The value of household chores

Don’t get me wrong. I dislike household chores just as much as the next person, male or female, young or old.

While growing up, each of us had our fixed chores. One had to dust the furniture and the knick-knacks, one had to do the dishes, one had to help with chopping vegetables — and all had to keep their own rooms in order. Of course, we came up with all kinds of excuses to avoid these chores. “Schoolwork” was the main pretext because it was the only one that posed the possibility of being paid attention to. All the others: Like injured fingers (to avoid doing the dishes) or a runny nose (to spare us the ordeal of dusting), were given short shrift and chores were just rearranged amongst us so that we had to do our bit somewhere in the house.

Therefore, we learnt that the best option was to get the chores done in fast forward. ‘Meticulous’, ‘thorough’, ‘painstaking’ and similar words meant nothing to us. We swept in, we swept out: We also swept a few items off the shelves. So what if a saucer or two landed on the floor in smithereens? We had done our bit for the greater cause of home and household and the exasperated sighs and broken-hearted cries we left behind us were simply ignored ... “It’s only a dish, not the end of the world,” became almost a refrain.

The same easy attitude was carried forward by us into our own homes. Okay, let’s confess, it was only one of us who did that: And thus, through decades of running my own home, I scurried through household chores, invented short cuts and escape routes — anything to ensure extra time at my own private workspace, which mostly translates into a cross between daydreaming and scrambling to meet a deadline.

The reality of household work, however, remains. It does not reduce or miraculously disappear as the years go by and it eats into time we would rather spend on more inspiring activities. Who would prefer to put the dishes into the kitchen cabinets or fold the clothes from the clothesline when there is a meeting to attend during Library Week (or some other significant occasion), or a music or dance recital to go to, or most tempting of all, a half-read book waiting for us to return to its storyline?

So, long-term solutions are sought.

The kitchen is ‘organised’ for dishes to stay out permanently on an open rack. The laundry room is equipped with a large enough clothes stand to allow three washes to remain suspended there to ‘take the air’ — while we follow our hearts and give wings to our minds.

And when we eventually address those long postponed tasks, we mostly do it with bad grace, muttering about all we could be doing instead and how our heads and hands are made for better things ...

Then, we see a 93-year-old who insists on walking to the clothesline in the yard to hang up his towel after a bath and then insists on bringing it in himself — along with other clothes from the line. Another 90-year-old enters the kitchen daily, rummages through the vegetable tray, thinks about what the household would like to be surprised with — and proceeds to help the cook by stringing beans and shelling peas. These stalwarts obviously believe in ‘Use it or lose it’ and resort to the mundane to keep their limbs in working order ...

And we realise that while we need not linger over household chores or make them the reason for our existence, we have to acknowledge that mentally and physically, they keep us in forward gear with their sheer constancy.

There’s always a ‘What’s next’ in a household, isn’t there?

Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.