 2

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

part 2

I thought the whole point was to give women choices, and not bash them if they made a choice someone else might not.
Yes, but see my point about the ideological limitations placed on so-called free choice above. After all, if the choice were absolutely personal and down to the individual, you would statistically expect 50 percent of men to be staying at home and caring for the children. As this is not the case, I remain absolutely convinced that the choice made by women is not a purely personal one.

After my experiences with the whole career thing, I'm quite a bit less enthusiastic about it than I was ten years ago. I'm a lot more interested in being accountable mostly to myself, having a more flexible schedule
Oh, that I can empathise with completely. That's less ideology than experience. And a matter of figuring out how to achieve such a schedule in a practical way.

[verylisa.livejournal.com]

I've been 'doing' Flylady for about a year now. (Thoughts of me and Flylady in carnal relations have just intruded rather scarily into my mind. Um.)

I have a Control Journal but rarely look at it. The main benefit was in creating it, rather than obsessively checking it every day.

I activate the email reminders whenever I feel the need, but mostly I've absorbed as much of the system as I want, and the rest is just the idealogy that I don't want.

The things that have stuck:
- Saving Dinner for meals. It really is useful, even if the ingredients lists are still too North American for me.
- Pre-sort laundry (separate hampers for darks and whites), chuck in a load every morning, get it dried and sorted and put away same day.
- Swish and swipe the bathroom every day.
- Bedtime routine for my daughter. That was a life-saver.
- War on clutter. If I have to bring new crap into the house, I have to get rid of some old crap to make room for it.
- Sinks are mostly clean, most of the time. But I don't have a dishwasher, and I'm not going to hand-dry my dishes, so they mostly air-dry overnight.
- Thinking of housework as a blessing to myself and my daughter. It really is a gift to ourselves when our house is clean and welcoming. I'm a happier person when my home environment is organised and clean.
- The timer. We use it ALL THE TIME. My daughter loves it.
- Racing the timer. I can do anything for fifteen minutes. And fifteen minutes really does make a difference. Housework done imperfectly is still a blessing.

I think I needed to attempt to embrace most of the program before I could judge what worked and what didn't work for me. As in, following the instructions fairly closely just to give them a fair chance to work. Then I dropped the things that didn't work, or seemed a waste of effort, and just kept reinforcing the ones that did.