I've been reading Charlotte Mason on atmosphere lately: what she says about cultivating a life-giving atmosphere for our children seems to go for our guests as well. The most important atmosphere comes from us—the kids (and guests) don't care if we have a spotless, Instagrammable house if we're in a foul or anxious mood. And after that, there's a balance between being in a space that feels lived in as well as that which is appropriately tidy for the occasion. It's understood that a certain level of tidiness shouldn't prevent us from having over last-minute guests, or welcoming in the neighbors when they drop in. I suppose I try to go for an orderly homeyness: orderly so that things can be done—meals, conversations, chores done together, clean-up accompanied by music or continued chat—rather than sterility or the appearance of sterility. (I think the primary time I truly feel pressure to have things spotless is when my mother or mother-in-law comes to visit!)
I find it helpful to recall what feels welcoming to me when I'm a guest: I appreciate feeling the character of a particular home (as well as signs of life—herbs drying, bread rising, laundry waiting to be folded), and I appreciate feeling that things have their place, so that I can more easily join in the work of the house while I'm there. When I'm visiting my in-laws, some of the best conversations happen as we're making food or cleaning up together.
That balance is what we go for in our own home: making things tidy enough, and helping our kids understand that tidying is one way we can love others and welcome them into our home. (That our kids understand that under-tidiness oughtn't prevent us from hosting is demonstrated by how many times they make their own invitations for spontaneous future gatherings: “You can come to our house whenever you want!”)
A few years ago I was talking with a friend about minimalist design trends and hospitality, and they said something that has stuck with me ever since. They had started hosting a weekly Bible study, and every week they scrambled to make their home spotless and tidy before people walked in. A few weeks in, they realized that the stress and the effort involved weren't sustainable, and so they simply accepted the fact that people would see the mess of ordinary life and tried to make peace with that. That evening ended up being one of the best gatherings they had: everyone was visibly more relaxed and comfortable, and the conversation had more depth and vulnerability. I try to remember this when I feel the urge to hide the evidence of my own domestic work, or when I am reluctant to invite people over because our home is untidy. I don't want those things to be a barrier to hospitality—especially when they could actually invigorate it! I want to be hospitable, and I want that hospitality to be an act of inviting people into our daily life, rather than setting aside those ordinary things of life to "host" or "entertain" others temporarily.
I think the framing of this question is interesting, because I feel like I don't TRY to make my domestic work invisible, but it nonetheless is. My boyfriend and I recently moved in together, and I've been cooking meals while he cleans up. One day he asked me--maybe somewhat jokingly--how I decided what we had for dinner every day and just had everything for it in the house. I showed him my notebook where I wrote out a meal plan and used it to form a shopping list for each week. He had no clue that so much planning went into it, and that's not because I tried to make it invisible, but because the sign of its being done well was its invisibility. I suppose if I wanted it to be more visible, I could put calendars and shopping lists on the fridge. The idea of *purposefully* making domestic work more visible in order to demand respect for it is definitely one worth pondering.
Also, I love your anecdote about your daughter's Montessori classroom having a blank workspace, but everything you might decide to use in plain sight! I am realizing that this is exactly how I use my desk--I clear it off at the end of the day and between tasks to help with focus, but anything I might need to use is within a few feet of it.
I have so many thoughts on this topic, including that “invisible” might not be the precise term needed. I lean more to “effortless.” Domestic work is supposed to be this simple thing, done in a snap, with the time required edited out like the actual cooking (and of course the cleanup) on a cooking show. It isn’t supposed to be invisible so much as it is supposed to be easy. Thus, our kitchens advertise a lifestyle that we aspire to, or at least project for resale value because that’s what people want, right? Why? That is an excellent question because we do not, on the whole, live that lifestyle. If our kitchens were designed around our lifestyle, many of us would have catering kitchens, which recieive, store, warm, and plate food prepared elsewhere. Instead, how many fancy chef’s kitchens in which no one cooks have you seen? With Taylorizing — an essential homemaking skill whether one knows the formal theories or not — cooking and catering kitchens are very different spaces. For one, catering kitchens would be much easier to make prettier and less cluttered, which, if the designer’s theory about asthetics was the whole answer, would have seen resale reasoning shift to catering kitchens years ago.
