The Why Chromosome
Ah, I love a nice, clean house. I suppose I'd love it even more if I wasn't the one who had to clean it, but still. It's wonderful to relax in it knowing that if Oprah or the guy you had a crush on in high school just happened to knock on your door, you could welcome them into your home with aplomb.
Even though the work level is split pretty evenly at my house, I still whine about having to clean. I like to think of myself as a fairly renaissance woman, able to juggle the many challenges a 00s woman must face, but I must confess that scrubbing toilets on a regular basis is not one of the things that makes me feel particularly self-actualized. Although, I guess it's good to know that my worth as a human is no longer based solely on this skill. Now it's based on my ability to write a marketing plan as well. So there's that.
However, I've noticed in living with a male person of the masculine gender that our cleaning styles tend to differ slightly. And I'm wondering if it's just the households that I've lived in, or if it's a more widely-seen phenomenon.
There is one example in particular that stumps me. If your home has more than one level in it, chances are the women in your household do this when they clean: they pile up things that need to go upstairs at the bottom of the stairs, and things that need to go downstairs at the top of the stairs (depending on what floor she is cleaning at the time). This is an incredibly rational, extremely efficient thing to do. Instead of breaking her stride and wasting energy taking a trip up or down stairs needlessly, she will place the object on the stairs, knowing that in the general course of her cleaning, or the rest of the day, she or somebody else in the household will be going up or down and can easily grab the object on the way.
I have never seen a man do this.
In point of fact, I have actually seen many a man confidently stride past an object placed on the stairs, not only without taking the object, but as if he hadn't even seen it. When pressed as to why he had done this, he will insist that he had no idea where the object was intended to go once brought up or downstairs. How was he possibly supposed to guess where the toilet paper, a stack of folded laundry, or a dirty dish goes? He's not a mind reader for god's sake!
Indeed.
I do remember doing the same thing as a child before I grew up and started taking responsibility for myself, but the answer there was that I was just lazy and didn't want to take the thing. But that can't be the answer here. Can it?
I am hoping that there is some rational, science-based answer for it. Something about right-brain versus left-brain thinking, perhaps. Or hunting versus gathering race memory behaviour. Anything, really. Please feel free to email me your theories, or leave them in the comments.
We need to get to the bottom (or top) of this!
Even though the work level is split pretty evenly at my house, I still whine about having to clean. I like to think of myself as a fairly renaissance woman, able to juggle the many challenges a 00s woman must face, but I must confess that scrubbing toilets on a regular basis is not one of the things that makes me feel particularly self-actualized. Although, I guess it's good to know that my worth as a human is no longer based solely on this skill. Now it's based on my ability to write a marketing plan as well. So there's that.
However, I've noticed in living with a male person of the masculine gender that our cleaning styles tend to differ slightly. And I'm wondering if it's just the households that I've lived in, or if it's a more widely-seen phenomenon.
There is one example in particular that stumps me. If your home has more than one level in it, chances are the women in your household do this when they clean: they pile up things that need to go upstairs at the bottom of the stairs, and things that need to go downstairs at the top of the stairs (depending on what floor she is cleaning at the time). This is an incredibly rational, extremely efficient thing to do. Instead of breaking her stride and wasting energy taking a trip up or down stairs needlessly, she will place the object on the stairs, knowing that in the general course of her cleaning, or the rest of the day, she or somebody else in the household will be going up or down and can easily grab the object on the way.
I have never seen a man do this.
In point of fact, I have actually seen many a man confidently stride past an object placed on the stairs, not only without taking the object, but as if he hadn't even seen it. When pressed as to why he had done this, he will insist that he had no idea where the object was intended to go once brought up or downstairs. How was he possibly supposed to guess where the toilet paper, a stack of folded laundry, or a dirty dish goes? He's not a mind reader for god's sake!
Indeed.
I do remember doing the same thing as a child before I grew up and started taking responsibility for myself, but the answer there was that I was just lazy and didn't want to take the thing. But that can't be the answer here. Can it?
I am hoping that there is some rational, science-based answer for it. Something about right-brain versus left-brain thinking, perhaps. Or hunting versus gathering race memory behaviour. Anything, really. Please feel free to email me your theories, or leave them in the comments.
We need to get to the bottom (or top) of this!
posted by Alanis at
7:00 AM
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1 comments
