Let’s talk about housework for a minute. Supposedly, there are women who actually enjoy doing it because they find it relaxing or whatever. I don’t know any of these women. I’m going to generalize and say that most women hate having to keep the house clean. Household maintenance gets even more onerous when you’re responsible for the bulk of it.
According to a 2023 article on npr.org, women are still doing the majority of the housework even when they work outside the home full-time. If you’re a woman, in an opposite-sex marriage, this isn’t news to you. You know this is happening because you’re dealing with it every day. And you may be resentful about it because if you share your home with other people, you shouldn’t be the only person concerned with keeping it clean.
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A Solution
After reading the above article, not wanting to sit in a resentful funk for too long, I went out in search of something that would make me feel better. I decided to read Fair Play by Eve Rodsky. The first half of her book walks you through her ah-ha moment, the realization that despite working full time as a lawyer, she was still carrying the burden of doing most of the housework.
Eve, being a brilliantly creative thinker, produced the Fair Play Deck (with the help of moms far and wide). This deck of cards is a companion to the book and includes one card for each of the household tasks that fall mostly to women. If you haven’t heard about it, you need to head over to Amazon and get you a deck right now. She divides the cards into categories: magic (maintaining relationships), caregiving (self-explanatory), out (socializing), wild (unexpected stuff) and home (cleaning, meal prep, etc.). I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have a deck of these cards laid out on a table to help wrap your mind around how much women are expected to do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Y’all, the deck includes 102 cards!
My only complaint is that she has one card for “cleaning.” Even when a woman tries to outline all the unpaid work we do, she still couldn’t cover it all. Women do a lot! This one “cleaning” card could never encompass what a ridiculously huge and exhausting endeavor it is. You could probably create another 102 cards to detail all the tasks that go into just cleaning. (I’m tempted to suggest an expansion pack for the original deck.)
How to Play
Ideally, you will sit down with your spouse and other members of your family old enough to take on these tasks and divide the cards up. The key here is to account for all the invisible chores that need to get done and make sure someone owns it. Rodsky admits the cards may not always end up being divided equally. In the end, the magic is in the negotiation taking place and the acknowledgement that there is a ton to do. Those invisible tasks are now visible and everyone is getting credit for doing their part–including and especially moms and women.
Now you can go about creating a manageable schedule for yourself that involves (hopefully) a realistic number of tasks. It may be tempting to schedule and manage the tasks for others. Eve warns against this. Handing off cards means that the members of your family holding them are responsible for managing their tasks from beginning to end. Not only does it free you from the physical toll of having to do the task, it also frees you of the mental load. According to Eve, everyone must exercise a minimum standard of care for each task.
The Fair Play system isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest we’ve come to addressing the issue of the imbalance of household work that’s so common in most homes.
Want to learn about other ways to make cleaning easier? Check out this blog post:
9 Ways To Make Cleaning Easier
Why This Is Important (Soapbox Moment)
While the cards are an amazing way of balancing out the household work so you’re not left feeling resentful, the true brilliance in Eve’s system is the Fair Play book itself. She eloquently explains how sometimes trying to keep an immaculate home all by yourself, along with all the other things you’re expected to do, is a losing game. Here were some of my infuriating take-aways after reading her book:
- The weight of all that invisible labor women are expected to do is causing real suffering that no one is acknowledging.
- Women still do three times as much unpaid domestic work as men.
- Women’s time is considered less valuable than men’s time. (This is why men are given more credit for doing the same tasks. They’re heroes when they “help.”)
- Doing all the tasks to run a household is more than a full-time job, which is why we always feel like we’re behind.
- Society keeps us convinced that it’s our responsibility to do all the domestic work and shames us for needing a break.
I could go on but I think you get the idea.
So what’s my point in presenting all this besides glazing Eve Rodsky and her system? My point is that maybe the key is to do less cleaning and household work rather than worrying about whether or not you can get it all done. Even as a stay-at-home mom, it’s not reasonable to expect one person to do everything required to manage a household.
I left my full-time job years ago because I figured out I couldn’t do two full-time jobs at once. As a stay-at-home mom (who homeschools her teens and blogs on the side), I’ve realized that there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Instead of cutting down on things I enjoy so I can have a Pinterest-worthy home, I’ve decided to become more comfortable with the chaos. I’ve decided to no longer care about societal expectations or side-eye from my husband and the rest of my family. It’s a mindset shift you may want to consider in order to protect your sanity.
I’m taking a page out of Melanie Sanders’ book. She’s a creator over on TikTok and Instagram who started the We Do Not Care Club. She creates videos for middle-aged women who can’t be bothered to care about things society thinks they should care about. And yes, cleaning is one of those things she and the members of her club don’t care about anymore.
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