The Myth of Domestic Goddess-ry Part II

(This is a modified but recycled post from my old blog so some of you may have read this before).

"Your goal : Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order, and tranquility."  -from The Good Wife's Guide, circa 1955

Remember Monica Gellar from Friends?  She was obsessive about keeping her living space clean, so obsessive in fact that she could not even go to sleep at night if she knew that there was a pair of shoes lying out in the middle of the living room floor.  My sister used to call me "Monica" because I was exactly that way.  In my first marriage my ex husband used to marvel over the fact that as soon as he put down an empty glass it would be whisked away to the dishwasher... and sometimes the glass wouldn't even make it to emptiness.  I used to be Monica.  In fact, I still am.  There's just one problem that I have that I didn't have in the days of pre-motherhood: MY HOUSE IS NEVER CLEAN.

I spend HOURS every day on cleaning.  But at the end of the day no matter how much I've cleaned it ends up looking exactly like the picture above.  That's what a 7 year old, a 3 year old, and a 2 year old will do for you, I suppose.  Not to mention my husband.  Oh he helps clean, a lot, so this isn't a rant that he's a useless lump that won't help 'cause he's not.  It's just that his messes that he leaves before he cleans are nothing short of amazing.  Thankfully the 7 year old is now old enough to help quite a bit, but the messes are so frequent and huge that both of our efforts kind of equal the little boy that stuck his finger in the hole to plug up the dam. Now there are days that I "take off" and don't clean and just choose to catch up on DVR backlog.  But the whole time I'm sitting there full of guilt and beating myself up feelings. 




The thing is I wish I could stop obsessing about cleaning.  Because in between actually raising my kids, working, spending time with The Family Guy, exercising, brief spiritual practices, and cleaning I have NO time left for anyone else.  My scrapbooking box gets left under the bed.  The pile of books at my bedside remains unread.  Excluding Titanic 3D, I haven't seen a full length movie in almost a year.  I have no friends outside of one sentence updates on Facebook and no social life at all.  And for what?  Nobody actually CARES if my house is clean except ME.  And yet I cannot let go of the guilt.  Two years ago my daughter contracted a case of head lice from school.  Being as obsessive as I am I got the case under control within a day (while the poor girl had to endure hours of lice shampoo treatment, comb throughs, and me ranting and crying).  But before I found out it came from school my first automatic thoughts were, "It's my fault, my house is so dirty, I'm officially a bad mother."

But therein unearths a much deeper issue: every since the failed cosmetology career fiasco of 4-5 years ago my constant thoughts about almost everything are: "I'm not good enough, I'm only average at best, etc."  Something else has been getting to me as well.  I look at friends my age with their Facebook photos and they are living in nice brand new homes.  We are not. (My husband and I had to start life all over with no credit and a huge loss of income while most of them didn't).   That's the the really unhealthy thing about "Fuckbook" (as my hilarious bloggy friend, Hippy Jersey Devil , calls it).  It's like Mind-Fuckbook.  Everybody is hotter, smarter, and lives in a better house than you.  I think something inside of me says: "Well I don't have it as nice as they do but maybe if I keep what I have nice it could come at least semi-close."  Ugh... what a waste of time, energy, and everything else.

As bad as I feel and as icky as the energy feels here my home never looks like we need to call Hoarders to come set up a camera crew and a few 1-800-JUNK trucks, so my efforts aren't totally in vain.



I'm really working very hard to not dwell on these things constantly.  Despite being a Domestic Goddess, one can only do what they can do.

The Myth of Domestic Goddess-ry Part I

This is a recycled post that I believe I originally wrote in 2010.  I just felt like archiving it in this blog as well.  It isn't a particularly spiritual subject or anything... just life itself.

A couple of years ago I started a blog that I couldn't seem to keep up with so I in the end deleted it. I had started it out on the theme of being a "Domestic Goddess" without putting much thought into it. (Ironically it seems I have come full circle back to this theme).  Imagine my surprise when after I'd already started the blog any basic Google search on "mommy blogs" brought up hundreds of other "domestic goddesses"! To me one of the points of blogging is to put your own unique spin on events in life, so I was kind of bummed out about being just another domestic goddess. So I kind of abandoned that blog theme back then and just sporadically typed about whatever for about a year.

The one thing I found on that subject that did make me stand out however was that I did seem to be one of the few "domestic goddesses" out there who was actually a working mom. Which I find ironic because to be both managing a home with multiple small children and to be working outside the home too (and to stay remotely sane while doing so) one must practically have supernatural powers to keep it all together (therein lies the "goddess" part).

If I'm not mistaken the term "domestic goddess" originated from the 80s and 90s sitcom Roseanne, as that is how the star of the show, comidean Roseanne Barr, referred to herself.  In the earlier seasons of the show (the first 4 or 5 seasons before the show went downhill and the writers constantly played on the "white trash" jokes) Roseanne was a smart mouthed "Slytherin" type of housewife who was no one particularly extraordinary.  She was a good mother, yes, but outside of her circle of friends she was one of the few mothers who actually worked AND took care of her family's need (especially on TV... previously most TV mothers were June Cleaver types).  She worked because she simply had no choice and she worked quite a few menial jobs to work around her husband's and childrens' schedules.  In the meantime Roseanne sort of sadly remembered her days of youth when she had dreams of becoming a writer or having an actual career.  Her husband, while also a good father, did not have much education and didn't make very much money although he was a hard worker.  The family lived in a small modest "hovel" type home and always barely scraped by on the bills.  The family (called The Conner family in the show) were definitely in the "lower middle class" range but they weren't really white trash until in the later seasons when the show started being written that way.

Sound familiar?  Our family is very much like those early seasons Conners.  Like down to every last detail except my personality is not quite as aggressive as Roseanne's was.  We even have the three kids, and the matriarch of the house doesn't have that perfect Lois Griffin (of Family Guy) figure.  I mean, I don't quite have Roseanne's girth but I'm no Lois Griffin (I was before I had kids though).  But that's fine, Lois Griffin is my absolute least favorite character on Family Guy anyway.  (She's a terrible mother and little more than a man's sexbot fantasy of a housewife).

Anyhow I don't see too many blogs dealing with the issues of balancing a family and working.  Probably because these moms are too busy!  I myself can really only update like once a week or so.  I'm stuck at home with the kids during the day with no car so this is my only connection to the outside world. Back in the days when I had the office jobs with Internet access I could actually blog, but now I truly am Roseanne, working in manual labor type places at night to help support my family.  I am the statistic that daytime TV trade school commercials target.

So to me "domestic goddess-ry" isn't just limited to those who are fortunate enough to be able to give 100% to their homes and families.  It could be an identity for any mother really, but for someone like me who daily attempts to balance the challenges at both work and home I believe it is a title I have more than earned.


Roseanne quote from Season 2 (1989 - 1990):

"I need that job, and I hate like hell that I do, but I need it. And, I'm not working there because I need an allowance. I'm paying for a mortgage and putting food on the table and buying clothes for three kids. But, I don't think you'd even understand that. I don't think you understand anything. You're not grown up enough, yet, to understand that your life doesn't always turn out the way you plan it to be, and sometimes you end up doing stuff you thought you'd never do in a million years, but you still have to do it 'cause there's nothing else you can do".