Feminist theory collides with common sense and hygene! Oh noes!

Up until a few months ago, I was an unreconstructed slob.

And then I realized that living in a chaotic, messy environment brings with it a constant low level of stress. It just feels nicer, emotionally, to come home to a clean, orderly house. I feel like I can relax here now.

I am pretty tidy, which may or not be a reaction to the complete disaster of a house in which I grew up.

I grew up having to do chores once a week, and always having to clean before company came over. However, my dad and my brother were just as expected to clean as me, my sister, and my mom. So I never thought of it as a gender thing. My parents treated it more like cleaning the house before company came over is being respectful to your guests. And cleaning it regularly whether or not someone's coming over is being respectful to the other people living in the same space.

To this day, noting motivates me to clean like guests coming over. I am not as good about the regular cleaning, although I try not to let it get too bad. I love me a clean house, I just hate doing the work to get there.

We're fairly tidy but there always seems to be something to do when company is coming. That's usually vacuuming and, sometimes, the bathroom needs a quick run through.

It just feels nicer, emotionally, to come home to a clean, orderly house.

I agree, which is completely at odds with my laziness. MuddDude and I put in an hour each weekend on chores (not counting laundry), which keeps everything slightly cleaner than Nuclear Waste Site. I imagine, when we get a dog, we'll have to keep the place much cleaner.

Of course, when company comes over, we nuke the bathrooms and vacuum the carpet and crannies.

As a girl, I mostly did inside chores while my brother mowed the lawn. Of course, that could be because the second time I mowed the lawn, I ran over a sprinkler head and caused several hundred dollars worth of damage to the sprinkler system.

I have two little boys that delight in emptying drawers for the sheer joy of it. We also have a large dog that sheds constantly and has fur so fine it hangs in the air to settle after the floor's been vacuumed. Our house is clean for minutes at a time.

But I do enjoy those fleeting moments of non-clutter and cleanliness.

I enjoy all things that have to do with the home and homekeeping. You can still be a feminist and enjoy the "domestic arts". I like to cook and craft. I love to look at beautiful dishes and pottery, and furniture and well-designed rooms. I spend time thinking about how I would like to redecorate my house. I enjoy decorating books, blogs, and magazines.

I never want my friends and family to see my house in a messy state. I don't think it has to do with age, necessarily. Some people are neat freaks by nature, or enjoy a clean home, whether they identify as feminists, or not.

I don't feel oppressed when I clean a toilet or wash windows. I can afford to hire a cleaning person if I wanted. I've had cleaning people in the past, when I worked more. My husband also helps with the cleaning. I do procrastinate at times with cleaning, but not because I feel devalued.

I like a clean and orderly home for exactly the reason jason's_planet expressed. I am more relaxed chilling at home when the place is clean and tidy.

I feel better in my house when it's clean and semi-orderly (especially because I work from home and probably don't get out enough), so I try the best I can. I did a huge clean-up a few months ago- set up a filing system, got rid of a lot of clothes, re-painted the living room, got cute pillows and bedding for my sofabed couch- and that made me feel really good about the place.

I am house shamed. My house is a disaster right now. I'm hoping to tackle my office this week, and then a big overhaul in December.

I sort of pendulum-swing on this issue.

While I was growing up with an OCD mother who wouldn't tolerate the odd pair of shoes in a corner, being sloppy was the simplest and most repulsively defiant activity I could engage in. As I grew older, that became less satisfying. My husband is way messier than I am, so I became the neatness advocate: "Please, no pizza on the floor, ok?". In the 14 years we've been together he's gotten MUCH better, and I realized at some point that we rarely had people over because I was always too embarrassed about the state of the house. So I've been trying to chill about it, and relax my standards for guests.

Oh, and we've learned that a regular cleaning person is much cheaper than couples counseling, so that helps.

I am less of a slob than I used to be, but with the two dogs and the teenager and his friends and me not actually caring all that damn much, my less slobby than it used to be is still messier than any neat person's worst day.

I will repeat a comment I made on mefi a few months ago:

If you come to my house and it is a mess, it's a compliment. It means I feel comfortable with you and close to you.
If you come to my house and it is immaculate, it means you freak me the f@ck out, your visit is causing me stress and I'm counting the moments until you leave.

I am, frankly, baffled by the house cleaning process. Every now and then I'll catch, say, dustbunnies in the corners of my stairs and think, "Huh...stairs need to be cleaned. Who knew?"

That said, my house isn't totally gross. I mop. I scrub. I vacuum and shampoo the carpet. But I've got two young kids. Chaos is a regular state. I can promise you won't get a disease from eating off my plates, but I can't promise you won't find a few cheerios stuck to your ass when you get up from the sofa.

We've talked and talked about getting a cleaning person, but it still hasn't happened.

I try to keep things tidy, but am astonished sometimes at how much mess two cats make while I'm at work ;-)

I feel better when the house is clean-ish and tidy. I tend to not see cobwebs though, but am tempted at this time of year to spray them silver and pretend they're meant to be there.

The summer before my husband's little sister was to attend school for the first time everyone was psyching her up for it: "you're going to meet new friends, and learn things, and get to do all kinds of activities!" etc. So, she was very excited about the prospect, got up bright and early on her first day of school, dressed herself in her new clothes and was very eager to get to class and begin her grand adventure. Perfect.

