Tags
decorating, feminine, housework, nesting, organizing, red pill, woman's work
The other day when I was feeling particularly restless, I decided to channel that pent up energy into cleaning house.
Now cleaning house is not my favorite thing to do, by any means, nor am I particularly domestic. In fact, I was raised to think of housework as “oppressive drudgery” and something to do as least as possible. Domesticity is not my strong suit.
But as I went room to room creating order from chaos, I found my inner mood also became much more calm. The better things looked, the more it spurred me on. After I was done reclaiming the living room from under the piles of stacked and folded laundry I found myself sitting in the now tidy room, relaxing and enjoying the space, feeling calm and serene.
There’s something to nesting that is particularly female, I believe, and perhaps some of our current angst is due to a modern day suppression of this inborn instinct to create a beautiful space.
Unlike most modern women, my babysitter and her clan absolutely revel in household chores, cheerfully doing laundry, cooking up tasty treats, redecorating with ingenuity, and in all ways big and small turning a house (no matter how modest) into a home. It’s a busy hands, happy heart approach to living. Rather than begrudge such chores, they embrace them as an expression of love and nurture for their families, their contribution to the collective good.
Men also appreciate “a woman’s touch” in a home. As one male blogger said, a gal with a comfortable abode stands out in the search for a mate. And what guy wouldn’t love being with a gal who joyfully primps and preens their space rather than constantly harping, nagging, and keeping score with him that all household chores are split absolutely 50/50?
After realizing what a mood lift I got from nesting, it dawned on me that it’s something I have been denying myself, another piece of the feminist narrative it’s high time to discard. There’s nothing “wrong” or “demeaning” in nesting. Quite the opposite — it’s surprisingly deeply gratifying. Nurturing — both to myself and others.
For me, getting started is often the hardest part. It can seem daunting…where to begin? A good friend taught me a wonderful trick she used to get going — set the timer for 15 minutes per room, get as far as you can in 15 minutes, then either take a break, move on to another room, or spend another 15 minute burst in the same area. Somehow knowing I am only going to spend 15 minutes cleaning makes it seem less overwhelming and it is surprising just how far one can get in a 15 minute sprint. Before you know it, you’re done!
So if you too have been raised to see “woman’s work” as something to scorn rather than celebrate, I invite you to join me in embracing the lost art of domesticity. Let me know if you find the same uplift from doing so that I have! Here’s to creating and crafting a beautiful, bountiful nest for you and yours!
What do you think? Please share in the comments.
Women all about relationships they are.
Home where the relationships happen they do.
So incentive to improve it there it is
Bloom – this is actually interesting to me. my first husband and i agreed about 95% on things inside the home – style, maintenance, what to keep; what to ditch, etc. my second husband and i only agree about 50%. it’s slightly irritating to me sometimes 😉
So you see how far the feminist narrative has driven you. To live in your own home in less than optimum conditions because they told you that housework is beneath you. It is your home and who else will clean it? It is good that you got to the bottom of that one. What else is there?
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/young-men-seeing-reality/
my second husband and i only agree about 50%.
But he likes your breasts
I know fuzzie, how sad! I seriously feel like I was brainwashed sometimes! After writing this I spent the rest of the day nesting and I got much do e and feel it was a successful day! Imagine that….
Farm Boy – roflol! yes, he does!
(me thinks Farm Boy and Yoda need to have a conference so Yoda can relay the last bit of advice he shared with Ame, to Farm Boy 🙂 )
Men and women are not the same and all of it goes back to biology and genetics. And most here won’t understand that mankind in its current form has been around for about 50,000 yrs or so … give/take a bit. Feminism has taken hold for the last 30-40 yrs. Out of 50,000 … so lots of behaviors are baked in … no matter how hard they try to deny it. As in … home making for a woman. Totally natural for both men and women.
As a man, I defer to a woman to take a house and make it a home. Its what she does, its who she is.
I vividly remember my ex. When she was having a bad day, something upset her, was spoiling for a fight that had nothing to do with us … I’d grab a rag and container of comet. CLEAN … I would tell her. And after awhile she knew the drill. Rag and scrub and clean and make her house her home. Made her feel better. Feel settled. It worked. She’d work out her energy and feel better.
Like lots of the lies feminists tell, it worked for her. It worked for me. Just takes a man to stand up for himself and do what works. Tell your woman to do what a woman does. Instinct. Follow your effing instincts, it ain’t that hard. Unfortunately, in today’s society and legal system that is a very hard thing for a man to do … because he has a 44 magnum up against his temple. The legal system. Used to destroy men. So it becomes a battle … instincts vs MAN-HATE.
