Being the wife

I'm over a month in to my six-week stint as a housewife, and I think I rock at it.  While my partner makes the big bucks, works late, and juggles meetings, my responsibilities have been focused on hearth and home.  What with trying to offload the old apartment and move into a new one, it's unclear how anyone with a full time job would have been able to do it all.  For most of July, my part-time job was to conduct apartment showings, set up contractor estimates, and clean, clean, clean.  Then, it was to unpack boxes, find a place for everything, and clean, clean clean.  And organize.  I've been doing so much organizing, I feel like my second home might be the Container Store.  My life is bourgeoisie-fest summer 2011, and we are sleeping indoors on freshly laundered sheets.  You're welcome.

So I know I got the second shift and emotion work down - what can I say, I'm from North Carolina and I had strong housewife-modeling.  And for the most part, being a housewife is as compatible with my introverted personality as being an academic.  In our big, scary world, sometimes it's easier to just stay home and clean out the linen closet, or bang out a dissertation intro (and in case you were wondering...check and check!).  My cancer sign tendencies also incline me to be a homebody, nestled into my safe, warm, color-coordinated crab shell.  It's quiet in here, and I know where the ice cream is.

But being a privileged housewife is also as remarkably underwhelming as Betty Friedan diagnosed several decades ago.  I love solving the puzzle of where all the pot lids will go as much as the next professional Elfa installer, but it's just not very stimulating.  Of course, coming up with a grocery list and running the dishwasher are all necessary and vital tasks to a fully-functioning household, and I would never begrudge any person who takes on housework as their full time duties.  Lots of people (especially women, especially women of color from Global South nations) do this for their careers, although vastly under-compensated and under-appreciated.

But seriously...there really has got to be more to life than this.  I may be glorifying the masculine work sphere when I say this, but I liked the second shift work better when it was actually my second shift.

So now I'm wondering...have I internalized the paternalistic attitude towards housework?  It's not like my partner is putting any pressure on me to do any of this...God knows she wouldn't care if I waited another week to sort the Tupperware.  (In fact, I should accept the fact now that I'll probably always be the one to sort the Tupperware.)  I have that dual identity pulling me in both directions - the socialized training that has inducted me into the ways of sorting Tupperware (and you must sort it!  Not sorting it is not an option!), and the socialized training that has me utterly convinced more fulfilling, stimulating, and important work rests beyond my front door.  Fulfilling and stimulating...probably, unless I do Excel spreadsheets all day.  More important?  Now that's the socialization talking.

Or it could be that, just because I'm super awesome at something, it doesn't mean it's something I should take on as my life's work.  Like most things, it's probably a bit of both.  I read the Dykes to Watch Out For collection over the past few days, and while it's made me a little anxious about all the future issues I have to look forward to in my relationship (why do they always end up in couples' therapy?!), it's also reminded me of how complicated our problems are, and how applying our intellectual neurosis to them is usually more comedic than effectual at solving them.  We all have to balance social justice inclinations with salaried work, our obligations to others, and, in the end, someone has to do the dishes.  You're welcome.