I might return to post other thoughts, but the Tuesday after Labor Day is ever a To Do list kind of day for a mother with school aged children. I am changing the format of my Life Admin podcast though, and this article just jumped the queue to get discussed first. So much here.
Ooh, do I have thoughts on this one. One of the most important issues this touches on, to me, is the way that we tie judgments of moral and social worth to the completion and invisibility of domestic work. I grew up in a constantly cluttered (but generally not filthy) home, with books everywhere and stacks of paper and random piles covering most flat surfaces a good portion of the time. The biggest pressure to try to impose some semblance of "clean" and "orderly" came when company was expected. It's understandable why, of course - and as I got older, I realized it had a lot to do with my parents' desire to avoid snarky comments from certain relatives. But it also sent a message that how we lived was somehow shameful - that the clutter that naturally grew from our lifestyles was something that had to be hidden, and therefore there was something about us that had to be hidden. It was unacceptable to be our authentic selves when the outside world could see. And since everyone's authentic selves involve domestic tasks, the desire to render them invisible means pushing ourselves to hide a fundamental part of our humanity.
As an adult woman with ADHD and chronic health issues, who is incapable of maintaining a "clean and orderly" home whether I wanted to or not, I'm especially sensitive to the impacts of that judgment. As others have said, not only is domestic work supposed to be done, but it's supposed to be done easily and naturally. There's a broad social presumption that the incompletion or visibility of that labor is a failure of the woman in a couple or family - that she is slovenly, or lazy, or too focused on pursuits outside of that constricted understanding of domesticity. Because what other reason could there be for failing to do such "easy" and "natural" tasks? It's an ever-renewable source of shame and stress, and for those without the time, energy, health, or brain wiring to have a hope of living up to that standard, it's such a waste. I've seen more than a few women with ADHD worry that they should not have children because their inability to keep up with chores disqualifies them from being good mothers, and it's heartbreaking. (On my list of qualities that make a worthy parent, cleanliness barely makes the bottom of the list).
I strive to have a home that feels full of warmth and acceptance and spaces for joy. Which means periodic efforts to tame the mess when it starts to generate stress or hazards for my husband, and genuine effort to not let clutter devolve into filth, but otherwise a space that makes visible the life that it holds, and embraces that. So there will be some piles of clutter, and some haphazardly organized shelves, and blankets dropped in heaps on the sofa. And maybe even some dirty dishes in the sink, or the remnants of cooking that haven't been put away. And some things that do get organized for functional purposes because they're used frequently. Beyond that level, I would so much rather spend my domestic energy on acts of caring and creation and enjoyment than simply cleaning up and then hiding the evidence of said cleaning.
It's valid to have a strong preference for tidiness, of course - but it's the shame attached to not having or fulfilling that preference that feels so destructive, and the desire to make that work invisible feels like the logical conclusion of that shame.
What does a work space look like when the work is valued? It's clear that things are happening there. You can see the things that are put to work. Yet, there's order and tidyness, meaning, that everything has its place and I know where to find things. Everything is reasonably clean. I do the work and put things away when I'm done.
The last thing I'd want is to have a filthy environment, wherever it is in the house. It's unappealing, and doesn't bode well for having visitors. Worse yet if it were the kitchen. I'd be afraid of food poisoning, and visitors as well.
Respecting oneself and one's visitors should mean an environment that is tidy and reasonably clean. It's about being thankful for what we are blessed to have. We are supposed to be good stewards and take care of them.
Are there parts of your home that feel like a work space and wear that identity proudly? The kitchen and study.
What work do you feel the strongest impulse to make invisible? When I'm on Zoom calls because the pandemic, I'm glad that the background behind me is the door to the study. No one needs to see the rest of the place, even though it's tidy. No one needs to see my bookcases. It's about privacy. I never show a picture of my desk. If I showing an image from my computer, I make sure only the bare minimum is shown for the purposes of whatever it is I'm talking about. That is about privacy as well.
What work do you do openly in front of friends? Cooking and cleaning sometimes.
What work have you been surprised to see friends or family do in front of you? I would be suprised to see someone do bill paying and budgeting in front of me. That is incredibly private.
This is such an interesting topic - I’ve been chewing on it for a few days. I don’t necessarily feel much pressure to make domestic work invisible, per se, but I’m realizing that all the same, my home space isn’t designed to elevate this work. Some concrete things I’ve added to my dream home wish list as a result: a butcher block, rather than getting out and putting away cutting boards that are too small anyway; and a sewing table or better yet a sewing room, rather than letting my craft projects take over other surfaces and then berating myself for the “clutter”.
