I tend to be a bit strange when it comes to books. I have trouble getting rid of them, and unless there is something especially vile about them, I am reluctant to even trade them in at a used book store. So sometimes there will be a book on my shelf that will just one day say “Read Me” and I realize that I haven’t for whatever reason. Last night Caligula jumped into my bookcase and was attacking my books, and a book on the shelf did that last night, Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House.
I recieved this book for Christmas in 1999 from my father. I was 18 at the time and it was difficult for me to hide my distaste for it. I figured it was probably some jab at my mother for not being a housewife (I was probably correct about this), and I’m a liberated woman dammit, I don’t need to play housewife! What I didn’t realize is that SOMEONE is going to have to keep the house looking nice someday, both men and women need to worry about cleaning, and a book like this which gives a lot of tips and tricks to doing house work can be very helpful. When I moved out (early 2000) I shoved this book at the bottom of a box, it stayed there until this winter, when I finally had shelf space for all my books.
So I started actually reading this book the other night
I decided to try and find out if this book had some sort of official site, I had little luck, but I did find a couple articles that seemed to strongly dislike this book. Now granted, the woman who wrote it is a neat freak, but come on, is there any other sort of person who would write an 800+ page book on keeping house? Probably not. Her expectations are high, but the virtues of this book FAR outweigh anything you could complain about. I find this book wonderful and amazingly helpful, if you want to open your mouth and spout some feminist babble to me I’m going to clobber you with this book.
I guess I’m just sick of this feminist/anti-feminist war. It can make someone such as myself very unsure as to what my place in society is. I’m currently really struggling with this. I went as far as to do some studying of the roles women played in the past, and learned how untradtional the postcard “traditional housewife” of the 1950’s actually was. Women prior to that did house work, but it was some serious work, laundering was a heavy chore without automatic clothes washers, cleaning the carpets was much more difficult without a vacuum, the heating sources used in the previous centuries tended to be quite dirty and made homes much dirtier than ours today, sewing was something that was done so you and your children had clothes, not as a hobby… In reality, the 1950’s was an anomaly. Technology was just beginning to make a huge difference on the amount of free time that a woman could enjoy. Which shines an interesting new light on how many misconceptions about a woman’s role there are.
I guess this brings me to where I am now. Yet again wondering what I’m doing. I guess I can rest assured that there are plenty of people my age in the same boat, so it’s not like my problem is strange. I suppose this lost feeling is just part of becoming an adult. I do have interests, even if I am having trouble forming this into a concrete idea for a career. As far as the basics of my life (where I want to be physically, who I want to be with) I’m very secure.
It’s crazy how 22 can be such a crappy and wonderful age all at once. I’m definately happy and not bored, in fact I’m quite busy. I am still learning a lot and making progress in all sorts of fields I’m interested in. M
y house is nice and clean and my garden is looking great. I just haven’t worked at a job in over a month.
*wanders off*