Such timing. Here we are just a couple of days before Pesach, and there's an article in the New York Times about housework and how it somehow still falls on the woman.
Getting ready for the Passover holiday has become an orgy of spring cleaning run by paranoid obsessives. I'm convinced that if the rabbis who decide what's "clean enough" had been doing all the cleaning, their instructions would be different.
Getting ready for the Passover holiday has become an orgy of spring cleaning run by paranoid obsessives. I'm convinced that if the rabbis who decide what's "clean enough" had been doing all the cleaning, their instructions would be different.
There are very famous instructions by Rabbi Aviner of Beit El, how to get your kitchen ready in less than a day, but that takes for granted that the house and especially the kitchen are sparkling clean all the time. Or at least you should follow certain guidelines all year.
I never let my kids walk around eating, except maybe an apple. That worked for over twenty years; now they're all adults and insist that I'm just lazy. Nobody else has that rule!!!
I never let my kids walk around eating, except maybe an apple. That worked for over twenty years; now they're all adults and insist that I'm just lazy. Nobody else has that rule!!!
I've always hated cleaning, and terrified of finding ants and crumbs all over. Of course it doesn't always help, but it does make things easier. If it's just a mess and not food, it's not as bad.
It doesn't matter how the work is divided among various family members, but the big responsibility is always the wife's, or the "lady of the house." When men divide it up, announcing "halachik," that means Jewish Law, standards, they frequently become the supervisors, not the dusters and scrubbers. At best they move the furniture, so the "little lady" or young kids can get to the grime (or chametz) more easily.
I'm sure that I'm not the only woman who feels that when someone walks in they take for granted that it's my, the wife's fault, if there's a mess. Even if I would put a sign up saying: "My husband washed the floor before Shabbat and he avoids the entrance, so don't blame me." Really, who would really blame him? They'd say: "Aren't you lucky that your husband helps!"
So, decades after Feminism began, nothing's new, and nothing's changed, and I really should be scrubbing behind the couch. But at my age, I need to take breaks. And I really need some hand cream.
It doesn't matter how the work is divided among various family members, but the big responsibility is always the wife's, or the "lady of the house." When men divide it up, announcing "halachik," that means Jewish Law, standards, they frequently become the supervisors, not the dusters and scrubbers. At best they move the furniture, so the "little lady" or young kids can get to the grime (or chametz) more easily.
I'm sure that I'm not the only woman who feels that when someone walks in they take for granted that it's my, the wife's fault, if there's a mess. Even if I would put a sign up saying: "My husband washed the floor before Shabbat and he avoids the entrance, so don't blame me." Really, who would really blame him? They'd say: "Aren't you lucky that your husband helps!"
So, decades after Feminism began, nothing's new, and nothing's changed, and I really should be scrubbing behind the couch. But at my age, I need to take breaks. And I really need some hand cream.
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