“Caring for others is accomplished by a dazzling array of skills in an endless variety of circumstances. As well as cooking, shopping, cleaning, laundering, planting, tending, harvesting for others, women comfort and guide, nurse and teach, arrange and advise, discipline and encourage, fight for and pacify. Taxing and exhausting under any circumstances, this service work, this emotional housework, is done both outside and inside the home.” Selma James
At 5;45 AM, my alarm goes off and I get up, handle my grooming and while I’m in bathroom , I clean the bathroom including sink, tub, toilet, sweeping, loading washer, unloading dryer, and putting yesterday’s dried laundry into the basket to be folded. By 6:30, I’m walking the dogs because Master’s already fed the little beasts. Master winds down by tossing the ball for the wee ankle biters and then I start his breakfast. He’s fed and those dishes are handled by 7:30ish and Master’s off to bed or school depending on the day. By then, the sun’s up and the lizards are awake so I clean their cages, feed them, and crank the heat in their tank to 110 degrees basking so they’ll be happy. Then I take a break and usually shoot the shit with Theresa until we both know it’s time for us to get started again.
8:30. I check my email, where I will almost ALWAYS have an email from Ma’am. I mail her back, and then prep lunch and dinner and Master’s meals for work. That’s done by 10 AM. After that, I clean the living room, reset the studio, and clean the kitchen, sweep, vacuum, check the mail, pay the bills, make the phone calls that need to be made. That’s about 2 hours. I’m done by Noon or 12:30. Cook lunch, cook dinner and plate Master’s meals for work. Then from 1:30 to 2 or just after, I fold the laundry while watching TV. I try to have my house in order by 2 PM.
Master either wakes up to go to school or comes home from school between 3 and 5 PM. I make sure he has a meal waiting for him and we talk for while before he gets back on his schedule. I try to make sure all of that talk is pleasant and for the most part, I just listen. I listen, comfort, and try to make him laugh. He works 7 days a week with no days off unless he’s sick and that’s stressful enough without the burdens of a housewife laid on top of him. I keep him content and unless it’s something I simply can’t handle, I try to make sure he only sees the beautiful side of our life. It’s something he’s never asked me to do, but I know he appreciates it. It may be the biggest thing I do to make sure that Master spends very little time paying attention to the “man behind the curtain.”
I work an 6 to 8 hour day in our home and that’s it. There IS an end to housework in our house. I just didn’t always know that. I’m learning what the end looks like. I asked Master to tell me one day when I was done, and he did and that is my daily benchmark. Once things are done, I generally have a lot of free time. It wasn’t always this way, though, and it still isn’t always this way. Some days have heavier work loads than others. Some days I have classes during the day that interrupt the flow of my schedule. When I learned how to manage my time and do what Master expects of me rather what I thought he expected, life became much easier.
Another thing that makes it easier for me is circumstance. There’s just the two of us living here. There are no kids making messes or coming home from school or bringing home friends and that makes it a lot easier on me. Barring some accident we won’t ever have children. (I am pro choice for everyone but I would personally not choose an abortion and Master wouldn’t make me.) Master works at night, sleeps a good bit in the day and has school to take care of and self defense classes to teach and he has lots of friends also which means his time at home is limited. We live largely separate lives, so much so, that a year ago, someone left a comment in my blog for clarification as to whether or not Master and I were a long distance couple! This also means that the time we do have together each day I want to devote to him fully with no housework or school work in the way.
Our house is small and doesn’t ever get that messy. The dogs are lazy as hell. One of them sleeps 18 hours a day like a cat on the end of the sofa and complains if you try to move her. The other one is happy if there are least 4 squeakers in his reach. Master doesn’t make big messes except dishes and dog toys are binned every night before bed and that cuts down on the clutter. I don’t clean Master’s room. (He won’t let me.. It’s cluttered and he LIKES it that way.)
In our house if something doesn’t get done, it’s not that big of a deal if it’s just one or two days. Master isn’t as invested in this “perfect home” notion as I am. He likes a house that looks and feels lived in and comfortable. Presentable, smells nice, clean, but not perfect. Master wants me to have a lot of free time. He doesn’t want me constantly laboring on his behalf because he believes that my art, my friendships, and most of all, my classes are important. It’s school, not housework, that takes me away from everything I enjoy. Housework I can handle, but it’s difficult to maintain a 3.6 GPA or better and that’s something Master requires. Even if the housework falls off a bit and he has to eat leftovers, he requires that school come first all the time. He says that he would rather have me excel in school than keep a shiny sink a’la the FlyLady. But when I do both, he is especially proud of me and I like that feeling. I want him to smile at me that way.
Being able to get things done in a timely manner and still have time to spare is a luxury of circumstance in my situation. If we were living a different life, with children, in a larger house, or what have you, it wouldn’t be this way, but I’m very happy that it is. When Master finishes school, has more time at home, and maybe if he allows me to work at some point, things will be much different but for now, circumstances allow me to spend time online with friends in the afternoon, read books for leisure, and spend a lot of time at LaMaestra’s House of Fun on weekends. When things change, I’ll go with the flow, but knowing my owner, he’ll simplify the housework load rather than change significantly the amount of free time I have. He understands me and what I need to function well. He needs downtime, too, and maybe it is because we are so much alike as people that he doesn’t require me to keep busy all hours of the day.
I’m happy with the freedoms he allows me. I’m almost never frazzled anymore. I’m almost never at wit’s end unless I put myself in a situation by not handling things daily. I appreciate how often he puts my happiness ahead of the house and how he assesses situations and formulates a priority structure that doesn’t ever hang me out to dry.