Man, 50, does housework for the first time.
Okay, so the headline is a lie. Kind of. This isn’t my first time — it just feels that way.
Yes, growing up I did almost nothing. I picked up my clothes off the bathroom floor (after I was reminded). I put my dishes in the dishwasher (sometimes).
Then college. The odd thing about college and cleaning was that I just don’t remember anyone doing it. Yes, maybe the dishes. We had a washing machine and a line but I can’t recall using either much. I guess, mostly we just lived with mess.
And that carried on into my first post-college home. I was employed by then and had discovered launderette service washes. The nearby Safeways had a shirt laundry facility. I’d get five shirts washed each week for work.
But there are additional horrifying details. I smoked then. A lot. Even at my desk and it never occurred to me that I smelled. In fact, we would even go out to smoky pubs after work then on to a club or a curry house and then…
…wear the same suit the next day.
Most of us only had one suit and dry cleaning was a couple of times a year. The British stank as recently as the 90s.
As for the home I shared with two other early twenty-something males — sure we probably tidied *sometimes*. But mostly we were just happy to live with mess. Even visiting girlfriends didn’t seem bothered by it.
Then my first house on my own (once a week cleaner, service washes and continued mess-overlooking).
Then living with a partner (I did *my fair share*)
Then I was a spoilt expat ( I did *nothing*)
Okay, again, not nothing. I did 90% of the cooking. Sometimes I even washed up. I cared for a kid (either side of local nursery care with luxuriously long days).
But we also had a housekeeper for two hours each morning and we lived among shiny floors and sparkling appliances. My clothes were washed the same day. I thought two hours’ employment was being kind. After all, it doesn’t take that long to keep a house clean.
I now find, it does.
Because if you’re not doing *all* the housework then you’re not really doing housework at all. If you’re not doing what a single parent with limited resources does (side note: I am now a single parent) then you can’t really gauge the enormity of it.
Because, I’m back in England with a seven-year-old. Without partner. Without housekeeper. I’m also without a job — although I’ve secured one starting later this month.
I recently did 3,000 steps without leaving the house. Just pottering. Picking up stuff. Folding clothes. Occasionally going wild and wiping down a sink. It’s just two of us and yet this seems endless.
There is a nanosecond between being entirely caught up on laundry and being three loads behind. Tidying around my daughter basically means moving her into a different room, picking up the mess she has left behind, then repeating this in her new location.
There are tasks I have discovered. The dust that settles on skirting boards. Not only did I never clean this before, I didn’t realise that someone had been doing it the whole time.
Housework can expand to fill a whole day. Day after day.
Between 18 and 30 you can overlook squalor. It’s almost expected of you. At 50, with a kid — it’s not cool.
I’m blessed to have wonderful nearby family who will babysit at a moment’s notice but, 90% of the time, if I need to buy even a single item from a shop it means negotiating the kid into the car. Supermarket trips are an exercise in bribe management. (Promise little and only at the end — *if you’ve been good*).
The new job will be mercifully flexible and the hours are a little short of full time. That means school runs can be covered. It means I can spend time with my kid between 3.30pm and bedtime… and there won’t be that much more work to catch up on before sleep.
When they called me to say I had the job — they complimented me on my research. My mum had the little one the night before the interview. That’s when I researched — I’m pretty sure I’d never had found the time otherwise.
I have nearby family support. I have savings. I have my health. I have only one child. I have a home. A car. A job! I am extraordinarily fortunate.
But previously, I don’t think I am alone in finding that so much of what had been done for me, largely invisible.
