It is said that money and housework are the most commmonly argued topics in a relationship. Sadly, these statistics may actually ring true. In addition to her writing hobby, Miss Cheapist plugs away at a stable, but not lucrative, public sector job, while her partner is a self-employed artist and consultant. Her work is routinized, interpersonal and service-driven. His work is technical, inconsistent and client-driven. Tensions arise whenever the subject of a shared income, and their obvious counterpart, shared domestic responsibilities, arise. When friends hear about his inability to adhere to a "chore wheel," the vitrolic arguments about who does more, riddled with phrases from childhood like "pulling ones weight," and his scathing critiques of Miss Cheapist's shoe habit, they usually shake their heads and say, "just hire a cleaning person." According to them, paying for someone else to clean allows a couple to elevate their relationship above the profanity of domestic life, freeing up their time to discuss more exciting topics like having better sex, planning a family, and buying a country home.
But Miss Cheapist cannot "afford" a cleaning person, nor does she think a working couple living together, without children or any limiting physical disabilities, should have to rely on one. Affording a housekeeper is a moral and financial issue for Miss Cheapist. Even though she is not struggling financially, she is not exactly thriving either. Like others in her peer group with higher educations and middle class families, she knows that she will never be destitute, and yet spending a few hundred dollars extra a month for cleaning seems an extravagance. Some would respond that they don't have the time to clean, and want to spend their free time on leisure activities. That's totally valid! Let's not discount the importance of relaxation, especially as employers demand more in this new economy. Still, it seems, if a couple can not learn to negotiate their work, leisure and home responsibilities, and devise a language of sacrifice around keeping house, it seems weightier topics will be equally difficult to tackle. Miss Cheapist has stubbornly refused to hire a cleaning person, yet she is bored with arguing. Is cleaning a metaphor for something else in the relationship? Is okay to let a couple "off the hook" by letting someone else do their dirty business? Isn't some of the "small stuff" worth sweating? If she hires a housekeeper, she may never find out.
4 comments:
miss. cheapist-
i have a fabu cleaning person! her name is:
merecedes
she can be reached at:
718-505-8311
she is amazing!
xoxo
It might help if you think of it a little like a pyramid scheme. Cleaning people are often those less educated than or less fortunate than you and have chosen that life to support their families. To that end, they hope to send their kids through college to achieve the middle class dream that you have now attained. I guess one way to look at it, and the way that many people probably do in order to justify their choices, is that by not hiring a cleaning person, you are creating a system where demand for cleaning people is low, and therefore, wages will also be suppressed, and jobs not created. So you might be killing two birds with one stone - achieve marital bliss and help the economy. But at the same time, you may be perpetuating the greater evil of a system in which hierarchical economies and pyramid schemes like this do exist. And that may not be a price worth paying.
Make Mister Cheapist do the cleaning, and if he doesn't ... withhold sex.
hiring a cleaning lady is only for the big stuff like washing floors, cleaning toilets, etc. you still have to deal with wiping up spills, dishes, etc. they can get a man to the moon, but they cannot eliminate this kind of grunt work from life.
Question for Miss Cheapist:
Would you pay someone to re-caulk your bathtub?
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