The next morning, however, found her still asleep in her cozy bed, and when her Mom woke her up to get ready for school, she blinked in surprise and annoyance, and said, "What? Again?!" She figured she had done the school thing, and that was that.

Heh. That's a bit how I feel about housework... I detest the fact that it's all about doing the same exact thing, over and over, every day, several times a day. Bah. I mostly do it, but the house itself makes a big difference to me - some seem easier to keep clean, and it doesn't have so much to do with type of flooring (though carpet - ugh and bleh) or walls or whatever, so much as as how the flow of the house is, how adequate the storage is... and very critically, how much clutter accumulates.

Right now, our house is clean most of the time... The flow here means that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so I wash up as dishes get dirty (huge help), and because mr. taz has a workroom now (halleleujah!), I can whisk around and dust/sweep/mop very easily because all the electronics and equipment that were sitting all over our last place are in his room. Also, I got to throw a bunch of stuff away when we moved, which is the best argument for moving every five years ever - especially if you live with a packrat. Not to slur him, though - he's not a nutty save-every-catalogue-and-bottlecap packrat; he's the fixes-all-kinds-of-things-so-has-bits-and-pieces-everywhere packrat. But yay and double yay for his workroom, plus we also have a basement-like storage area on the premises so the situation is great for me.

Oh, also! Our last place was so small, the washing machine didn't fit inside, and was instead in a small alcove on the balcony, which meant that I was constantly forgetting I had finished laundry in there, so I would have to re-do the wash after it had been sitting there for a day, and sometimes the laundry would pile up as a result, which never happens now. It was awful when we didn't have a washing machine at all (in the U.S.), and had to use the laundromat. The best thing one can do in that situation is send it out, I think, even if you have to sacrifice elsewhere... two of the biggest downers for trying to keep neat are stacks of dirty laundry and dirty dishes; if you can sort out a way to keep those to a minimum, it's much easier to do the rest.

I'm trying to make a point to keep other stuff from becoming grimy, so I'm cleaning the outside of the kitchen cabinets, the fridge, the oven hood about once a week, and the stovetop once a day. I've found very cool microfiber wipes which making washing windows and mirrors very easy (and even kind of fun), I try to clean up random wall marks whenever I notice them, and I wipe down the bathroom sink pretty much every time I brush my teeth. The toilet gets cleaned a lot... but why that is, is a story for another day. Perhaps a story with illustrations.

Also (because I actually hate cleaning, but am being terribly clean and tidy these days - or months, really - so I think I love this subject too much, and am rattling on...), here's something that you can do that will give you a great return on time investment in terms of feeling really luxuriously clean and rather smugly self-satisfied:

Once every two-to-four weeks clean all your kitchen counter space, thoroughly. Move everything out from against the wall and clean every nook and cranny, wipe down or wash every counter-top appliance, your Brita if you have one of those, every spice jar in your spice rack if you have one of those... and every electrical cord to every appliance, plus the power strip if you use one (unplug it first, d'oh). If you're getting into it, wipe down the walls behind the counters, and the undersides of the cabinets, all the cabinet and drawer pulls, and all the light switches and outlets. Then, if you're still feeling the feeling, you can use a special stainless steel cleaner/polisher for your faucets and your sink (if it's stainless steel, otherwise, nah).

It's nice to do this when you have a partner or comfortable friend who feels like hanging out and drinking coffee or wine/beer and aimlessly chatting when you do this, or when you feel like zen-ing out on your own, and not thinking at all, just doing. It becomes so satisfying, one tends to do a lot more than they started out to do. But it's the starting out that's tricky, because it seems like a huge, ucky job. But every time I do manage to begin at all, I start grooving to the chore and find it hard to stop. Just did this recently and now I wanna go slap Martha Stewart and call her my bitch.

To everyone who talked about their pets - heh. Our dog doesn't necessarily contribute greatly to the mess, but man, do her toys have a way of getting underfoot. I've been meaning to go buy a cane basket for all the Kongs and tug toys and balls and whatnot that I'm constantly tripping over, but I'm not sure it'll make that much of a difference, since it's not like she knows to put everything away when she's done with it. I can't imagine what it's like for people with young kids.

On post-view, I'm looking forward to those illustrations, Taz, so long as they include a picture of Martha Stewart after you've slapped her and called her your bitch.

Hee. I'm negotiating with TMZ now for the video; will let you know!

Taz, I love wiping down kitchen counters and any other space that will stay still long enough. It's amazing what a sense of done it accomplishes. (And I've started using lavender castille soap for that project, which makes me happy because it smells so fresh and clean.)

I veer between neat and not-neat. I tend to get more messy when I live by myself, because I don't think of the mess I make as actual "mess." But because other people's messes bother me, I try to be considerate and take care of my own when I'm living with roommates or partners. And I love living in clean spaces -- totally cluttered or actually dirty living spaces quickly make me depressed and overwhelmed -- but I hate the actual work of cleaning, so it's always a bit of a balancing act.

Plus, of course, cat hair.

But I *am* totally committed to cleaning before people come over. Partly because it's a good excuse to clean, in general, and partly because otherwise I'm just nervous that guests are thinking, "Gah, can't she get it together?"

But I worry about that in a lot of aspects of my life; I don't think it's house-specific.

Yeah, we like our place. We're lucky to have it, and it's worth a lot of money. We've done a lot to the place and we're proud of how it turned out. We do a little more to do, yet.