Hear Me Out: Working from home makes me feel like a bad housewife

“I didn’t want to be the woman doing laundry. I wanted to be the girl in the meeting who says things like, ‘Can we circle back to that?’”

I have never had any desire to be a stay-at-home anything, not as a wife, girlfriend or mother. I’ve always loved going to work every day, and the key word here is ‘going’. I love going to pick out my outfit every morning, I love going to my favourite local coffee shop before work and ordering a vanilla soy latte.

I love going into the office and seeing my co-workers and then going to get a coffee together. Fine, maybe it’s a cocktail! But enter the pandemic and suddenly, I stopped going anywhere.

Looking for some similarly thought-provoking reads? Subscribe here and we’ll send them straight to your inbox.

You see, the reason I like working so much is that I’m not good at the domestic stuff. To quote the iconic Cardi B, “I don’t cook, I don’t clean!”. As far as I’m concerned, being a housewife is actually the hardest job in the world and frankly, I’m not up to the task.

On the frontline 

For me, being out and about in the working world has always felt crucial to my own mental health and identity. I like who I am at work as well. I like feeling competent and capable, and I like feeling that way at my very own desk that is not my home space, which I reserve for relaxing. At home I often feel like a bit of a mess, I’m a terrible cleaner, below average cook and I hate all life admin tasks.

Obviously, the pandemic forced almost everyone to work from home. However, in my situation, my boyfriend was going to work every day while I was housebound. By default, this meant anything to do with the house during the day fell on me. Deliveries, handymen, dishes from last night, hanging laundry that needed to be saved from the rain. I was in charge because after all, I was home, and it felt simply rude not to do it. Yes, he was a frontline worker but I became a frontline laundry person.

Pre-pandemic, we’d both leave the house every day around the same time, return around 5pm and have to sort these things out together. I must give credit to my boyfriend here – he is the more domestic one. He is the one that does most of the cooking, he was the one excited about owning a Dyson vacuum and he is the only one in the house that is interested in cleaning beyond a quick surface wipe.

I’m better at planning fun nights out, ordering Uber Eats and looking gorgeous –  the really important stuff. So, when suddenly I was the one being lumped with all the house stuff, I found it really tough both on myself and on my identity.

I didn’t want to be the woman doing laundry. I wanted to be the girl in the meeting who says things like, “Can we circle back to that?” or really just anyone but the woman explaining to the repairman the sound coming from the sink. I think we all gravitate to roles we feel we can succeed at and as the lockdowns dragged on and on and I kept putting whites in with colours, I constantly felt like a failure.

Domestic duties

In the scheme of the pandemic, this is pretty small-fry stuff, but it was annoying suddenly being responsible for the ongoings of the house. I felt like I had been launched back into the 1950s, despite the fact I wear a necklace every day that says ‘feminist’. I struggled with the fact that I was the keeper of the house while my boyfriend was out most of the time. He was free from staring at last night’s dishes or realising you had to save the washing from a recent downpour.

Of course, this was all about choice, right? If you chose to be the stay-at-home partner, you’d probably feel empowered in your position but a pandemic forcing me into a more domestic role felt unfair.

Of course, my boyfriend was helpful when he got home but it never felt like it made up for all the time I’d spent, in between work, doing little meaningless house duties. I’d imagined my life as a never-ending version of the movie Working Girl and I felt more like Alice from The Brady Brunch – although I should make it clear I’m not nearly as capable as Alice, picture less cleaning, more vaping.

For me, now that things are slowly getting back to normal I can enjoy dividing my time between home and work. Working from bed can be fun but I think a few things are true: domestic chores are never-ending and success at them is fleeting, there are always more dishes or more washing and I would make a terrible full-time housewife. I can’t even handle being a part-time one!

Have you wondered how much unpaid domestic labour you do each week? Find out here.