I’ve also been mulling over what it could look like to invite guests into household work. This feels like a norm that needs to be built together - that is, it’s a cultural change that one household can’t make alone. Rosaria Butterfield’s book *The Gospel Comes With a House Key* comes to mind because she writes about messy/unstaged hospitality. Often I feel like inviting guests over is mutually exclusive with doing chores...but what if instead I invited friends over with the stated purpose of doing chores together?! And then next time we go over to their house and do their chores together. Things could be so much better than current-state lonely drudgery if we could shift to seeing household work not as a perpetual barrier keeping us from getting to the fun stuff in life, but rather as a daily opportunity to build the world we want to live in.
This topic has several tentacles of direction, all of which I could comment on easily -- work that is valued, doing work with friends, or feeling the urge to make some of it invisible. But I think the biggest one I want to mention is that there's a kind of person who grew up in a house like this:
. . . who definitely make the best the enemy of the good. I think it may have been your pieces on "scruffy hospitality" that started to convince me that it's okay to have people over even if my apartment looks lived-in; I find I'm more comfortable in houses where it looks like people actually occupy the spaces.
(if that link doesn't work, it's the Chris Fleming "Company is Coming" video.)
BUT -- when making the best the enemy of the good, it is not always merely in hosting and hospitality. It can (and often is, especially for me) be "I have in my head a perfect organisational system for X set of items, but I don't currently have the financial or mental-emotional means to make it happen, so all those items will either remain unused and unuseful in storage, or out on the floor where I can see them indefinitely." Books are easy enough (we literally own over a ton, I did the math); they live on shelves, so the only decisions to make are "what goes where," but once the categories get lined up in the right order, it's practically self-sorting (we have systems for each category). My sewing workshop, on the other hand, has changed shape and size every move since 2016 (which has been many moves), and while I theoretically have a great method for cataloguing my fabrics (I even made a sheet to assign them Record Locators! years of interning in archives is paying off!), my execution is currently lacking in coherence. Do I unpack a box that's been tidily packed and labelled since 2016 and, while I access its contents but rarely, I know exactly what's in it because my past self wrote everything on it? How do I store clothes meant to be cut up and repurposed? What on earth do I do with all this cabbage? do I sort the cabbage? Do I organise my bin-drawer-things by fibre content, by colour, by purpose/weight, by amount of yardage left, or by Project I Bought It For? and so it remains half-sorted, half-unpacked, constantly reminding me that I definitely had plans for this. And with the pandemic continuing on, I've had no incentive to even pretend it's tidy; I just shuffle boxes around to get the floor space I so desperately need when I need it.
Last Christmas season, a big, beautiful family arrived at our door to sing Christmas carols. We were so delighted, but I was also embarrassed because my house was, predictably, messy. I sheepishly apologized to one of my singing friends about the state of the house. She replied: "That's OK, people live here!"
I somehow equate a tidy home with moral uprightness and worth, but it's a view I put on myself, not so much on others. I'm so relieved when I walk into homes that look like people live there! It gives me permission to let go of the self-judgement of a disheveled house.
After reading the book "An Everlasting Meal" by Tamar Adler, I was inspired to always give people something to do when they walk into my home. Hold a baby, dress a salad, set the table. It seems to enfold people into our family.
The craziest "chore" I've seen done at someone's home was a chicken harvest.
I aspire for all the rooms in my house to look like workshops — with everything stored visible-but-organized on shelves. This is the long-term vision, but it feels similar to the Montessori-style model you’re aiming for.
Watching Adam Savage’s workshop organization videos on youtube during the first year of the pandemic was very soothing to me; he was so happy to be solving real problems in his studio, and watching things get cleaned up and put away was the narrative I wanted to watch. This discussion reminds me of it because if you walk around his studio, even when everything has been put away, it definitely not minimalist — rather a dense, flexible arrangement of specialized tools and supplies. A single, fairly small space that can be flexibly transformed based on what project is in progress.
I'm very very attracted to the Montessori idea of a place for everything and everything in its place. But for me it's always been very aspirational and my ability to achieve anything remotely close is very low.
