31 days of circuit breaking: On chores
Staying at home so much for a sustained period of time has made me realize how much time one can devote just to the upkeep of a house. My previously nomadic lifestyle meant that in both the US and Singapore I spent ~60% of my time traveling for work and living out of hotel rooms. As a result I didn't much experience the daily rhythms of living somewhere permanent and taking care of the space around me... for better or for worse. Of course, this period has changed that. Some brief thoughts:
Time is so easily swallowed up. I vaguely thought that the circuit breaker period might mean a bit more empty time for reflection / life admin / random hobbies especially on the weekend, but it's amazing how much household work can expand to fill the time. We've always done a weekly house cleaning on Saturdays (my specialty is toilets) but even though that process has been optimized to an inch of its life, there always seem to be other things that need taking care of - decluttering my study desk, for example, or helping out in the kitchen whenever Mum is cooking. In addition there are new routines which previously were once a week things but now have become a daily reality - e.g. figuring out what to eat for each meal and how to get it (easy for one person, exponentially trickier the more people are involved), going to pick up food, the resulting dish washing and drying. Perfectly normal and everyday activities, I suppose, but constantly living out of hotels and living on my own meant I didn't devote as much time and mental space to them before. And there's always something else that should be done - filing of documents, properly dusting my room, the next load of laundry.
But we adapt. I'll admit, one of the biggest challenges about moving back home was getting used to the chores as a family. Neatness etc is somewhat subjective but I have it on roommate references that I'm generally pretty tidy, yet Mum takes it to another level (as moms often do). When I lived alone it was easy to clean the house once every two(ish) weeks and laundry once a week and not think too much about dust particles but now we clean once a week, laundry almost every day and spend a good part of each evening scrubbing the sink and turning over the drying rack to let it drip dry. Part of it has to do with climate and environment, as the heat and humidity here means almost-always-open windows (and resulting dust) plus prime conditions for roaches and lizards and scum and whatnot if things aren't kept relentlessly clean and dry. Initially it felt dreadfully tedious to set aside a couple of hours every Saturday for cleaning and have to think about laundry and dishwashing every evening but somehow I've gotten used to it and don't chafe at it as much any more. I even have my own established protocol for bathroom cleaning (toilet, floors, shower, sink, glass - in that order) which is accompanied by whatever "made for you" Spotify playlist of trashy pop/club songs that I play on my phone speakers. I don't think I'll ever enjoy chores and find them therapeutic in the way some people do (was blessed to have multiple roommates who did, lol) but eh, they're okay. We'll survive.
"Mental load". (Read this comic on what it is.) Being more immersed in Mum's world during this period has made me think more about not just the time spent on household activities but also the effort that goes into planning, prioritizing and organizing them and overseeing every detail. Growing up, I used to wonder why Mum got peeved over us not "taking initiative" with things around the house; now I understand a bit better. It's tough, though, because though Dad and I try to help out, I often find it difficult to predict the way she would want something to be done (the "project manager" metaphor is applicable in many ways...) It's taken a good number of missed attempts since I moved home to be at a place where I can (mostly) figure out what is missing in any household scene and try to fix it without being told to, and it's still not all smooth sailing, but I'll keep trying. Stepping back though, I wonder:
How do we help men (and children!) take on some of the mental load given (1) that we may be genuinely clueless and (2) that there often is an existing "sovereignty" over the household exerted by the mom/wife/etc (for better or for worse)?
How should I manage this in the future if I ever became a mom/wife/etc in a household of my own?
Growing up, learning to live with others. Even with these adjustments, though, I've been content. I've told a couple of people that living on my own all these past years has been incredibly fun and gave me valuable space and independence, but moving home feels like moving forward (which I know flies in the face of the "grow up by moving out of your parents' home" ethos in many places!) In many instances, the discomfort and interruptions of sharing a household with my parents have forced me to consider needs beyond my own and what it means to share in the responsibility for caring for our physical environment and for each other. And there's fun along the way - the joy of baking with Mum, lots of conversations around the laundry rack and kitchen sink, inside jokes about the way the washing machine sings or the new tap sprays forth and so on... These little moments are the ones that linger, I suppose, that make up the tapestry of our time together, often called forth at unexpected times.
Learning new things, and what to do with my hands. For the Boston Fellows program a few years ago, I read a passage from The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite friar who wrote about meditating on God throughout every his day of work at the monastery, from cleaning to cooking. I remember thinking frustratedly that I almost never thought of God throughout my workday, through the writing of Excel formulas and the sketching of slides and the making of presentations. I voiced this during one of our discussions and and the director of the program gently reminded me how much of our work these days is mind-work, requiring mental concentration on some (usually non-God-related) topic, crowding the mind. Given that I spend most of my day working with my head, it's nice to give my hands a task other than typing furiously on a keyboard, whether it's scrubbing pans or hanging out clothes to dry. I'm also learning about systems that I never really understood in detail before - last week, I helped Mum and Dad to replace a leaky kitchen tap and so boosted my knowledge of plumbing! On one hand, being unable to travel feels like missing out on a bunch of different experiences "out there," but on the other hand there's probably a lot of new stuff to be discovered right where I am.
P.S. If anyone can tell me the name of the below essential plumbing item (not sure it's really "faucet wrench pipe spanner allen key tube ring tube ring plumbing tool"), I would be eternally grateful!
