Tag Archives: housework

5 Cleaning Tips For People Who Hate Cleaning

Winona Dimeo-EdigerMay 23, 2012 //
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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a slob. Cleaning is one of my least favorite activities in the world, and I get the urge to tidy up about as often as I get the urge to, oh, I don’t know, relive middle school. But over the course of the last year I’ve made a dedicated effort to get better at it, and slowly but surely, I’ve become a fairly consistent doer of chores. If you’re not naturally prone to neatness, you know how tough it can be to put away the dishes or pick up a duster. To help you out, here are five tips, tricks, and strategies that have helped me tackle that terrible, awful job called cleaning the house… Keep reading »

Check Out These Get-Ready-For-Fall Cleaning Tips

Stylelist HomeAugust 28, 2011 //

It’s almost that time again! Leaves change colors, sweaters come out of hiding and your home is begging for a good clean. We asked readers and friends to share their best cleaning and organizing ideas for fall. We’ve got a baker’s dozen of our favorites.

1. Watch what you wear: “It sounds silly, but wear a dark color when you are cleaning your mirrors. Not only do you look chic and slimmer, but it’s easier to see all the shmutz that’s still left on the mirror.” — Patrick J Hamilton, Ask Patrick

2. Make it sweeter: “Add a drop or two of a spicy or vanilla essential oil to your furniture polish, and the whole house will smell like a pie baking!” — Deb Kennedy, Retreat Style Read more… Keep reading »

Is Housework The New Porn?

Wendy AtterberryOctober 22, 2009 //

OK, fess up: how many of you think it’s sexy when your partner does housework? Yeah, me neither. I mean, I appreciate it, for sure. But does it get me hot and bothered when my husband runs a vacuum over the living room rug or does a couple loads of laundry? No, not really. But according to a new study of 6,877 married couples, there’s a strong link for both women and men between watching their spouses do housework and getting turned on. One explanation for the correlation is that “housework may be a proxy for a general willingness to invest in shared interests, a symbol of commitment to home and hearth.” I’ve only been married for three months, so what the hell do I know, but good God, shoot me now if there’s a day in my future when “shared interests” refers to sparkling kitchen floors and freshly scrubbed toilet bowls. [via WSJ] Keep reading »

Thoughts From Guys On Our IM: Do You Require Domestic Skills In A Partner?

Amelia McDonell-ParryAugust 26, 2008 //

Watching Mad Men has made me slightly nostalgic (well as “nostalgic” as I can be for an era in which I wasn’t even a zygote) for the days when people drank at 9am (at work too!), men wore suits every day, and women rocked brooches and perfectly coiffed up-do’s. But it also has made me think about traditional gender roles, particularly the role of the woman in the home — cooking, cleaning, attending to the social calendar, and raising the children. Now that women are largely active and succeeding in the work force, “women’s work” has become something that a lot of women don’t want to do, have to do, or know how to do. While I love to cook and cleaning is my OCD vice, I can’t sew to save my life and wouldn’t know what to do when it came to making a table centerpiece. Catherine can’t cook and doesn’t have an interest in learning — but because so many of our mothers still fit these roles when we were growing up, do modern men still expect their future wives to nurture in the same way, despite having careers outside the home? In a nutshell, will Catherine’s future hubby be letdown when she tells him, “Sorry mister, I am not going to learn how to cook your mother’s famous tuna casserole”? I decided to ask the guys on my IM whether they still expect modern women to be “domestically skilled”. Keep reading »

Menage A Trois: A Man, A Broom, And A Dustpan

SimchaMay 7, 2008 //

What really turns women on? The Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative set out to create books of really sexy stuff by stripping away the usual conventions of the genre. In their SFW books with a sense of humor, Porn for Women and Porn For New Moms, you won’t find the typical tan babes wearing nothing but a smile. But what you will find inside maybe be something even more satisfying — hotties doing housework. Keep reading »

The Daily Squeeze: Housework, Wiener Worship, And A Personal Mastectomy Story

Amelia McDonell-ParryApril 7, 2008 //
  • According to a new study, men create as much as seven hours of extra housework for women every week, while a wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week. Supposedly this is due to the fact that men tend to do more labor outside the home. These results are based on recent data, by the way, not data from 1955. [Univ. Of Michigan News Service]
  • Five religions that worship the penis. We are not members, FYI. [Cracked]
  • We’re super interested in reading Jessica Queller’s book Pretty Is What Changes. Though she writes about snotty rich teens for the TV show Gossip Girl, her book is about her personal experience getting a double mastectomy. [New York]

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    The Daily Squeeze: Happiness, Chores, and Swedish Drugstores

    Catherine StrawnMarch 6, 2008 //
  • Half of being happy comes down to genes, according to a study of nearly 1,000 pairs of identical twins. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland found that genetics controlled 50 percent of the personality traits that make people happy, while other factors, like relationships, health, and careers, determine the rest. [Reuters]
  • American men have increased how much housework they do, doubling their contribution in the last 40 years. Instead of washing dishes and folding laundry 15 percent of the time, which is how it was back in the 1960s, men now do more than 30 percent of the total housework, a report released by the Council on Contemporary Families says. We’d like to see that number come up to 50 percent in the next few years, and we’re pretty sure that 51 percent of the population would agree. [USA Today]
  • The state-run pharmacy chain in Sweden will begin selling sex toys to satisfy customer demand. After a survey revealed that customers wanted to see dildos and massage oils at stores, Apoteket decided to offer them for a one-year trial period starting in May. Will they be on Aisle 3, with the plastic forks and spoons? [The Local]

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