Farm Boy:
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/lies-and-more-lies/#comment-65756
“When she was having a bad day, something upset her, was spoiling for a fight that had nothing to do with us … I’d grab a rag and container of comet. CLEAN … I would tell her. And after awhile she knew the drill. Rag and scrub and clean and make her house her home. Made her feel better. Feel settled. It worked. She’d work out her energy and feel better.”
___
that’s … awesome! 🙂
RPG,
You’re all right. It is just the bad input that this twisted society tried to instill in women. How can anybody no feel better making thier home better? And the reverse is true. By neglecting it, they would run themselves down. Anyway, it is not just you. You have offspring and pets too. They’ll be cheered up by extension.
that comment from mega is a classic
@ mega I think it’s good advice. There really is something to it, as un-PC as it is to say these days.
In some ways it’s similar to the old, “don’t try to be pretty because you won’t be taken seriously” dogma. It feels good to know you look good, as a woman. Yet so many women are shamed for it…
RPG,
Women shaming each other for looking good? It sounds true and it would make for another post. I don’t know if it is “crabs in a bucket” or sabotage to make them look better by comparison.
There’s a Catch-22 with looks: http://www.levo.com/articles/lifestyle/women-good-looks-hurting-your-career
Being beautiful can be a detriment in a woman’s career. Some will assume that she is passing by on her looks.
But, less attractive women are also discriminated against (there is no doubt about that). Either way, a woman loses. Too pretty? She gets hated for that. Too ugly? She has no reason to live!
A friend of mine is exceptionally pretty. She’s also very sweet and accomplished. I don’t see her getting a free pass (professionally) due to her looks. She never acts like she is extra special. She doesn’t act like she thinks she’s entitled to more because she’s beautiful. If she ever is treated less than seriously based on her looks alone, it’s a terrible injustice.
And, don’t even get me started on women who are against fat-shaming (I am too), but who think nothing of saying cruel things about slender or thin women, like implying they’re not “real women.” Talk about hypocrisy!
Being beautiful can be a detriment in a woman’s career. Some will assume that she is passing by on her looks.
But, less attractive women are also discriminated against (there is no doubt about that). Either way, a woman loses
Perhaps wear a burka women should
A new post at Spawny’s there would be
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/for-what-purpose/
So the moral of the story is,…
If you want to get a divorce, tell her to clean the house! lol
Do you think that is what Brad said to Angelina?
Most brilliant essay Captain Capitalism ever wrote.
Now before you get your knickers in a not. Some background.
Cappy holds a Masters in Economics and worked for one of the Fortune 500 banks for 15 years and quickly rose to be in charge of 100s of millions in investments.
He saw the shell game and bailed. His blog and ytube has almost 100,00 followers. He posts not not just essays but proof of the lifestyle. His pictures of his road trips are stunning.
So. His question. Women want to take over the government and Corporate America.
Why not let them? Seriously? Have at it?
Serious discussion only please. No Shaming, Step up crap.
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.ca/2016/09/why-we-should-let-women-have-corporate.html?m=1
Horseman – that is one, hugely, powerful piece. and i have to agree with him.
how do you see this playing out? it seems like women would take over corporate america … screw it up … decide to quit … leaving it in shambles … and begging men to pick up the pieces and fix it all for them.
FNU MNU LNUsaid:September 24, 2016 at 12:17 am
“So the moral of the story is,…
If you want to get a divorce, tell her to clean the house! lol”
– – – – –
lol!
Ame,
They would indeed make a mess of it in short order.
I cannot live in a messy space. It stresses me out to no end. My mother never cleaned ANYTHING, so I think I just had enough of living in chaos. I’m a daily cleaner.
Ame. Yup.
But the men wont save them. By then they will be living smaller but meaningful lives in small houses, powered by Musks solar, doing a few hours of craft, trades or other hands on work then fucking off to the golf course.
To paraphrase Mad Men
“Save you? Bitch, I don’t even bother to save money.”