We have seven people in a 1400 sq foot house. Nothing in our house is neat and tidy and organized. Some days it feels like nothing has a place.
I love the idea of a well-organized library, but at this point that feels like a pipe dream. We either have to move to a bigger house or get rid of half of our books. We are homeschoolers and are constantly acquiring books and seldom give any away. We don't have nearly enough bookshelves for our hoard of books, so they are double stacked and many live on the floor and on the coffee table and in children's beds. Once upon a time there was an organizational system, ten years ago when we moved in. At this point it's barely controlled chaos. Though mostly the poetry books and theology books have proper homes.
We don't have a basement, a garage, or useable attic space and our house is very short on closet space compared to the amount of stuff we have, so things tend to be stored at the margins of rooms. Ugh it sounds like we are hoarders and sometimes it feels like it too, but mostly I just don't have time and bandwidth to manage stuff, so it accumulates like the accretions on the caddis fly larva.
If people come over I will attempt to tidy-- to the extent of picking up things (especially Legos) from the floor to clear a path for walking, to clear chairs and couches for sitting, the table for eating, etc. But the mess and clutter of our lives is never going to be prettied away. I do think there's a balance to be struck between extreme mess and making a house look un-lived-in. and my goal is making things picked up enough not to be uncomfortable for my guests. I don't want other people's kids tripping over the shoe archipelago by the door so I will have the kids line them up neatly. But the shoes have nowhere else to go, so by the door they stay. They don't disappear so I can pretend we don't wear shoes.
Ditto the kitchen. Our kitchen looks like the kitchen of a household of seven people who are home all day and eat three meals a day at home. It's functional but cluttered.
I guess all of which is to say that I long ago passed the point of being able to make domestic work look invisible, even if I found such a goal desirable. What I crave is a sense of order. I'd love to have the ability to get rid of more stuff, but I am organizationally impaired and the truth is the biggest barrier is probably that I'd rather read books or go on a hike than get rid of stuff. I spent a couple days this summer when the kids were at camp, but I really need a couple solid weeks of no one else at home for me to be able to tackle what needs to be done.
One thing I have noticed since my husband started working from home is how much more he sees and understands how much work homeschooling is and meal planning and housekeeping. Since my hernia surgery last fall he's taken over doing the grocery shopping and that shift hasn't been effortless as we are now having to communicate a lot more about things I just took for granted when I was doing the bulk of the shopping. I don't really feel like there's ever been a huge communication gap though because we do talk about everything.
This is all fascinating for me to read because it's never occurred to me that domestic work should be invisible. I just want it to be done, or half-way done, please, for once, oh no, here we go again. And maybe it's because so many of my friends have young children and I know what that treadmill is like, but when I visit someone else's clean and tidy house, the very clean-ness seems like evidence of work to me -- like, How nice to sit here in Mary's *recently vacuumed* living room.
I like having every workspace in my house (kitchen and office in particular) as organized and clutter-free as possible, including clear surfaces, simply because it’s more pleasing to the eye and therefore less mentally draining to be present in. It’s not really about “hiding” work or making the evidence of labor invisible for me at least; I do the same thing in spaces used primarily or solely for leisure.
When my life partner needed 24/7 care because of memory and cognition issues, the cabin where we lived -- one 12x24' room plus an entry hall/laundry/closet and bathroom addition -- was organized for her best quality of life. Crucial was a "command center" with her desk and a bookcase and extra storage that she knew was ALL hers -- and she could see from her desk anyone coming in the room, and watch the entire kitchen and area -- and the bird feeders on the deck. Our bed was also right there -- naps any time. Lighting changed at dusk from super bright daylight to dimmer yellow lights -- big proven effect and definitely worked. If I worked at night (as a writer) after she went to bed, she could see me from bed -- zero isolation!
I moved my office to the second floor of another building here, where she used to have her office and napping area and where she used to see psychotherapy clients. So big furniture exchange. The first floor of that building became her exercise area, then a drum set was added, then her old computer setup was added. So all this was an ongoing thing -- definitely all things good for her left out, anything distressing locked up or up in what had become my office. No mail ever went directly to the cabin -- so I could screen it all in my office first. (I could still do a bit of part time work though about half the income went to the paid personal aide so I could be in my office.
