Housework Quotes

“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Housework won't kill you, but then again, why take the chance?”
― Phyllis Diller

“There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.”
― Quentin Crisp

“Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold

“The cruel irony of housework:
people only notice when you don't do it.”
― Danielle Raine, Housework Blues - A Survival Guide

“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”
― Erma Bombeck

“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“I love it when my justifications for avoiding housework are actually legitimate. ”
― Julie Kenner, California Demon

“Housekeeping is nothing more than a losing encounter with entropy.”
― Claire Oshetsky, Chouette

“Home is the first point of investment. The first and most important thing to invest in is your home. Make sure your house is in good condition physically and energetically, make sure you’re paid up on the household bills, make sure you’re stocked up on supplies and food, make sure your home is furnished to your style and comfort, make sure you’ve got nice plants to clean the air, nice art, nice crystals and essential oils, nice things that promote your wellbeing…. Make sure your garden is growing nutritious plants. Invest in your household and your family because they have the greatest Return on Investment. And your investment in your home will be a magnet for many other different kinds of investments.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic

“To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of The Family House in which the comfort and happiness of men and children have been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, unloved, neglected, exhausted woman. It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create a home that everyone enjoys and that functions well. Above all else, it is an act of immense generosity to be the architect of everyone else's well-being. This task is still mostly perceived as women's work. Consequently, there are all kinds of words used to belittle this huge endeavour.”
― Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

“The secret of surviving housework is simply to do it. Pull the plug on the part of your brain that always wants to negotiate everything. You need to change a diaper, rinse a bottle, clean a spill, fluff a pillow? Consider it done. It's a no-brainer. End of conversation. End of story.

Not postponing chores-and not spending any mental energy equivocating, temporizing, or stalling-is actually a lot more restful than worrying about what needs to be done. ”
― Veronique Vienne

“People very often say to me, 'How did you do it, how did you raise a baby and write a book?' And the answer is - I didn't do housework for four years. I am not Superwoman. And um, living in squalor, that was the answer.”
― J.K. Rowling

“I no longer call such tasks "housework". I call them the "domestic arts," paying attention to all the ways they return me to my senses.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“To emancipate woman, is not only to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments to her, for the "emancipated" woman will always throw her domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse; it is to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear her children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient leisure to take her share of social life. It will come. As we have said, things are already improving. Only let us fully understand that a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful words, Liberty, Equality, Solidarity, would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half.”
― Piotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

“The preparation of food also serves the soul in a number of ways. In a general sense, it gives us a valuable, ordinary opportunity to meditate quietly, as we peel and cut vegetables, stir pots, measure out proportions, and watch for boiling and roasting. We can become absorbed in the sensual contemplation of colors, textures, and tastes as, alchemists of the kitchen, we mix and stir just the right proportions.”
― Thomas Moore

“It hadn't felt necessary to learn more about my mother outside of her existence on the periphery of my life. She cleaned our clothes and bought us groceries. Made our meals, mopped and dusted, trimmed the tree. My father was the one I'd admired. He was the one I'd wanted to be like.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“There is hope in the morning hours, just as there is desperation in the afternoon, which stretches like gum and yet contracts into nothing, once it is filled with laundry and dusting and dinner.”
― Inga Vesper, The Long, Long Afternoon

“Servant or wife, man always reckons on woman to do the housework.

But woman, too, at least claims her share in the emancipation of humanity. She no longer wants to be the beast of burden of the house. She considers it sufficient work to give many years of her life to the rearing of her children. She no longer wants to be the cook, the mender, the sweeper of the house! And, owing to American women taking the lead in obtaining their claims, there is a general complaint of the dearth of women who will condescend to domestic work in the United States. My lady prefers art, politics, literature, or the gaming tables; as to the work-girls, they are few, those who consent to submit to apron-slavery, and servants are only found with difficulty in the States. Consequently, the solution, a very simple one, is pointed out by life itself. Machinery undertakes three-quarters of the household cares.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings

“It seems reasonable to assume that the minute Irma walks into Venera and Goderdzi's home she will take off her while wedding dress, take up the yoke of domestic duties and work like a mule until her dying breath.”
― Nana Ekvtimishvili, The Pear Field

“In one representative study of the situation in the nation today, the sociologists Jill Yavorsky, Claire Kamp Dush, and Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan found that for male-female partners who both worked full-time (roughly forty-hour weeks), first-time parenthood increased a man’s workload at home by about ten hours per week. Meanwhile, the increased workload for women was about twenty hours.
So motherhood took double the toll as fatherhood, workwise. Moreover, much of the new work that fathers did take on in these situations was the comparatively “fun” work of engagement with their children—for example, playing with the baby. Fathers did this for four hours per week, on average, while dropping their number of hours of housework by five hours per week during the same time period. Mothers decreased their hours of housework by only one hour per week—while adding about twenty-one hours of child-rearing labor, including fifteen hours of physical child care—for instance, changing diapers and bathing the baby. And mothers still did more by way of infant engagement: about six hours per week, on average.”
― Kate Manne, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

“Studies show there is but one circumstance in which men’s and women’s household work will tend to approach parity: when she works full-time and he is unemployed. And even then, the operative word is approach. She will still do a bit more. Equality is elusive, even in the supposedly egalitarian U.S. context.”
― Kate Manne, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

“The survey of the time spent in the home by most housewives established that, on average, they worked 75 hours a week, with overtime on Saturdays and Sundays. This did not take into account that a number of women were also doing part or full-time work outside the home.”
― Marguerite Patten, Post-War Kitchen : Nostalgic Food and Facts from 1945-54

“A TIDY SPELL"

I've just been through a tidy spell,
I tell you it's a verity,
I've sorted out the things to keep,
The things to give to charity.

I've sorted out my ties and belts,
I've sorted out my shirts,
I've sorted out my coats and slacks---
To part with some it hurts.

I've sorted out my shoes and socks,
I've sorted out my shorts,
I've sorted out so much, in fact,
That now I'm out of sorts.
-by Richard Armour”
― Richard Armour

“To some "housewife" has become a dirty word.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The New Suburban Woman

“Do great women vacuum?”
― Nanette L. Avery, The Fortune Teller and Other Short Works

“... I take my cues from "Flylady" Marla Cilley, who says, "Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family."... we delight in what we can do, however little.”
― Myquillyn Smith, Welcome Home: A Cozy Minimalist Guide to Decorating and Hosting All Year Round

“Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don't do it”
― Rachelle Blondel, Forgotten Ways for Modern Days: Kitchen Cures and Household Lore for a Natural Home and Garden

“You can say what you want about housework--dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and so forth-- but besides having dinner together every night, there's nothing more valuable to a household than order. A tidy home provides structure for family life and an oasis from the chaos of daily living. And these sorts of household chores keep us in touch with our possessions, ideally in a constant state of measuring their value in our lives. Housekeeping chores are made for divvying up among family members-- cleaning gets done more quickly, everyone is invested in the care of the home, and good habits are established and shared all the way around.”
― EllynAnne Geisel, The Apron Book: Making, Wearing, and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort

“Social psychologists have their own name for the mental load. They call it mnemonic work. Studies have established that couples intuitively, rather than consciously and explicitly, divide the work of planning and remembering. And just as intuitively, it mostly falls on wives.”
― Darcy Lockman