A mom of five has vowed to do less housework and spend more time “acting like a man” and enjoying her life instead. Australian comedian Mandy Nolan shared her thoughts on giving up tidying in a hilarious and lengthy Facebook post, expressing the frustrations many women feel on a daily basis. How relatable is this?!
- Running a household takes so much time and energy. It seems like the cleaning and chores are never done, especially when you have kids, and that’s something Mandy Nolan feels all too strongly. “It’s so much effort maintaining order. It’s clearly not the natural state. I’m tired of spending another minute of my life doing something pointless and ultimately unrewarding,” she wrote. “As anyone who has lived with me will attest, I’ve maintained an unrelenting regime of sorting and dusting and wiping and waxing. And Yelling. I am 52, I’ll be dead soon. I don’t want to lie on my death bed thinking … ‘I wished I’d cleaned the fan.’ Although if I’m dying and I have to look at a dusty fan I know it will [bother] me.”
- Mandy remembers when Sundays used to be for something enjoyable rather than cleaning… again. “I sometimes wonder when ‘cleaning under the house’ became something to do with one’s Sunday. I remember when I used to wake up and plan something like a day at the beach or a bushwalk but now I clean cupboards, only to open them a few weeks later to find they have resumed their former chaos,” she shared. Oh man, I can totally relate to that! Aren’t we supposed to have days of rest and relaxation? Aren’t weekends supposed to be about renewing our energy to face the work week ahead instead of piling on even more work?
- Why do we actually care so much about being perfect all the time? Mandy went on to ponder why having the perfectly tidy house became tied so closely with our own personal sense of pride and accomplishment when there are much more important things in life. “Am I prescribing to the antiquated belief that states the cleaner the house the better the woman? Do I think less of messy women? Do I think I am better because my house is cleaner? There’s this puritanical psychological coding that exists deep in my brain stem that insists I clean up if people are coming over. I don’t want them walking into my house and seeing my lack of care, my failure to be a woman secretly declaring ‘That Mandy Nolan is a dirty b***h – on stage, and OFF,'” she wrote. It’s not just Mandy’s brain this is drummed into!
- The global health crisis changed Mandy’s perspective. She says that she lost interest in housework when lockdown started as no one was coming over to see her living space. She began to realize that she was taking cleanliness way too seriously and that no one was going to judge her for a few crumbs here and there.
- Mandy Nolan points out a pretty significant double standard when it comes to housework. “Why are women judged by the state of their homes and men are not? I am sure blokes don’t visit other blokes for an arvo beer and think … ‘Gary really needs to get the spray and wipe on his coffee table.’ ‘When do you think he last cobwebbed?’” That is very true. We often just write men off as inherently messy and assume it’s a woman’s job to clean up after him. Why is that?
- No more – Mandy’s ready to act more like a man now. In other words, she’s going to adopt a more casual attitude towards housework and not stress so much when things aren’t “perfect,” which we should all do more of. “When my husband makes the bed and he doesn’t achieve my level of excellence, I won’t re-make the bed. I’ll learn to leave it. I thought that doing all this stuff made me happier, but it doesn’t, it just makes me irritable. Does colour coding my underwear drawer make my life better? Will I be happier if the ironing is done? Is there something to be learnt on your knees with a toilet brush? NO,” she wrote. “It’s just part of an indoctrination that sees women lose their best hours to unpaid drudgery. I’ve wasted too much of my life giving a [crap] about stuff that doesn’t matter. That’s why I’ve decided to transition to a man. Well, more of a man’s mindset. Or a manset. I am going to start operating with the belief that someone else will do it.” Sounds like a plan to me!