Now, ten years later, the cabin looks mainly like a painting studio, which it is. The whole main room is almost all painting stuff, and yes, the big table is usually left clear. The cabin has so many windows (22 plus a sliding glass door) that there's very little closed storage, but some things are in labeled plastic drawers and boxes. Kitchen end is mostly for food prep, but one corner is for brushes and cleanup. I sleep in the sleeping loft, to which stairs fold down or up as needed. (My partner made that "ladder" over 40 years ago, when we thought the cabin would be a "temporary shelter while we built a real house.)
The area I tend to be ashamed of is the entrance hall, because I read all of Christopher Alexander's books ("A Pattern Language" and the others) -- which says an entrance should be totally different from looking at a washer and dryer and two laundry bins! And when I had a studio show, I covered those with a nice tablecloth.
When life is at its best and I'm working well and having good friends over -- or even new guests -- I'm more and more fine with the cabin being what it is, including the laundry area. (And I have to say, having the closet and clothes dressers right there, with plenty of counter-height area for folding clothes across the washer and dryer -- is mighty convenient.)
I grew up in a very clean, tidy home (which I now appreciate more than I did then) -- and also loved my parents' sign studio which was semi-organized mess. I'd say most of the time, my spaces are semi-organized mess -- sometimes just chaos, sometimes at least ONE room will be neat and clean -- painting area first, kitchen next. Or if guests are coming, bathroom first.
I love the phrase “scruffy hospitality”!
I've been reading Charlotte Mason on atmosphere lately: what she says about cultivating a life-giving atmosphere for our children seems to go for our guests as well. The most important atmosphere comes from us—the kids (and guests) don't care if we have a spotless, Instagrammable house if we're in a foul or anxious mood. And after that, there's a balance between being in a space that feels lived in as well as that which is appropriately tidy for the occasion. It's understood that a certain level of tidiness shouldn't prevent us from having over last-minute guests, or welcoming in the neighbors when they drop in. I suppose I try to go for an orderly homeyness: orderly so that things can be done—meals, conversations, chores done together, clean-up accompanied by music or continued chat—rather than sterility or the appearance of sterility. (I think the primary time I truly feel pressure to have things spotless is when my mother or mother-in-law comes to visit!)
I find it helpful to recall what feels welcoming to me when I'm a guest: I appreciate feeling the character of a particular home (as well as signs of life—herbs drying, bread rising, laundry waiting to be folded), and I appreciate feeling that things have their place, so that I can more easily join in the work of the house while I'm there. When I'm visiting my in-laws, some of the best conversations happen as we're making food or cleaning up together.
That balance is what we go for in our own home: making things tidy enough, and helping our kids understand that tidying is one way we can love others and welcome them into our home. (That our kids understand that under-tidiness oughtn't prevent us from hosting is demonstrated by how many times they make their own invitations for spontaneous future gatherings: “You can come to our house whenever you want!”)
A few years ago I was talking with a friend about minimalist design trends and hospitality, and they said something that has stuck with me ever since. They had started hosting a weekly Bible study, and every week they scrambled to make their home spotless and tidy before people walked in. A few weeks in, they realized that the stress and the effort involved weren't sustainable, and so they simply accepted the fact that people would see the mess of ordinary life and tried to make peace with that. That evening ended up being one of the best gatherings they had: everyone was visibly more relaxed and comfortable, and the conversation had more depth and vulnerability. I try to remember this when I feel the urge to hide the evidence of my own domestic work, or when I am reluctant to invite people over because our home is untidy. I don't want those things to be a barrier to hospitality—especially when they could actually invigorate it! I want to be hospitable, and I want that hospitality to be an act of inviting people into our daily life, rather than setting aside those ordinary things of life to "host" or "entertain" others temporarily.
I think the framing of this question is interesting, because I feel like I don't TRY to make my domestic work invisible, but it nonetheless is. My boyfriend and I recently moved in together, and I've been cooking meals while he cleans up. One day he asked me--maybe somewhat jokingly--how I decided what we had for dinner every day and just had everything for it in the house. I showed him my notebook where I wrote out a meal plan and used it to form a shopping list for each week. He had no clue that so much planning went into it, and that's not because I tried to make it invisible, but because the sign of its being done well was its invisibility. I suppose if I wanted it to be more visible, I could put calendars and shopping lists on the fridge. The idea of *purposefully* making domestic work more visible in order to demand respect for it is definitely one worth pondering.
