It’s Sunday, and as usual, I’m waiting in line at the grocery store, mentally building the day’s to-do list: wash the vegetables, prep salads, make the protein bowls, then wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. By the time I’d slide my neat stack of Tupperware containers into the refrigerator, the day would be more than half over, and the Monday Dreads would already be creeping in. Somehow, I’d become a Trad Wife with a 50+ hour a week job.
Bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.
It’s unsurprising if you take a glance at how I was raised. The passive cultural shaping and outright indoctrination from my years in the Lucky Clover Girls’ 4H club, and Home Economics classes, plus the blueprints provided by only-partially-liberated female role models, folded me into the shape of a homemaker. Being a good cook, a good housekeeper and adept at chores and finances were unspoken KPIs that I readily onboarded.
Even while simultaneously collecting signatures for the Equal Rights Amendment and writing angry letters to Phyllis Schlaffley, I was internalizing those values. I could have a career as long as I also succeeded at ALL the other womanly arts.
I knew the Game. I hated the Game. And I could not deny the flush of joy when I won the Game. Having the whole Thanksgiving dinner ready at the same time. 500 points. Sparkling clean floors. 100 points. Never running low on toilet paper or toothpaste. 50 points. Making bone broth from a chicken carcass. 75 points.
The Game kicked into hyperdrive during Covid. My inner Laura Ingalls Wilder came to stay. I planted a garden. I fermented my own hot sauce. I made my own tomato soup (or Bloody Mary mix—depending on your supply of vodka). I tried and succeeded making decent sourdough bread. I attempted, and failed repeatedly, to find a palatable way to eat zucchini. I made quilts, and tailored my clothes. I groomed our dogs (even the pedicures!) and hoarded enough sundries to open a bodega.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m back in the office at a demanding full-time job, spending 15 hours a week grocery shopping and preparing food. Throw in a few hours of laundry, washing windows, scooping dog poop, and wiping floorboards. So. Much. Housework. Taxes. Runs to the recycling center. Yardwork. I was chatelaine of the manse and head janitor, doing everything to provide a smooth and comfortable existence. I had a good life. And I was exhausted.
More of a break through than a break down.
I shared my insights with my spouse in a manner that in no way resembled am emotional breakdown, and we eventually arrived at the decision to throw some money at the problem. We both have jobs that come with long hours and cognitive loads that require evening couch rots to survive. We got a monthly gardener visit for $120. He admitted he really didn’t enjoy the yardwork and would rather spend time riding his motorcycles. We booked a monthly deep clean for $250. We could handle the off-week tidy-ups easily enough.
For the first time, we booked a pet groomer. It turns out Tucker doesn’t mind having his nails done…just having me do them. We also subscribed to a prepared meal delivery service for lunches and some dinners.
Outsourcing my unpaid labor to professionals was not cheap. I was shocked after updating our budget, that it would total close to my first year’s salary after grad school. I can’t promise I won’t revert back to old ways. I haven’t necessarily put the newly free time to its highest purpose, with the urge to “tackle a little chore” pulling at me in quiet moments. Part of the same training that landed me in a Safeway on a sunny weekend comparing brands of garbanzo beans, teaches me that it borders on sin to pay someone else do something you’re capable of doing.
It runs in the family.
The phone rings. It’s my Dad. He’s calling me “between quilts” while his machines are running. He retired for the first time at 62 and it didn’t stick. The second time he retired at 70, he bought two long-arm quilting machines, and since then has been working 60-hour weeks from his home, quilting the piece-worked tops and plain bottoms together for dozens of artisans.
He’s quilted over 10,000 pieces since then, and regularly comments about how demanding his schedule is (sucks to be your own boss), but plans to really retire, this time for good, at 85.
He tells me about his latest quilt commissions, the new motherboard needed to run the larger machine, that he mowed his yard and the church grounds, and that he has to run because it’s a bowling night.
That same compulsion to always being doing is in me. If I am not careful and aware, I will build a dungeon of chores for myself, forging each link in the chain. Wrapping it around my own neck, complaining all the while about its weight and my loss of freedom. My life is more than half over. I’m not seeking a legacy, or some infamy for my name or deeds. I merely want to be able to give myself permission to enjoy more and task less.
Perhaps new KPIs on my dashboard are required: Witnessed a stunning full moon rise: 500 points. Took a nap with my spouse and dogs on a Saturday afternoon: 100 points. Repurposed a broken piece of bric-a-brac into something amazing: 75 points. Looked at a photo album and remembered an adventure shared: 200 points.
