A New York Times Style-section column by Michelle Slatalla caught my eye this morning, declaring that I should be a patriot and hire a housekeeper(???) I decided to peruse the column and saw that it was mostly devoted to Slatalla’s musings on ‘spring cleaning’ with her family. But I read on, and was pleased to learn that Slatalla had consulted a sociologist when she became exasperated trying to get herself and her family in gear for cleaning the house. She writes:
And that [cleaning grease from the stove and noticing the filthy baseboards] was when I finally gave up. I couldn’t do this on my own anymore. I needed the help of an expert to motivate my family.
“How am I going to get the rest of them to help me keep the house clean?” I asked Pamela J. Smock, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies how housework affects family relationships.
“Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Are you still able to afford to hire someone to clean your house?”
“ ‘Afford’ is a state of mind,” I said. “My household hasn’t lost income — yet — but my husband and I are journalists, the most endangered species there is outside of Detroit.”
I’m superstitious: Maybe if I appease the God of the Bad Economy with this offering — cutting my discretionary spending — I can ward off a worse fate.
That’s the wrong way to think, Professor Smock said.
“Right now, the bad economy is hurting people who clean houses for a living much more than it’s hurting the middle class,” she said. “So anybody who is solidly in the middle class or above should hire the cleaners back. Absolutely. Immediately. You’ll be serving your country.”
I stopped to consider this argument, which sounded, frankly, like the exact opposite of the old conventional wisdom.
“I used to feel guilty about hiring housecleaners,” I said. “Like I was selfishly relying on the hard labor of poorly paid workers to make it easier to pursue my own career without sacrificing my comfort.”
Forget that claptrap, said Professor Smock, who pays $110 for housecleaning twice a month.
“If I got a raise, I’d do it every week, and also hire the cleaning lady’s husband to install the underground sprinklers,” she said. “Right now, people need jobs. It’s a bad idea to cut back on things you used to do normally. Don’t do your own hedging. Don’t start mowing, either.”
Put that way, I saw she had a point. How could I have been so selfish? I called the cleaners right away, of course, and that made me feel so patriotic that I decided to do more.
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