05 | The Myth of Domestic Perfection
05 | The Myth of Domestic Perfection
In this episode, I debunk the myth of domestic perfection. We all have a vision of the “perfect” home, but there’s no such thing as the perfect way to maintain a house. Every belief we hold about how our home should look or feel is based on societal messages.
We have tricked ourselves into believing domestic bliss is a clean, organized house with bins, labels, and baskets. But the feeling of “bliss” is made up! Even more so, tidiness does not equal happiness. I'm here to help you realize how patriarchal and misogynistic messaging has encouraged women to tie their value to how tidy and productive their homes are. This is false.
I empower you to shine a light on where your self-expectations originated. Together we will inspect how your socialization and upbringing affects your belief in what clean and organized means. Remember - there is no right way to keep a house; there’s only your way.
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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing an Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy, and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast, we'll go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to episode five, “The Myth Of Domestic Perfection.” Before we dive into the topic of today's episode, I'd love to walk you through a brief visualization exercise. Now, if you're driving, like I'm often doing while listening to podcasts, you should definitely hold off for a bit. For everyone else, I'd love for you to take a deep breath in and begin to imagine the ideal home. Picture everything about it. It could be your current home as is. It could be your dream home. It could be a celebrity home. It could be your childhood home. Imagine your sense of perfection, your ideal space. Notice not only how it looks, but take note of how it feels, how it smells, the light and the colors. Imagine how many items are in the home. Imagine the amount of space. Each of us has a vision of our ideal home environment.
Now, gently set your imagining aside. It's important and valuable information that you can come back to at any time. In today's episode, we'll zoom out from this a bit to talk about domestic perfection and the roots of this sense of clutter free, frustration free bliss, and how the myth of it all impacts the way you see your home today. This is good stuff, y'all. What many of us don't know or haven't really thought about is that the way you see your home and the beliefs you have about home management, motherhood, care tasks, caregiving and creating a comforting restorative living environment - this perspective comes from somewhere. You've been given it by your ancestors, your community, the larger patriarchal society, and by the media. You've then blended lots of these messages and beliefs together to find your own sense of home life too. Now, by no means will today's episode be an exhaustive list of historical resources.
That's not my intention, and if it was, I'd probably lose you along the way. My aim is to heighten your awareness about what you've been taught throughout your life so that you can get curious about what you believe. Then you can decide if the societal messages you've received truly fit your current lifestyle. They absolutely may feel amazing or just a few may make you ponder a little deeper. I'll reiterate, my belief is that there's no right way to run a household or keep a house. There's only your way, and this podcast is all about bringing intentional mindset to your daily life. This episode will spotlight how the messages you've received about the right way or the wrong way are steeped in our uncomfortable collective patriarchal history.
So a little roadmap for you. First, I'll define a few key terms that are relevant to the topic. Then I'll discuss how in the past, women's time and value was tied to child-rearing and productivity within the home. Both the concepts of clutter and tidiness stem from these centuries old messages, generations later, lots of them are still prevalent, and that's where it gets exciting. Alright. The three key terms I'd like to highlight are misogyny, patriarchy, and socialization. These terms aren't political in any way. Misogyny is a belief. Patriarchy is a system. Socialization happens to us all. Everyone listening will have a different relationship with each of these ideas. That's to be expected. However, each of them plays a role in some way, shape, or form in your life. Misogyny is the belief that men are inherently superior to women.
This creates a hierarchy of dominance directly from birth, held by many communities worldwide. Misogyny appears from the moment you're born in subtle or in some cases direct messaging. Think about the clothing styles you were directed towards or the sports or activities you were guided into when you were younger. Some were for girls and others were for boys. Misogynistic messaging becomes ingrained in our subconscious, whether you're born female or born male, it sounds a little bit like, “real men don't do housework, that's why they have a wife.” “You're being so hysterical. Girls are emotional.” “Boys don't ask permission. They just go and do.” “Be a good girl and smile more.” Although you may not knowingly believe these messages, it takes active attention and a process of unlearning to see the ways that you've been influenced by society, the household chore gap, who does what within the home is a great place for each of us to start getting curious.
Patriarchy is the broader structural system created from misogyny with men being the historical dominant voice in politics and economics. Patriarchy gained its status through its widespread repeated use and reinforcement within the home. Patriarchy impacts all our social systems. Think education, employment, like the wage gap between men and banking and financial education, religion, healthcare, all these things. What is defined as the domestic space, the role of women in society, childbearing and child rearing, as well as societal views on what it means to be productive are no exception.
Lastly, we are all raised in different communities and different family structures with different cultural influences. Your socialization is not optional. It's determined through the combination of messages and beliefs that you were taught by those in your direct sphere of influence. It's basically how you were raised. This includes "acceptable ways" of being a woman or a man in our daily lives. I want to pause for a moment and say that I recognize other gender identities and I'm always learning and growing. For this episode, I'll stick to the traditional stereotypical narrow definition of womanhood. Essentially, each of us were taught how to operate within our gender classification. It's subtle and often unrecognizable, and this is critical. It means that your thoughts about your abilities as a woman, as a mother, as a partner, as a caretaker, a professional, a household manager, all of those have been made up by society and taught to you. They are not fixed facts. Whew!
