This roundtable is brought to you by the fact that Autostraddle co-founder Riese is truly obsessed with knowing about people’s feelings about various common household chores. She came to the rest of us editors like won’t someone please ask our team the question on everyone’s minds: what are your favorite and least favorite chores around the house? We were skeptical at first, but then it became clear from our conversations with each other and the answers we received that chore breakdowns and our feelings about them ARE kind of interesting. So, okay Riese, you were right.
And now, behold, a vast portrait of queer domesticity! The Autostraddle + For Them team shares their favorite and least favorite household chores. What are yours?
Comments
YES this is exactly the sort of thing I love about Autostraddle!
My favourite used to be laundry but now I’m in the UK and don’t have a dryer (most don’t!) it can’t be a discrete start/end task (I agree, these are the best ones) and therefore it is so annoying! I still love it going in, taking it out and hanging it all to dry…and then it just has to be there until the next day, MININUM. Just looming over me as an upcoming task.
I also love how everyone splits up cooking/dishes which my partner and I don’t do at all! We both really love cooking so we alternate weeks, and that person does the lot – groceries, planning, cooking, cleaning dishes/kitchen – while the other has a week off just arriving to delicious meals and no work. It makes the off week feel so luxurious, and then we’re excited to cook again!
I find grocery shopping to be tedious, not helped by it being annoyingly expensive. It is my worst chore. Luckily my partner loves the supermarket so I often successfully get myself out of that one. I always take the rubbish (trash) and recycling out and clean the gross shower filter. I love tidying the garden but is this a chore.? I am also an expert disposer of dead vermin my cat brings inside. My butch babe finds this hideous so I always come to the rescue hehe.
i looooove grocery shopping minus the increasingly exorbitant cost
I often ask people how they find grocery shopping (I started doing this as awareness of its perplexing popularity dawned on me) and it is clear that I am part of a very small minority in my intense dislike of it. I don’t understand.
i love grocery shopping and also enjoy the budgeting challenge. my wife thinks i’m crazy but what can i say i love couponing!
Huge thanks to Drew for somehow articulating what I never realized about why I like the chores I like and hates the chores I hate.
i felt the same way when i read what drew wrote i was like yes that exactly is why i don’t like those tasks!
I LOVE doing laundry. There’s few things better than the smell of freshly laundered clothes dried out in the sun. Breathe it in and it’s all warmth and comfort and sunlight, like a hug but for your nose. I will happily sort out darks from lights, load up the washing machine, hang up the laundry (no to dryers because I’m not a barbarian), and then fold it and put it away.
I also like going to the shops for groceries and coming back to put them away in their dedicated spots in the fridge and pantry. It’s like a fun game of Tetris and I enjoy browsing the aisles and checking out the produce.
However, if you give me a broom, mop, duster, or scrub, I’ll pout and barely resist the urge to throw a tantrum. I detest hoovering, mopping, scrubbing and the like. I find it unbearably tedious and exasperating.
i loathe mopping i think of all the things that exist i do hate mopping the most
eva how do you facetime people while watching dishes what’s your secret? even with my headphones in my mom always insists she can hear the dishes being washed!
Like Nico, I love somebody elses chores! That is why I have been thinking of getting a side job as a cleaner.
Like Summer and Nico, I hate dishes! I have a theory, that most autistic people do. I feel like the dishes and the water, and dishsoap give my face a greasy covering, and thus I always have to fo wash my face after doing the dishes. We have a dish washer, otherwise my spouse would be doing the dishes all the time.
I agree about hating dishes as an autistic sensory thing!! My issue is that the way my parents did dishes was to completely fill one sink with hot soapy water and all the dirty dishes go in that, and the idea of doing that and they sticking my hands in that disgustingness is more than I can bear. So instead I end up with lots of individual dishes soaking with dish soap in them, but at least everything’s visible and with the kind of soap we use there’s relatively little scrubbing. The downside to that is that some part of my brain is always worried that I’m not actually getting anything clean enough. It’s mostly okay for stuff that then goes on the dishwasher, but I’ll put off washing plastic stuff that can’t go into the dishwasher forever because I don’t feel like I’m sufficiently cleaning it. (Pots and pans are slightly less of an issue because we have relatively few, so logistically I end up washing them pretty frequently because I need to use them again.)
I’ve also found that spot cleaning with a handheld vacuum is much more doable than using a fullsize one because I can quickly do it whenever stuff gets recognized by my brain as an issue without having to also clear everything off all of the floor space and do everything at once. I don’t mind cleaning the bathroom, but it gets put off when other chores feel more urgent (which is almost always).
I genuinely love grocery shopping to the point where it isn’t a chore to me, it’s just a nice activity. (As long as the store isn’t super crowded). I rarely go with a list other than a few specific needs, so I like browsing and getting inspired, comparing all the options of whichever thing I might get, etc.
In general, I like cleaning and hate tidying. Dishes is probably my favorite chore. I don’t like vacuuming (something about dealing with the cord!) but other than that, I don’t mind wiping, scrubbing, sweeping, etc.
I’m horrible at organizing and tidying. (My brain just gets too distracted I think? But it can’t wander happily the way it can if I’m doing a cleaning task bc I have to think about where things go.) I can keep common spaces pretty neat but my own room ends up being messy (though never dirty!) unless I have some external motivation like a guest.
Can I ask a question that has haunted me for years…what do Americans mean when you say folding your laundry? Does it include ironing? Or literally just folding the clothes?
I’m from the UK and I’ve never heard any one talk about folding their clothes as a stand alone task, but it’s a staple of all American chores-related media. Why does it take hours??
Very grateful for any insight (also loved this article)
I’m from the US, and while I can’t speak for everyone, when I say “folding laundry,” I literally just mean folding the clothes. Putting clothes away is a related chore that may happen immediately thereafter or not until days later, if I have folded them before lugging them home from the laundromat or upstairs from the washer and dryer in the basement of my apartment. When I had in-unit laundry, I was more likely to fold laundry and put it away simultaneously, but when I have to wash it elsewhere, the folding is prone to happen right after drying it, only to have the folded clothes languish in tote bags for days.
(Only two of the houses or apartments where I’ve lived in the US have had outdoor clotheslines, and one of the neighborhoods in which I grew up had a homeowners association that forbade them. All that is to say that most of the time, the laundry needing to be folded is coming out of a dryer, not off of a clothesline. If it is not removed and folded promptly, it gets wrinkled. However, I do not automatically include ironing as part of folding laundry, as ideally it isn’t necessary. Even if it is, I usually wait until I actually want to wear one of the garments in question.)