“I am busy with other things, mainly running the household for me and my 90-year-old sister plus a young working man who came to stay three years ago and doesn't look like leaving any time soon,” a friend wrote me recently. I had asked about her retirement and she said she wanted to find time to write. Before retirement, she had been a journalist. 

Running a household is a composite of many things. There is toilet paper in the washrooms, food in the fridge, clean clothes on the shelves...it goes on, of course. Doctor/dentist appointments are booked, some restful, fun or hospitable things have been planned for weekends. And when an ant infestation makes its way into the house, the person running the household notices, shrieks in horror, and runs to get traps. 

Running a household is still a thing. It makes for a peaceful existence at home and the ability to get to waged work in clean attire. It is itself work and for the vast majority, it is work we will do every day until we die or cannot. Some outsource all of it and many outsource parts of it. But please note: Booking others to do the work for you is also work, and part of running a household, too.

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This basic subplot of human existence has been politicized. Over years, we’ve been told different lies about it. One is that running a household is not meaningful work. It’s utter drudgery, some say, unless it’s paid, at which point it magically morphs into something respectable, meaningful and demanding union wages. Even more political, it’s drudgery when women do it, but a man doing exactly the same work, also unpaid, earns applause. 

There’s a term under which women can file the burden of managing a household: “emotional load.” It loosely refers to the stress of household management. While I think the term “emotional load” is annoying, I do concede that the pressures are real, and indeed, sometimes, overwhelming. Here’s the thing, though: When faced with this additional work, instead of naming it as important work, and accommodating the reality that it takes time, we instead blame the men in our lives because they are purportedly not doing enough of it. 

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Here things get more controversial. I put forward to you the proposition that many women do the household management, which does indeed lead to a higher “emotional load,” because we prefer to do it. And perhaps we may prefer it because we are, in fact, better at it. All the minutiae that this brain of mine worries about, constantly making lists of things to do and buy, doctors to call, vacations to plan—it’s a level of organization that applied to other domains might have launched a space shuttle. Or so it feels.  Hopefully not the Challenger. 

Whether I enjoy it or not, it’s work. And yet we don’t recognize it as such. When we are faced with the double, triple, quadruple loads of work outside the home, raising children and household management, we don’t blame the impossibility of trying to do all these things at once as the source of our nervous breakdown, but rather, we blame those closest to us. If we would recognize that running a household is work, we might grant it respect. In granting it respect, we might dial back competing commitments, as necessary, in service to a livable home.  

Yet this idea is somehow insulting. The spreadsheet of household tasks must calculate to absolutely perfect equity between the sexes. It is retrograde to suggest men and women may have inclinations that lean in different directions. Or that men face disproportionate burdens in other domains, and are simply less likely to complain vocally about them. 

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Women who do these tasks should be accorded a modicum of respect and receive help and applause. This is work that creates a sense of belonging and gemütlichkeit. Instead, we imagine this work barely exists. I’ll grant that today household work is easier thanks to technology. Nary a laundry load goes by when I don’t count my lucky stars for the ability to throw dirty clothes into a machine and walk away, returning only to transfer to the dryer. 

Easier than decades gone by, and yet, still work. Work requiring time. I hope my friend is able to return to writing more—she is a good writer. Meanwhile, though, I affirm her choice and send my applause for caring for a sister and creating a household that works.