Comments on: Housewifely Virtues 1: Clothing Management

By: Transition Times :: Transition Times » Blog Archive » Peak Oil Is Still a Women’s Issue, and Other Reflections on Sex, Gender and the Long Emergency

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:54:34 +0000

[...] for pregnant and nursing women, and what kind of menstrual supplies you might need post-zombie, why I think people who demean housewifely virtues are assholes , and why I like being called a shameless hussy (and why I think that there’s an important [...]

By: Tina Cipolla

Tina Cipolla — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:15:29 +0000

It pained me to read your words about refusing to learn the home crafts from your foremothers because I did the exact same thing, and like you, I deeply regret it. My mother was the one who was always trying to teach me how to knit, sew, crochet and do needlepoint. I flatly refused to learn any of it, because as a child I certainly knew that I would never need such skills. I was going to have a high profile job and someone was going to do all of those home tasks for me. At 41 years, I cringe thinking about how much “smarter” I was when I was a teenager. The only thing that brings me some comfort however, is that I did learn to cook, garden and do laundry properly from my mother. And the problem of rejecting what our mothers try to teach us seems endemic. My own mother confessed to me that she flatly refused to learn how to clean (eviscerate) live chickens from her mother because she said “it was so gross and I knew I’d always buy my chickens from the grocery store.” Now, I’m the one that is going around my community trying to bargain with the local poultry farmers to teach me how to do this very task that my mother was sure we’d never need! See how things just come full circle!

By: mary q contrarie

mary q contrarie — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:02:02 +0000

I love the laundry part of clothing management. When our dryer broke a couple years ago we decided that for the planet we were not going to replace it. Because the weather does not alway cooperate for drying on a line. We purchased a couple clothes drying racks I find the act of hanging laundry to be very medatative and very beautiful. If you look on line and search for images of drying clothes it is amazing. What a rich tapestry it adds to our landscape and homes.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:48:14 +0000

In my last post I said that in a home where love and compassion reign there is no need of discussion of laundry duties. I by no means mean to imply laundry discussions are of no consequence, just it isn’t as important as mutual understanding in marriage. I enjoy very much this and other conversations on how laundry issues are mastered. I have even moved all our family laundry to the open shelves in our mud room, which may seem quite messy at first. I cannot express how this has changed the stress level for my children who had little room in dressers for all the clothes. I have a full view of all there items and can quickly access what is needed and when we have too much. If it can’t fit in your area it gets passed on or given away.
The mundane tasks of life are often never spoken about and in turn we never innovate. How liberating is this to realize that we can ease other peoples burden simply by trying different means in our housekeeping.

Shameless hussy is the funniest and most pleasing term!!!LOL. I can’t wait for the reaction friends will have when I refer to it.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:23:32 +0000

Sharon
I just wanted to thank you for this post as well as a thoughtful conversation about the quiverful / partiachy gang. I can be lumped in with part of this group and rarely find comments from either side that grant respect to both ideas of thought. I don’t find submission a difficult thing to understand but, in our society it is almost impossible to try to explain. My husband does not lord over me as one would think and our home is as plesant a place to be as any other home. I find that where love and compassion reign there is little need of discussion on laundry duties. This job of running a home to me is a great joy to me and it is my firm belief that the moment women started to leave the home is the age to which we lost most of our power as women. The way society looks at the realm of home has tainted the view of the jobs actually performed there. Families and women have been weakened in my view, by our abandoning the power in raising children, nourishing the people who live with us, providing peace and general care. We in turn are, in my family, are only trying to gain a better understanding of what family means. I am blessed with a husband who works from home, children who school at home and a desire to be at home. It is a powerful thing to be able to say this is my choice and it is. I would by no means take this choice away from anyone. Everyone in life needs to be able to build their own lives. I hope that the intersecting of the quiverful sect and the greenie groups comes to find they are more alike than different as I am positive they are. We all care deeply about the future of our children. We simply have different paths that oddly enough cross quite alot.
Thank you again for your comments and much love to those who may not understand but love us still.
I love good intellectual thought and lively discussion so, I am delighted to have found your site.

By: Liz

Liz — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:50:26 +0000

Thanks for the tip, Mary!

By: RC

RC — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:31:44 +0000

All the posts appeal to me. Thanks for everything.

By: Mary

Mary — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:51:18 +0000

Liz,
May I suggest when you look for a sewing machine (and they are a g-dsend if you have to do *a lot* of sewing) that you look for a steel machine from the 60’s or earlier? They’re built like tanks and can probably be handed down to your granddaughter. Oh, and get one with a zig zag stitch.
Mary

By: MEA

MEA — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:12:32 +0000

To be honest, motherhood is a lot of things, most of the good, some tolerable and one or two downright teeth gritting, but it isn’t a subsitute what you can’t or don’t take with you from the privious life. If found life with and without children to be two completely things, and the pleasure of one didn’t (and don’t) compenstate for what was missing from the other. I wouldn’t give up my chance at motherhood, for me, pusihng swings is a diffent pleasure from going to MOMA and don’t having to say “don’t touch” every two minutes.

(Actually, I used to go to MOMA’s cafe with a pair a (uninvolved) gay co-workers to men watch, and sometimes we’d have to say “don’t touch” but that was another life.)

By: Sharon

Sharon — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:12:38 +0000

MEA, I’d say that was true except that I can’t think of the last time I got to do any of those things except the worldly novels . Ah, motherhood. Actually, I did get to take the kids to the Met, when we were last in NYC, but spent an awful lot of time saying “Don’t touch that” and not so much meditating on the beauty of the art.

Sharon