Also, I love your anecdote about your daughter's Montessori classroom having a blank workspace, but everything you might decide to use in plain sight! I am realizing that this is exactly how I use my desk--I clear it off at the end of the day and between tasks to help with focus, but anything I might need to use is within a few feet of it.
I have so many thoughts on this topic, including that “invisible” might not be the precise term needed. I lean more to “effortless.” Domestic work is supposed to be this simple thing, done in a snap, with the time required edited out like the actual cooking (and of course the cleanup) on a cooking show. It isn’t supposed to be invisible so much as it is supposed to be easy. Thus, our kitchens advertise a lifestyle that we aspire to, or at least project for resale value because that’s what people want, right? Why? That is an excellent question because we do not, on the whole, live that lifestyle. If our kitchens were designed around our lifestyle, many of us would have catering kitchens, which recieive, store, warm, and plate food prepared elsewhere. Instead, how many fancy chef’s kitchens in which no one cooks have you seen? With Taylorizing — an essential homemaking skill whether one knows the formal theories or not — cooking and catering kitchens are very different spaces. For one, catering kitchens would be much easier to make prettier and less cluttered, which, if the designer’s theory about asthetics was the whole answer, would have seen resale reasoning shift to catering kitchens years ago.
I might return to post other thoughts, but the Tuesday after Labor Day is ever a To Do list kind of day for a mother with school aged children. I am changing the format of my Life Admin podcast though, and this article just jumped the queue to get discussed first. So much here.
Ooh, do I have thoughts on this one. One of the most important issues this touches on, to me, is the way that we tie judgments of moral and social worth to the completion and invisibility of domestic work. I grew up in a constantly cluttered (but generally not filthy) home, with books everywhere and stacks of paper and random piles covering most flat surfaces a good portion of the time. The biggest pressure to try to impose some semblance of "clean" and "orderly" came when company was expected. It's understandable why, of course - and as I got older, I realized it had a lot to do with my parents' desire to avoid snarky comments from certain relatives. But it also sent a message that how we lived was somehow shameful - that the clutter that naturally grew from our lifestyles was something that had to be hidden, and therefore there was something about us that had to be hidden. It was unacceptable to be our authentic selves when the outside world could see. And since everyone's authentic selves involve domestic tasks, the desire to render them invisible means pushing ourselves to hide a fundamental part of our humanity.
As an adult woman with ADHD and chronic health issues, who is incapable of maintaining a "clean and orderly" home whether I wanted to or not, I'm especially sensitive to the impacts of that judgment. As others have said, not only is domestic work supposed to be done, but it's supposed to be done easily and naturally. There's a broad social presumption that the incompletion or visibility of that labor is a failure of the woman in a couple or family - that she is slovenly, or lazy, or too focused on pursuits outside of that constricted understanding of domesticity. Because what other reason could there be for failing to do such "easy" and "natural" tasks? It's an ever-renewable source of shame and stress, and for those without the time, energy, health, or brain wiring to have a hope of living up to that standard, it's such a waste. I've seen more than a few women with ADHD worry that they should not have children because their inability to keep up with chores disqualifies them from being good mothers, and it's heartbreaking. (On my list of qualities that make a worthy parent, cleanliness barely makes the bottom of the list).
I strive to have a home that feels full of warmth and acceptance and spaces for joy. Which means periodic efforts to tame the mess when it starts to generate stress or hazards for my husband, and genuine effort to not let clutter devolve into filth, but otherwise a space that makes visible the life that it holds, and embraces that. So there will be some piles of clutter, and some haphazardly organized shelves, and blankets dropped in heaps on the sofa. And maybe even some dirty dishes in the sink, or the remnants of cooking that haven't been put away. And some things that do get organized for functional purposes because they're used frequently. Beyond that level, I would so much rather spend my domestic energy on acts of caring and creation and enjoyment than simply cleaning up and then hiding the evidence of said cleaning.
It's valid to have a strong preference for tidiness, of course - but it's the shame attached to not having or fulfilling that preference that feels so destructive, and the desire to make that work invisible feels like the logical conclusion of that shame.
Great questions!
What does a work space look like when the work is valued? It's clear that things are happening there. You can see the things that are put to work. Yet, there's order and tidyness, meaning, that everything has its place and I know where to find things. Everything is reasonably clean. I do the work and put things away when I'm done.