Horseman –
that piece was interesting to me on various levels. my first husband was Corporate America … worked 12-15 hour days … traveled all over the world … bilingual … could sit and have a conversation with the janitor just as easily and comfortably as the Chairman of the Board or CEO or CFO or COO or whatever combination of letters … was well educated, well certified, well versed, well read, and had a very short learning-curve.
i remember one time meeting him and this woman he worked with for lunch when our oldest was a baby. the woman was someone we both admired, and she wanted to spend time with out baby. i commented something about *this world* they worked in, and she said, “You don’t want this.” i didn’t. i loved being a SAHM and leaving all that to him.
it was odd, though, that toward the end of our marriage he seemed discontent with me just being a SAHM, though he never succinctly voiced it. i wonder if it was b/c of the number of women coming into those ranks, the number of wives of peers who had corp jobs … and all his wife did was stay at home with the children, manage the home, didn’t have a degree or a career and didn’t want one.
Ame
Possibly. His 90 percentile interactions with women would be in a work situation so anyone falls into that lens. Then its seeing the role of collegue vs wife.
Our problem was Mrs Horseman was not fulfilling the wife role as a SAHM so was not differentiating from the women at work. She was not defining herself so the only lens I had was the work one to which she was not even close. Hence the Year From Hell.
Coming out of that she redefined herself not as SAHM cause the kids are gone but as Home Support/Companion. She redefined as running the house so I dont have to. And most importantly as my Companion. Not that she doesnt have a personality or own interests, she does. But her “Job” vs mine is to support the one who goes to work. My logistics officer so I can fight. The squire who takes care of the armour and the mount.
It is important for women to define their re vs their men. They will never be natural buds…because you dont like sports (not really), you can’t really cuss or fight, and you can’t really appreciate a fine set of ta tas.
So you need to fufill a role. Mother of the children, companion, work collegue, harlot, arm candy/trophy.
Its not chauvanistic so layoff. (I can hear you others spooling up).
We fulfill roles for you. We are not your BFF. We dont get shoes, hate shopping and wont ever stop taking pride in bodily expulsions (BURP. pardon)
But we will be your protector, plowhorse, ginatingle plow…er horse, ego supporter etc.
That is IF you make it worth while and worth the bullshit.
p.s. After 40 its really hard cause we’re done with babies, our sex drive is dropping, we have our own money and face it….gravity works.
p.p.s. sorry for rambling…. thoughts are like a walk in the woods…to be explored as neat stuff pops up.
that makes sense – her needing a ‘role’.
idk why it began to bother him b/c it was how we’d planned things since we’d met. i wonder if telling people his wife didn’t have a ‘career’ that matched other wives careers … when asked, “What does your wife do?” … began to bother him? idk. i was puzzled by that, but … alas, those answers are now, literally, buried.
btw – our kids were 5 and 7 when he moved out, so we were still in the little-kid stage … and the youngest with special needs (although, he denied she had those until many years later when a specialist forced him to see the truth … grrr … but even then, he still didn’t really want to believe it.)
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/youre-not-doing-it-right/
Some women focus on the THING aspects of nesting- the house, the furniture, etc – and don’t pay enough attention to the emotional and spiritual parts. A man at work who is a friend has a wife who is obsessed with her house. She insisted on a big expensive one, then on remodeling to make it even bigger and more expensive. Lots of $$ on furniture and appliances. It is putting a lot of financial stress on him, and keeping him from having much to spend on things HE would like to do or things he would like to have.
I do have a nesting instinct I think, but hope to always remember that the nest is for the people that live in it not the other way around.
Yeah, that’s part of what destroyed my marriage. All focused on stuff, and not on what really is important. To this day she doesn’t realize just how much she screwed up our kids, and refuses to take any blame.
What all of those people seem to forget, is that to be “equal” shouldn’t require special help to get there.
At Hawaiian Libertarian. Keoni Galt made the observation that home should be a refuge to the man. A place where he wants to go. If it is not, then something is very wrong.
A new post at Spawny’s there is
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/09/28/clueless-to-the-end/
There’s a reason traditional marriage is the most stable and happiest man-woman relationship for BOTH sexes. It’s almost like feminism was created by miserable women unable to sustain a real relationship in order to create more miserable women unable to sustain a real relationship, since misery does indeed love company. Miserable people need other miserable people in order to hide what miserable people they are. The more miserable people there are, the more normal being miserable is. Telling women to be more like men is a recipe for very unhappy women. Most women actually know this, but end up feeling guilty for actually liking being a woman and doing “women’s work”. Weird how feminists are so eager to denigrate “women’s work” isn’t it? Or not, if you actually understand what a cancer feminists are.
Ken, Two points!
