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?
I try and spend a couple of hours each morning working on stuff, but this can vary from working all day to 5 minutes. I spend almost as much time on research, reading through stuff and finding visuals.Living on my own housework comes at a very low level and is usually done when I notice a surface isn't shining. I spend quite a long time cooking and gave my iron away nearly 2 years ago. I have lived about 2/3rds of my adult life not in a living together relationship (if that makes sense), so for housework and everything else I have depended on myself, that could probably include my time married!
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