The last thing I'd want is to have a filthy environment, wherever it is in the house. It's unappealing, and doesn't bode well for having visitors. Worse yet if it were the kitchen. I'd be afraid of food poisoning, and visitors as well.
Respecting oneself and one's visitors should mean an environment that is tidy and reasonably clean. It's about being thankful for what we are blessed to have. We are supposed to be good stewards and take care of them.
Are there parts of your home that feel like a work space and wear that identity proudly? The kitchen and study.
What work do you feel the strongest impulse to make invisible? When I'm on Zoom calls because the pandemic, I'm glad that the background behind me is the door to the study. No one needs to see the rest of the place, even though it's tidy. No one needs to see my bookcases. It's about privacy. I never show a picture of my desk. If I showing an image from my computer, I make sure only the bare minimum is shown for the purposes of whatever it is I'm talking about. That is about privacy as well.
What work do you do openly in front of friends? Cooking and cleaning sometimes.
What work have you been surprised to see friends or family do in front of you? I would be suprised to see someone do bill paying and budgeting in front of me. That is incredibly private.
This is such an interesting topic - I’ve been chewing on it for a few days. I don’t necessarily feel much pressure to make domestic work invisible, per se, but I’m realizing that all the same, my home space isn’t designed to elevate this work. Some concrete things I’ve added to my dream home wish list as a result: a butcher block, rather than getting out and putting away cutting boards that are too small anyway; and a sewing table or better yet a sewing room, rather than letting my craft projects take over other surfaces and then berating myself for the “clutter”.
I’ve also been mulling over what it could look like to invite guests into household work. This feels like a norm that needs to be built together - that is, it’s a cultural change that one household can’t make alone. Rosaria Butterfield’s book *The Gospel Comes With a House Key* comes to mind because she writes about messy/unstaged hospitality. Often I feel like inviting guests over is mutually exclusive with doing chores...but what if instead I invited friends over with the stated purpose of doing chores together?! And then next time we go over to their house and do their chores together. Things could be so much better than current-state lonely drudgery if we could shift to seeing household work not as a perpetual barrier keeping us from getting to the fun stuff in life, but rather as a daily opportunity to build the world we want to live in.
This topic has several tentacles of direction, all of which I could comment on easily -- work that is valued, doing work with friends, or feeling the urge to make some of it invisible. But I think the biggest one I want to mention is that there's a kind of person who grew up in a house like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBwELzvnrQg
. . . who definitely make the best the enemy of the good. I think it may have been your pieces on "scruffy hospitality" that started to convince me that it's okay to have people over even if my apartment looks lived-in; I find I'm more comfortable in houses where it looks like people actually occupy the spaces.
(if that link doesn't work, it's the Chris Fleming "Company is Coming" video.)
BUT -- when making the best the enemy of the good, it is not always merely in hosting and hospitality. It can (and often is, especially for me) be "I have in my head a perfect organisational system for X set of items, but I don't currently have the financial or mental-emotional means to make it happen, so all those items will either remain unused and unuseful in storage, or out on the floor where I can see them indefinitely." Books are easy enough (we literally own over a ton, I did the math); they live on shelves, so the only decisions to make are "what goes where," but once the categories get lined up in the right order, it's practically self-sorting (we have systems for each category). My sewing workshop, on the other hand, has changed shape and size every move since 2016 (which has been many moves), and while I theoretically have a great method for cataloguing my fabrics (I even made a sheet to assign them Record Locators! years of interning in archives is paying off!), my execution is currently lacking in coherence. Do I unpack a box that's been tidily packed and labelled since 2016 and, while I access its contents but rarely, I know exactly what's in it because my past self wrote everything on it? How do I store clothes meant to be cut up and repurposed? What on earth do I do with all this cabbage? do I sort the cabbage? Do I organise my bin-drawer-things by fibre content, by colour, by purpose/weight, by amount of yardage left, or by Project I Bought It For? and so it remains half-sorted, half-unpacked, constantly reminding me that I definitely had plans for this. And with the pandemic continuing on, I've had no incentive to even pretend it's tidy; I just shuffle boxes around to get the floor space I so desperately need when I need it.
