Keeping busy

Through my sister, I was pointed to an article in an old church magazine, written by a mother with a gazillion children in the 1970s. She was giving advice on how to be a good homemaker, in spite of all the millions of tasks that good homemakers needed to do. She gave advice about sewing Easter dresses for her little girls, waxing the floors, papering the kitchen drawers, ironing, and all sorts of things. Once this lady figured out her schedule and goals, she was able to ensure that by 5pm each evening, she had all the toys picked up, fresh makeup on and was wearing a clean house dress in order to greet her husband with a smile when he returned home from work.

I totally saw myself in that over-achieving housewife. She had a list of all the things that a good housewife does, and she was going to make sure she ticked them all off, by carefully organising her time and her life. True, most of the things she did were a lot of work for pretty much no point (matching Easter dresses for the family -- my mom did that in the 1980s). But she was doing all of them, and she was doing a good job. 

Matching dresses for all the girls. Required for every accomplished housewife.

I'm busy doing all sorts of things that pretty much have no point. Research articles, vision statements, websites, grant proposals. I have so many things to do that there seems to be no possible way to finish them all. So I organise my time, set deadlines and schedules in an unscheduled work week, and very slowly tick all the boxes. I do all these things, and I do a (mostly) good job. 

If I had decided to be a housewife, I would have transferred all these awesome goal-setting and time-managing skills to the housekeeping. And I would have been an awesome housekeeper. Sure, I would have had no friends, but my seventeen girls would have been dressed in the most fabulous matching outfits you could ever imagine.