by Marie Snyder

Emma Wilkins’ excellent piece “On Housecraft” in The Philosopher, discusses Helen Hayward’s book, Home Work: Essays on Love & Housekeeping in such a compelling way as to provoke some thoughts without having actually read the book in question. So this is a critique of a review of a book I haven’t read, but on a topic most of us relate to intimately. 

Like me, and many of us, Wilkins hates cleaning and is working through how to make the drudgery more palatable. She’s “more likely to make the bathroom less dirty than property clean.” Likewise, to take the confessions even further, cobweb strands are clearly visible from where I’m currently sitting in my kitchen.

Wilkins and Haywood raise a long-standing struggle for fairness in this field and pin the problem on daily chores being beneath our dignity, so they explore elevating the art of cleaning and finding personal benefits in the work. These paths might help, but I wonder if it could also help to revere the battle around equity and to lower and ground this regular exertion.     

NOBLE AND ADVANTAGEOUS EFFORTS

Haywood has found a way to embrace housework as a method of demonstrating caring. As an artform, it can become a noble pursuit to have a well-kept home. Wilkins writes that our disdain for chores is relatively new as Aristotle recognized that, 

“…’oikonomia’ or ‘household management’ contributed to the wellbeing of the community, thereby serving a higher purpose. … It’s not surprising that, in a secular individualistic culture, cultivating servant-hearted humility holds little appeal. Work done in the home might not earn us money, or praise, or even gratitude. But the more we’re motivated by care, and love, the more noble the work is.”

Wilkins later states her position: “I can’t see our attitudes to the work itself changing any time soon.” Instead, she hopes to endure the grind by seeing the work as personally beneficial: “Far from being a ‘waste’ of time, it could be time spent thinking, reflecting, practising, and learning. It could benefit our health as well.” If we hate that the dishes need doing again, at least we can reap some side benefits from it, like hitting our fitness goals by working our wax-on-wax-off muscles. I used this line of reasoning when I had little ones who always wanted to be in my arms. I was getting buff from carrying them around!  Read more »