German housewives do on average four hours housework a day. Shocked and somewhat intimidated by this statistic I was about to dismiss it, when I had a sudden thought. Exactly how much time do I spend a day on house related tasks?
To my amazement, on a day when I didn't think I'd done any real cleaning, I totted up two whole hours. This took in laundry, filling and emptying the dishwasher, making the bed, cleaning the loos, wiping over worksurfaces. The sort of thing I never even considered proper, hard core housework.
The two hours were balanced by the three when I did nothing but write.
Then of course there was the time spent dealing with e mails and FB. I did try to limit this to once a day, but found that I missed important messages, so now I allow myself a few minutes, first thing in the morning, mid-day and last thing at night. On only one of those sessions will I do more than scan through and answer urgent messages.
Was this a good day? I got a lot of editing done, the house was ticking over and I didn't miss anything on my social media.
On the other hand could I have done more? Could I have spent more time writing, or is this all part of being female and conditioned to look after the house in a way that men are not?