So now that we're all on the same page, let's define the myth of domestic perfection. It's the belief that's been developed over the last millennium that women in particular should always be working and striving for a state of organized, productive bliss within their household. I've actually developed my own tongue-in-cheek spin on this idea, which I'll share in a future episode. The best easy to access reference of domestic perfection right now in our contemporary society is the image of a spacious, well organized celebrity home with white walls, walk-in closets, open kitchen floor plan, and lots of bins, boxes, and labels. It's what my industry sells as bliss. It appears beautiful, so life within this idealized home must be running smoothly, so why is it a myth? I'm going to burst your bubble for a bit. It's not that a beautiful, well-manicured home isn't possible. Sure, with enough time, energy and resources, you can achieve external beauty.
The catch is in the second half of what I said, the belief that IF the bliss is achieved, that life within the home must be running smoothly. This is the sneaky, emotionally destructive side that makes it a myth and for that matter, a trap for women in particular. Throughout history, in most societies, women have been told their value is not inherent in who they are, but is derived directly from how many children they bore and how well they manage the productive output of their homes, think the quality of their children and their family's moral standing within the community. Women were intentionally kept out of the educational system and workforce by men, and explicitly told that the woman's place was at home a direct result of the patriarchal societal structure. Girls were seen as the property of the male relatives and required to seek permission for certain activities outside the home, and this still exists in many communities across the globe.
Allowing women access to education or the ability to earn income would've given us a measure of independence. Instead, we were forced to be financially dependent on male relatives, and again, this is still true in many households across the globe today. This relegated women to domestic responsibilities, caring for the home and property, shopping for household supplies, preparing meals, mending clothing, and being responsible for the moral upbringing of the children in their care. Because there was no separation of the professional and domestic sphere for women, they were expected to always be working for and towards the betterment of the household, and this sounds a little like the second and third shift that many of us still take on. Centuries ago, religion played a specific role as well. In Christian households, a woman was taught that her entrance into heaven was dependent on how virtuous, productive, and submissive to her husband's whims she was.
Idleness was a kin to sinfulness and again was seen as a moral failing or an obstacle to everlasting peace. Again, this is where I invite you to get curious about whether you've heard similar messages in your home.
Industrialization brought factory work. The regulation of workers' hours and the electrification of cities meant that paid work could easily continue into the night. Terms like “punctuality” and “efficiency” shifted from their Latin roots towards our more current understanding of their meaning. “Time is money” and time well spent equals income. Income allowed a family to increase its social status, therefore, overworking became ingrained as the path to material wealth. Then of course, leisure time was replaced by the expectation that one should either be working or keeping house.
Ugh, this feels so heavy and so familiar. “A woman's work was never done.” I'm sure you've heard that before. Historically, standards of housekeeping were based on tidiness and cleanliness. One's house could never be too clean, as these were considered morally superior qualities, and that's what we're trying to break apart here. Overworking within the home became ingrained as a measurement of women's value or her worth. Disorder and disarray were associated with impurity and immorality. An opulent home filled with objects needing to be tended, tidied and cleaned, signaled wealth and leisure. Patriarchal society viewed it as aspirational to be a middle class or upper class white woman able to hire others to do her manual labor and childcare while she indulged in social occasions with other women amidst decorative furnishings.
This was beneficial too and reflected well upon the stereotypical successful white man whose only responsibility was to work outside the home to provide the furnishings and hired help for his wife. Books, catalogs and magazines appeared in the mid-1800s educating women on the proper standards of keeping house, including her garden, and y'all I could do a whole episode just on that. These manuals included expectations on how to create orderly systems for domestic bliss, cook nutritious meals, and how to best entertain guests. These guides offered advice and often parroted Christian nativist moral ideals and were hundreds of pages long. Women were oppressed in a subversive manner by this cheery domestic science media featuring images of harmonious white households. These standards and expectations were pressure cookers for women because a “good wife” and a “good mother” was able to do it all. Sound familiar?
Think of today's Martha Stewart or Good Housekeeping. The individual aspects of media aren't necessarily harmful. It's the collective sense that going beyond crafting and cooking as a hobby or a personal passion is what makes you a “good wife” or a “good mother.” It's that that matters. Women were cajoled and convinced by patriarchal society to believe that our worthiness was dependent on our abilities to manage and maintain household harmony. We also became complicit generation after generation, not having the freedom to work easily outside of the home, and in this episode, I didn't even dip into the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Women perpetuated these ideals amongst themselves as well.
What you've been taught about homemaking, organization and care tasks has a deep and complex history. What I've shared here today is just the edge of it. There's a completely separate conversation to be had around home economics education within the school system.
I'm so glad that you've stuck with me. When I work with clients we hold these patriarchal and social messages up for closer inspection to see if they're your truth for your life today, or simply automatic thoughts and beliefs that you've absorbed. I hope these threads have given you something to explore within your own self and your own upbringing. Using the image that you visualized at the top of the episode, I invite you to think about the societal standards and expectations you were raised to see as the bare minimum and as the ultimate goal.
Your definition of clean or tidy comes from someone or somewhere. Your definition of the role of women or men within the home also comes from somewhere. Notice what you see as you move throughout your week ahead. Listen a little more closely to the conversations that are taking place in your circles. Look at the headlines of magazines and media. Take note. Thanks again for being here. I love questioning, exploring and helping you find your sense of what it means to be organized. There's so much more to come. Talk to y'all soon.
Outro: Hey, y'all, my monthly Second Friday's Workshop Series is here. Join me on the second Friday of every month in 2023 for a practical no frills come as you are hour of teaching and coaching. I'll show you exactly how I handle one area of home organization then the floor will be open for questions and coaching. We'll troubleshoot what's feeling challenging for you and get you unstuck on the spot. Find out more and register at www.apleasantsolution.com/workshops or via Instagram. Can't wait to meet you.
