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Next to Godliness
Oct. 8th, 2013 10:01 amAmongst the most annoying myths of our time is the commonly-held belief that women keep their living spaces cleaner, tidier, and better organized than men do.
Now I happen to be a man, and throughout my entire career my desk has been the cleanest one in my office. And my firsthand experience with the women I’ve lived with… Well, I’d like to relate a couple of my real-world experiences, for illustrative purposes. And for entertainment value.
I’ve always bought fresh orange juice, rather than frozen concentrate. However, a woman I once lived with would bring home those little cardboard “cans” of concentrate and pull one out of our freezer and leave it on a counter to thaw before mixing it with water to make OJ.
On one memorable occasion, she left one out to thaw on top of our microwave, which sat on the kitchen counter. She left it there long enough for it to thaw.
She left it there long enough for it to ferment.
She left it there so long that the pressure from the ongoing fermentation caused the sealed canister to violently explode in the middle of the night, scaring us out of a sound sleep and coating the floor, the counter, the microwave, the under-side of the kitchen cupboards, the wall, and yes even the ceiling with sticky, rancid, orange glop.
I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing just doesn’t happen in my experience living alone or with other men.
But lest you think that’s one isolated data point, let’s consider the fascinating habits of one of the other women I’ve lived with…
This example of the fairer sex operated on the assumption that one should only wash dishes as needed. You need a saucepan? Dig one out of the pile of grime-laden dirty ones that covers the kitchen table and spills across the floor, and give it a quick wash.
At the time, we lived in a ground-floor apartment where the front door went straight from the front yard into the kitchen. This was a certified boon for my housemate, because whenever she cooked something sticky, smoky, stinky, or even the least bit messy, she could throw the dish outside on the lawn before sitting down and eating her meal. The dirty dish would usually sit outside overnight, forgotten.
That worked great for four months out of each year. For the other eight months, the inevitable snows of a northern Maine winter would bury the dirty cookware overnight, benevolently hiding all evidence of her cooking ability.
Things got better and better for her as winter plodded on. She had to do less and less cooking, because there weren’t any dishes left in the house to use, and there weren’t any dirty ones to wash, either! A veritable feminine idyll.
Needless to say, we somehow survived those long Maine winters subsisting on instant Cup-a-Soup and no-name cheezy poofs. Then, in April the reluctantly receding snows would reveal a front yard littered with rusted pots and pans bearing the unrecognizable remains of Shake-n-Bake chicken and burnt mac and cheese. Two months later, after she worked up the fortitude to clean up the front yard, we would eat like kings for four months… until the snow flew again and our dishes started disappearing.
So before you buy into the hateful old sexist line that men are irredeemable slobs, I’d urge you to do a little empirical fact-checking. I think you’ll find there are a large number of women who cannot keep their living environment tidy (never mind sanitary), and an ample number of men who can and do… Even without the prodding of some mythical fastidious woman.
- ailsa,
- cleanliness,
- explosions,
- fastidiousness,
- gender,
- linda,
- maine,
- prejudice,
- sexism,
- snow,
- winter,
- women