Plenty of “modern women” who are into equality with their partners enjoy cleaning and making their home look beautiful. Plenty of modern women who are Feminists enjoy decorating and cooking. Feminism isn’t about demeaning women for being femme, a huge focus of feminism is making sure people have the ability to choose how to live their own lives without harsh judgements of the outside world, and would never dream of looking down on a woman who was a mother, homemaker, domestic, whatever. There are a LOT of women who are Feminists and homemakers, and posts like this and the comments afterward make me feel sad because so many people have a deep, fundamental misunderstanding about what Feminism is and looks like and how Feminists operate. For that I’m truly sorry.
Feminism and traditional gender roles are contradictory. The claim that the feminism about choice in 2016 is also laughable because with big daddy govt as their husband, has turned it into a male hating movement out to marginalize and eventually destroy the male as a species. The 50 years of misandry sure has succeeded in driving a wedge between the genders and now being ruthlessly pursued by legislative mean to deem all male-female interaction illegal. It was Barbara Ellen, columnist at the UK independent once wrote a column saying that she would like women like herself to take their daughters to museums in the future to show them what it was like when males roamed the planet. Most “modern women” will end up as spinsters after having absorbed the man hating agenda. By the time realization comes, it will be too late.
The goal of the social engineers to drive a wedge between the genders in my opinion is pure eugenics and they have succeeded in lowering the birth rates in middle and lower classes. Abortion being part of the feminist tool box is the continuation of the eugenics agenda. They have caused middle and lower classes to destroy themselves with very effort on their part.
Megan wrote this: “Feminism isn’t about demeaning women for being femme, a huge focus of feminism is making sure people have the ability to choose how to live their own lives without harsh judgements of the outside world, and would never dream of looking down on a woman who was a mother, homemaker, domestic, whatever. There are a LOT of women who are Feminists and homemakers, and posts like this and the comments afterward make me feel sad because so many people have a deep, fundamental misunderstanding about what Feminism is and looks like and how Feminists operate. For that I’m truly sorry.”
I find the definition of “feminism” to be different, depending on who you ask.
I always thought as “feminism” the way you do. Women are allowed to choose, and they can choose to be a stay-at-home mom with no shame and no pressure.
The “feminism” I think of (and choose to align with) is the one which fought for women to be allowed to vote, to own property, and to support themselves instead of being dependent on a husband or male relative.
But there’s no doubt that a lot of “feminism” nowadays is just a way to blame men for everything, and to find offense and “trigger warnings” at the most trivial, ridiculous things, and create a bigger wedge between the sexes. I HAVE heard feminists say that women who choose to stay home should be “ashamed” and there is that pressure on women to choose a profession, even if they may not have a natural inclination to do so (and would rather be a homemaker).
However, let’s be honest, part of the pressure to choose a profession is (or at least I hope is) the realization that women may have to support themselves if they are widowed and divorced. That I understand. But with many feminists, it goes farther than that, where a happy stay-at-home mom would be sneered at and mocked if she didn’t “do” anything else.
On the other hand, the red pill is very much into broad brush generalizations about how ALL women do this and that. I shake my head at some of they say.
I see some (note: SOME!) of red pill thought to be the flip-side of (SOME) feminism, which is this: The other gender is to blame for ALL of this. Some feminists think men are to blame for it all. Some red pill men believe that women are to blame for it all. I can’t get behind either of these two schools of thought.
I’d comment a lot more, but another woman wrote almost everything I think on the topic here:
http://fromfaye.com/2011/11/04/why-i-love-housekeeping/
And Nigella Lawson: “Sometimes…we don’t want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.”
15 minutes is not my style – that would mean I cannot be responsive to my family. I have a schedule about the order I do things in (aging women without schedules get dirty houses – the problem with cleaning when your eyesight deteroriates – my eyes are fine but I want to avoid that).
Also, I had no idea there was this thing called red pill women – thought I was the only one who always took the male side in online gender discussions. Nice to see I’m not the only one 🙂 So cheers to all you non-dysfunctional ladies out there xD
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Yeah, but if you will, the “vocal minority” is rabidly anti-male in almost everything it says or does. And it a lot of respects it is anti-female as well. You don’t often hear or read about men talking negatively about stay at home moms. The vast majority of the SAHM shaming comes from so called feminists, who rant incessantly about everything the SAHMs have given up. These same feminists then support women having a lot of sexual partners, when in reality a large N for both men and women, make it much harder to pair bond and have a successful relationship. Yeah, maybe they can eventually find someone to marry them, but they never really have a full relationship, but more of an arrangement. Perception is reality for most people. And the perception of most feminists is tarnished by those women who spew anti-male AND anti-traditional values. YMMV.