One of things I forgot to include on my aspirations list was my wish to have a beautifully clean and sparkling house. I find housework one of the most depressing tasks, because, of course its never ending. Anyway, I stumbled upon a thread on FLYing on a popular parenting site.
It sounded a bit weird but was in the good housekeeping section (tee hee that I was checking out said section!) so I investigated further. My nosing led me to this .
In short it seems to be a motivational, staggered system of instilling and creating 'good housekeeping skills', all starting with the basic premise of a shiny sink! So, in desperation I'm giving it a go. I'm onto day two of keeping my sink clean and so far so good but I'll keep you updated.
It raises some interesting questions for me my strong concern about having a clean house and being a good housekeeper, and for checking out the website it seems to be an anxiety shared by a lot of other people.
Did I say people? I mean women; because although we are in the 21st century, in what some might argue is the post-feminist era, millions of women feel guilty, dirty and desperate about the state of their houses. I could be wrong, and please correct me if I am, but in my research into 'FLYing' (which is an acronym for 'finally loving yourself'!) I couldn't see any men following the program, or on any of the chats of forums about it.
This is by no means a criticism of the program, hell I need all the help I can get and it has a very supportive and practical approach; BUT why is it such a concern for women? Is cleanliness an expectation instilled by women upon women (I frantically clean my house for my MIL not my FIL), or is it a remnant of the idea of household being the domain of the wife? Should we all (female and male) just relax and not let housework become an anxiety, or is cleanliness next to godliness?
I don't have answers to these questions and really hope that the FLYing system helps me reduce the sense of drowning the housework can engender in me, but I am going to ponder further on how I want Babin to grow up thinking about household tasks.
In the meantime I'm off to fight through the dust to admire my beautiful shiny sink!
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Sounds good to me. Thanks for claifying what it meant, at first I thought you were talking about becoming a pilot!
ReplyDelete-A Modern Mother
That might pay better than cleaning my sink!!
ReplyDeleteI'm on my second try at 'FLYing', I gave up the first time because of all the emails, now I just check in daily for new jobs. I don't bother with the sink..or getting dressed to shoes :)
ReplyDeleteHmmm, suspect that I might be on my 2nd attempt shortly! Good luck.
ReplyDelete