Oh boy, would you appreciate this household!
I’m not allowed near the washer and dryer, but am now permitted to load the dishwasher after 3-1/2 years. I’m allowed to do pots and pans in the sink and clean floors and occasionally OK’d to clean bathrooms.
I rock at home repairs, cooking and baking!
I went without a washer or dryer for a few years and just got down to a small rotation of clothes that I washed more often since large loads were pretty overwhelming. Couldn’t take clothes to the laundromat because all I had was a motorcycle and there were none in walking distance. Sinks work for smaller items, but I had better luck with a bathtub or shower for pants and shirts. I had two pair of pants and maybe three shirts. With the shower I would just get in with them. Dried them over a line in the shower. There I was lucky to live in a dry climate so things didn’t take long to dry.
Call me a traditionalist:
Oh, you pain me with your assumption!
Of the household chores, I love doing laundry. It is one of the easiest chores and I am actually good at folding. I can even fold a fitted sheet. When I was married I did like 90% of the laundry, even when we had cloth diapers. When I was a kid I did most of the household laundry of 5 people. Now I do all the chores! Eventually…
But now I don’t have easy access to a machine. I don’t really want to go to a laundromat if I don’t have to. (Are they open?) Going to a laundromat vs having your own machine uses so many goddamn spoons… and quarters!
I get we have it soooo easy compared to the days of the washboard. But I’d suck it up and go to the laundromat before investing in a washboard or some other user powered device.
I appreciate my own, where we do have pretty equal work in house work. Not all my sisters are so lucky.
Guys, really… I don’t need a list of how nice you are to your wives!
Well, order a hand machine from amazon, which are more efficient and less work than a washboard (and modern clothes don’t need nearly as much scrubbing as olden-times clothes…):
Or wash by hand in your tub? How do you think laundry got done prior to those labor saving devices… elbow grease!
The ‘plunger’ is known as a dolly. One of my aunts was still using one of these well into the 1980s. I remember playing with it when I was little in the 1960s, but it was genuinely the way she did the laundry. She and my uncle also had an outside lavatory, as did my school. (Small country town, south Cheshire, UK)
I have a hunch what this woman needs is a swift kick in the pants.
I was referring to how we divide up the domestic efforts, not any of the things I do to be nice to her. (Which are numerous and varied, I’ll have you know.)
I know… just joking there!
I do think it’s important to remember that domestic work is still often considered “women’s work” on the whole, and that women still often have the “double shift”. It is great to see guys who don’t buy into that and understand that house work is human work. Lots of men really don’t.
[long post redacted]
Thank dog. My fingers were cramping from all the typing.
As I so often am, glad to have been wrong. Had this been a meatspace discussion, “Wow, that’s sexist!” probably would have fallen out of my mouth before I caught myself.
I’ve lived with four partners over the years, and have never done much of the traditional gender roles stuff. Currently, she’s the breadwinner and I’m the housewife.
I can only count my blessings that at last I am not using the wooden dolly as laundresses had done in Victorian times:
Ye gods.
Truth!
I am now trying to squeeze in a third shift. Getting the veg garden sorted (late!). Weeding, composting and mulching aplenty to get the melons planted.
We’ve got a plan to do some vertical melon farming on one of the perpetual wet spots in our dirt. Haven’t quite made it happen yet, though.
More to the point, why do you need socks and underwear anyway? They don’t show on zoom.
I’ve literally worn one pair of socks in the past month, and that was for going to get groceries.
I could make a similar claim about underwear, but I can neither confirm nor deny that.