The Joy of Housework

Laura Vanderkam

Here is another post at Laura Vanderkam’s “Just a Minute” online newsletter. She is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2010).

To check out all the resources that Vanderkam offers, please click here.

To read my interview of her, please click here.

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Much has changed in the last 50 years. Perhaps most notably? Our relationship with our brooms. While American men are spending more time tidying (a more than 100% increase from 1965 to 2000), American women are spending a lot less.

Back in 1965, married mothers spent around 35 hours per week tending their homes. Labor market economists consider 35 hours the definition of a full-time job. These days, it’s under 20 hours per week, and among women who work full-time, it’s down to 14. 
 
I ponder these statistics every time my raft of April magazines arrives, many celebrating spring cleaning in vivid detail. Real Simple in particular is prone to creating artful spreads on cleaning your grout with lemon; this April’s issue features a stack of neatly folded towels (and a fluffy chick) on the cover.

In her monthly letter to readers, editor Kristin van Ogtrop has an explanation for this rather retro obsession: Olympia Snowe likes to clean! At a Fortune conference not long ago, Snowe (the senator from Maine) mentioned that she cleans to relax. Van Ogtrop viewed this as a sign of progress. “It’s perfectly all right for a powerful, accomplished woman to admit that she likes to clean — no one will bat an eye.” Of course, “perhaps the only reason a U.S. senator likes to clean is because she doesn’t have to.” I kind of buy this explanation myself. When you don’t have to clean, you can turn it into a luxurious experience, buying high-end Caldrea products that have more in common with aromatherapy than Mr. Clean.
 
Or perhaps there’s more to it than that.

Cleaning is “so satisfying because it usually has a clear beginning, middle and end,” van Ogtrop writes. “There is a direct correlation between effort and reward. The results are measurable and almost immediate.” There is a striking parallel with cleaning out one’s inbox. When you delete an email, or file it, or answer every note, you feel like you’ve done something.
 
But have you? It’s tempting to slake our desire for accomplishment with easy wins.

But at the end of your life, will you be proudest of your clean house and empty inbox, or the non-profit you managed, the books you wrote, the children you nurtured?

Women actually spend more time interacting with their children these days than they did in 1965, even though far more of us participate in the labor force as well. Our declining devotion to housework was a big factor in making this possible. An April scrubbing may be nice. But a romp in the spring mud with your kids might be better. 
 
All the best,
 
Laura

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As noted, Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based journalist, is the author of 168 Hours. She is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues. She is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, City Journal, Whole Living, Good and other publications. She enjoys running and singing soprano in the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and she lives with her husband and two young sons.