Domesticity

Musing on the simple pleasures in life

Home is where the heart is.

May I just say that I love my dishwasher? I spent most of my life without one. Indeed, in childhood living with no electricity in Alaska on a homestead meant a dishwasher wasn’t even possible. We hauled the water from a mile away, heated it on a wood stove, and sometimes in winter melted snow for water, but the interior of Alaska doesn’t actually get a deep snow cover, so that was limited. Particularly when there was an ashfall from one of the many active volcanoes in the region. So, when I first had a dishwasher as an adult, I wasn’t quite sure about it. I could see that it would be a timesaver, but I’d also been told that modern dishwashers were not terribly efficient. This is where the lack of one came in handy: I had no measure of comparison. I rinsed, I loaded, or the teens loaded (since this was when my children were much older) and the dishes came out mostly clean! Amazing!

Fast forward a few moves later, and into the house that will be our forever home, and the dishwasher was… disappointing. Installed forty years earlier, it was very much at the end of it’s life, the racks were rusting, it didn’t do a good job of cleaning and, well…

I’ve had the new kitchen for almost a year and a half, and I love it. I regularly stop when I’m working in there, look around, and just feel… content. The new range, the dishwasher which is roomy and works beautifully, the way I’ve been able to take a lifetime of thinking about kitchens and make this one work for me? It’s home. It’s a functional space and I got to see a friend walk into it for the first time yesterday, open her eyes wide, and exclaim “it’s beautiful!” which was a lovely external confirmation of my own pleasure in it.

A decade ago, when I wrote about the kitchen I was in, and how I was making it work, I was no less happy. I had serious limitations in the space. It was in no way conducive to entertaining, I could never have pulled off a meal for 17 (18 counting the baby) but it was ours. That was our first little nest together and for that, I loved it. Also, it had fantastic natural light, which I miss in this kitchen, but really, you can’t have everything.

Six years ago, I was able to go to the Smithsonian and see Julia Childs’ kitchen. Although I’ve never actually seen her cooking show (grew up with no TV) I knew her story, how she came to be a cook after being in the OSS, and it resonated with me. Looking into her kitchen I was inspired to design my own kitchen with some of the systems she had set up. Her space looked to me like it would work for me. And indeed, it did, and has.

Something you may have noticed in this stroll down memory lane is that I’m not at all concerned with any interior decorating trends. Most of the current ones I find repellant, frankly. I do want a beautiful space around us, but my idea of beauty is hardly mainstream. Many people would find my home intolerably cluttered, and I know this because my late grandmother tried her best to make me get rid of all of my books because they were ‘clutter.’ If I seem a bit… protective? of my library, this is part of the reason why. I grew up with homes that were busy, rarely clean, and hard-working. We grew much of our own food, hunted, raised animals for milk, eggs, and meat, and that’s not a tidy way to live. Being able to eat off a farmhouse floor is just never going to happen. For me, then, the home I’m making now is actually peaceful and restful, with no stray bits of hay, manure, random holes in the bathroom floor… Yes, I have rooms filled with bookshelves and few walls for art to hang on. Compromises!

Mostly, though, as I was standing at the sink this morning, after unloading the dishwasher from last night, and then reloading it before handwashing the few things I can’t put in there, I was thinking how happy I am with our home. It’s a work in progress. I have projects that I need to finish up. Likely will always have projects, as I complete one another two will pop up. I find joy in the housework, though, in a way I didn’t find until a few years ago. My husband was teasing me as I asked him about buying a new mop-and-bucket system recently, then waiting impatiently for it to arrive, before, as he put it, playing with my new toy. It did a very nice job on the kitchen floor! I suspect it will be too wet¹ to use on the wood floors, but that means I get to shop for a mop more. I like having the house clean, and it doesn’t feel like the Augean Stables now that it’s just the two of us at home.

Even when we host a large group it’s easy for me to clean up and recover from it. Which is wonderful because I love cooking for a gathering. The dishwasher holds so much I can sometimes even get everything in one load after the meal. I can, and do, use real silverware, cloth napkins, and only sometimes plastic and paper when I’m getting really ambitious². This is by design, though. I had an idea of what I wanted to do with our home, and how to do it, and over the last couple of years have been tweaking systems and layouts of the house to allow me to work without having more work than I could handle alone.

Supper last night, with the addition of an appetizer spread, was three courses taking us to Finland for the evening. Why? Because I could.

Which is important. If you plan workflows, cutting down on excess steps and effort, you can work more efficiently. In the home, this means more time to enjoy your company rather than being tied up in the kitchen and cleaning. Or, worse, feeling like a drudge after everyone is gone having to plough through the mess. That’s a terrible way to kill all the joy in your life. Some of this I had to learn the hard way. Housework is boring. I don’t do well being bored. However, if I maintain my home so I don’t have to slog through hours of work before guests arrive, then more when they are gone, I can enjoy having them, be present with them, and after they are gone I can relax in happy memories and look forward to the next time. I only wish it hadn’t taken me so many years to learn these techniques.

I can’t tell you what will work for you, every person and every house is different³ but I can say that you shouldn’t feel locked into what isn’t working for you. Personally, if I hide things in drawers or cupboards I lose track of them and forget they exist. This is why I hang my tools (like Julia did!) handy to where I’ll be using them. Some people would be driven mad by this approach. Also, if you have trouble motivating yourself to keep the house tidy, try coming up with different approaches to that. For me it was partly that I’ve always wanted to live in a house where I could look around, and not feel weighted down by the amount of cleaning that needed to be done. And I wanted to be able to have people drop by at any time and the house wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve lived where having someone come in the house would have been terribly embarrassing, or impossible, and I don’t want that. I want to have company. I want to feel calm and happy in my home.

I want happy domesticity. And I have it. It’s worth making that effort.

1. The wringer system doesn’t seem to extract as much of the water from the mop head as my old twist mop did. Which means on the vinyl kitchen floor it really gets the gunk up. But the hardwood needs just a hint of wet.

2. Like last night’s meal! plastic bowls for the dessert because I don’t have 18 dessert bowls.

3. Ok, maybe not the ticky-tacky boxes in the mushroom housing that pops up everywhere. Those seem to be all the same and all equally terrible in their design (or lack of design). Still, with much effort, I think they could be made into a real home.