Sparkling Clean is an Ad Slogan, Not a Standard
Whether you’re a woman entrepreneur or not, housework is a chore that many people dislike. And don’t have much time for!
April 7 is National No Housework Day. If you clean your own place, take the day off. If you have a housekeeper or cleaner, let them take the day off too!
Do we business owners need to do so much housework?
I mean, yes, there is a minimum standard of cleanliness to maintain. Otherwise you end up with bugs and creepy crawlies. Your tech (laptops, routers, screens) need dusting and cleaning regularly, or else they’ll get clogged up with dust and dirt and mites and what-not. You end up with a shorter usable life. Plus, keeping spaces clear can help you feel less overwhelmed.
So I want to state up front that I am not against cleaning in general. It definitely has its benefits! However, do we (especially women entrepreneurs) need to spend so much time on this particular chore?
You don’t need to eat off the floor, because you have a table for that. Cleaning the toilet prevents it from being completely disgusting. But do you have to clean it so thoroughly, using up some of your valuable time, and employ antibacterial cleaning agents, which harm both you and the environment?
Have a cleaning chore that you just can’t stand? I personally loathe vacuuming so I have a robot vacuum cleaner. It’s good enough at cleaning the floors, given that I’m not dining off them.
This idea of getting everything sparkling clean is basically the brainchild of ad execs back in the day, who needed to create urgency around buying their cleaning products. It’s not necessary or even advisable to “sanitize” surfaces. Especially since kids do better with an environment that isn’t completely germ-free and sanitized so their immune systems can build up properly anyway.
Who’s doing the cleaning?
The other issue with taking so much time on this chore is that it’s almost always the woman’s job, at least for hetero couples. Right?
If you’re a microchip manufacturer or a surgeon you need to sanitize your environment, but not for your house. Back when ad agencies were inventing the necessity of a sterile environment for the home, many women didn’t work outside it.
That’s not the lifestyle we live anymore, as you well know. Yet the female spouse is still expected to do all the child care: witness all the women who left the workforce during the pandemic to take care of the kids. Even if she was the higher earner. Adding on work outside the home to the housework and childcare seems like an insult to injury!
Business owners need to delegate
And not just at work! Many employeeshave been able to reset the expectations at the workplace, so why not reset the expectations at the house? If you’re married, there’s no reason for you to do all the housework. Your spouse should expect to step in for childcare and housework.
It’s one thing if you’re not working at a “separate” job so you’re at home all day and your spouse is working a separate job. (I used to say “work outside the home”, because housework is work whether you get paid or not, but now that many people are working from home, that doesn’t help!) When only one of you has a separate job, it might be reasonable to divide up the household into one who takes care of external stuff and one who takes care of the internal.
If you have kids, they should be doing their own (age-appropriate) chores. And if that means they go to school hungry one day because they forget to make their lunch the night before, even if you reminded them, too bad.
Maybe they put a red sock in with the white laundry and stained everything pink. Then they go to school with pink clothes (or rewash everything.) They’ll need these skills later on in life anyway!
And don’t allow your spouse to weaponize their supposed incompetence. (Yes, it’s a thing.) They’ll do things wrong to get out of having to do them entirely, figuring that you’ll just pick up the slack. Don’t. Let them suffer the consequences if they don’t do their share.
Or you could hire a housekeeper. If you have the funds, why not?
Will it be hard? At first, yeah, especially if you haven’t had these expectations before for your family. Expect whining and foot-dragging and weaponized incompetence at first. Take care of yourself while this is all happening.
Think about whether you still want to be doing all this work 20, 30, 40 years from now. If you’ll be doing your kids’ laundry when they’re 40 because they never learned.
Lower your expectations
Sometimes you need to keep your standards high. As a business owner, your employees need to do their work in a reasonable amount of time. They have to handle customer service to a very high level, at least if you want to keep your business running.
You undoubtedly have high standards for yourself. (Though do you need all of them? Probably not. Especially if it’s just a reason to beat yourself up.)
But for your house? Maintain a solid C average when it comes to your cleaning. Your kids and your spouse are going to do things differently, and that’s OK, as long as it’s a solid C result. Don’t fall for a cleaning product manufacturer’s idea of cleanliness.
And on April 7, look around at your house and all the things that aren’t perfect. Then sit down, maybe put your feet up, call a friend or do a craft or something that benefits your brain. Cleaning can wait!
Recap
Sparkling clean is for ad agencies and the cleaning product manufacturers who hire them, not for people. Cleanliness is not solely a woman’s job. Delegate your housework as much as you can and aim for a solid C, so you can spend precious time on things that are valuable to you.