Down with housework

A few months ago I wrote about how cleanliness was often an unhelpful addiction:

I am skeptical of cleaning, beyond that required to stay organised and avoid disease, for the same reason most people are nervous about drug habits. People differ enormously in how much cleanliness they expect. When someone catches the ‘cleanliness bug’, I doubt they are left any better off than someone with low expectations. They could easily be worse off if they have to incur the cost of cleaning just to maintain their original level of well-being. That is to say, I think cleaning exhibits strong dependency and addiction.

Quiggin has a similar take on social expectation for housework and how we could alter our attitude to them to save ourselves the trouble:

That still leaves a number of inescapably physical and essentially crappy jobs, for which technology has yet to offer a solution. The obvious examples for me are cleaning (surfaces, baths, toilets etc) and ironing (not such a problem if, unlike me, you can do it while watching a video/TV). Something these tasks share, and which is true of a lot of crappy jobs, is that we do a lot more than is actually necessary. Social standards inherited from the days of cheap servant labour dictate much more cleanliness than is required for hygiene, and practices like ironing for which there is no need at all.

So, a final part of my idea of utopia would be the institution of social norms that frown on unnecessary crap-work. In my utopia, a freshly ironed shirt would attract the same kind of response that is now elicited by a fur coat or an ivory brooch – a mixture of anachronistic admiration with disapproval of the process by which it was produced, with the latter element predominating over time.

I am willing to do my part – or perhaps I should say not do my part – to push social norms in this direction!