viviendo con yo

i caught myself today, thinking "i can't wait until i live alone."

its no secret certain things around here endlessly drive me crazy. maybe i'm just too old. maybe by 30(ish) we're too set in our ways to gracefully live with the rules of those with whom we disagree. different household ideologies*...

and the little things get me so frustrated. i keep telling myself the daily frustrations are a small trade off for living in a nice building in a location i enjoy. but the truth is, i think 1/2 the reason i want this grant is that it will give me an excuse to move out asap.

and i can't help but notice the gendered nature of household ideologies i've observed. the first time i lived with others in an independent household (meaning, not a university dormitory) outside of my parents' home (for an extended period of time) was when i lived with folks on hamlin. we managed to get along pretty well, and divide chores and such, but not without the "chore wheel" created by the other woman living in the apartment. when she left and i lived with 3 men, the chore wheel when down the toilet and things deteriorated to the point that i refused to do dishes because no one else would. i kept 1 set of dishes in my room, which i washed in the bathroom sink after each meal, because the kitchen sink was so full of quickly molding boy-used dishes.

later in life, i lived with cutsofbeef, who defied gender stereotypes in many ways. on friday nights he liked to drink a bottle of wine, do some baking, and clean the apartment with no small amount of method products. which of course was perfectly fine with me. but my point here is not that he defied the construct i'm setting up. my point is that he felt no need to regiment cleaning. it was something done when someone wants to do it or sees a need for it. there was no need for charts, schedules, or lists. cleaning was managed laissez faire. its only been women i've lived with that have needed hard and fast schedules, rules, and routines.

and its this regimentation and surveillance that drives me crazy. i live in a foucaultian cleaning panopticon. i get emails asking when i will be mopping the floor, or askance comments about whether i used the "correct" cleaning product for a certain task. maybe its my own fault for being non-confrontational, but i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take it any more. except that i probably will.

and then the other side of all this is, i actually will never live alone again. my little house in the country and my garden apartment at the bottom of the hill will be my only forays. however, when i move, i will get to live with someone who i, for the most part, actually share much household ideology. if anything, i'm the clean(er) freak. but there is little nagging or passive agressive insinuations about the frequency or method by which cleaning occurs. sure i probably strongly suggest on occasion that there is way too much dust hiding beneath the couch, and he can't understand why anyone would use any product other than bon ami (or perhaps feigns ignorance that anyone could possibly think anything else might be effective). but on the whole, we agree on cleaning, cooking, energy usage, and clutter levels. and that is one of the most reassuring things i can think of.

* i'm either coining or misusing the term household ideology. either way, what i mean is simply the cooking, cleaning, technology & resource use, and organizational patterns of the home to which people ascribe a level of neutral naturalness and common sensicality. ie. it is obviously totally logical to clean the bathroom once a week, or is obviously totally logical to clean the bathroom bathroom when it seems to be getting "dirty."