Last Christmas season, a big, beautiful family arrived at our door to sing Christmas carols. We were so delighted, but I was also embarrassed because my house was, predictably, messy. I sheepishly apologized to one of my singing friends about the state of the house. She replied: "That's OK, people live here!"
I somehow equate a tidy home with moral uprightness and worth, but it's a view I put on myself, not so much on others. I'm so relieved when I walk into homes that look like people live there! It gives me permission to let go of the self-judgement of a disheveled house.
After reading the book "An Everlasting Meal" by Tamar Adler, I was inspired to always give people something to do when they walk into my home. Hold a baby, dress a salad, set the table. It seems to enfold people into our family.
The craziest "chore" I've seen done at someone's home was a chicken harvest.
I aspire for all the rooms in my house to look like workshops — with everything stored visible-but-organized on shelves. This is the long-term vision, but it feels similar to the Montessori-style model you’re aiming for.
Watching Adam Savage’s workshop organization videos on youtube during the first year of the pandemic was very soothing to me; he was so happy to be solving real problems in his studio, and watching things get cleaned up and put away was the narrative I wanted to watch. This discussion reminds me of it because if you walk around his studio, even when everything has been put away, it definitely not minimalist — rather a dense, flexible arrangement of specialized tools and supplies. A single, fairly small space that can be flexibly transformed based on what project is in progress.
I'm very very attracted to the Montessori idea of a place for everything and everything in its place. But for me it's always been very aspirational and my ability to achieve anything remotely close is very low.
We have seven people in a 1400 sq foot house. Nothing in our house is neat and tidy and organized. Some days it feels like nothing has a place.
I love the idea of a well-organized library, but at this point that feels like a pipe dream. We either have to move to a bigger house or get rid of half of our books. We are homeschoolers and are constantly acquiring books and seldom give any away. We don't have nearly enough bookshelves for our hoard of books, so they are double stacked and many live on the floor and on the coffee table and in children's beds. Once upon a time there was an organizational system, ten years ago when we moved in. At this point it's barely controlled chaos. Though mostly the poetry books and theology books have proper homes.
We don't have a basement, a garage, or useable attic space and our house is very short on closet space compared to the amount of stuff we have, so things tend to be stored at the margins of rooms. Ugh it sounds like we are hoarders and sometimes it feels like it too, but mostly I just don't have time and bandwidth to manage stuff, so it accumulates like the accretions on the caddis fly larva.
If people come over I will attempt to tidy-- to the extent of picking up things (especially Legos) from the floor to clear a path for walking, to clear chairs and couches for sitting, the table for eating, etc. But the mess and clutter of our lives is never going to be prettied away. I do think there's a balance to be struck between extreme mess and making a house look un-lived-in. and my goal is making things picked up enough not to be uncomfortable for my guests. I don't want other people's kids tripping over the shoe archipelago by the door so I will have the kids line them up neatly. But the shoes have nowhere else to go, so by the door they stay. They don't disappear so I can pretend we don't wear shoes.
Ditto the kitchen. Our kitchen looks like the kitchen of a household of seven people who are home all day and eat three meals a day at home. It's functional but cluttered.
I guess all of which is to say that I long ago passed the point of being able to make domestic work look invisible, even if I found such a goal desirable. What I crave is a sense of order. I'd love to have the ability to get rid of more stuff, but I am organizationally impaired and the truth is the biggest barrier is probably that I'd rather read books or go on a hike than get rid of stuff. I spent a couple days this summer when the kids were at camp, but I really need a couple solid weeks of no one else at home for me to be able to tackle what needs to be done.
One thing I have noticed since my husband started working from home is how much more he sees and understands how much work homeschooling is and meal planning and housekeeping. Since my hernia surgery last fall he's taken over doing the grocery shopping and that shift hasn't been effortless as we are now having to communicate a lot more about things I just took for granted when I was doing the bulk of the shopping. I don't really feel like there's ever been a huge communication gap though because we do talk about everything.
This is all fascinating for me to read because it's never occurred to me that domestic work should be invisible. I just want it to be done, or half-way done, please, for once, oh no, here we go again. And maybe it's because so many of my friends have young children and I know what that treadmill is like, but when I visit someone else's clean and tidy house, the very clean-ness seems like evidence of work to me -- like, How nice to sit here in Mary's *recently vacuumed* living room.
I like having every workspace in my house (kitchen and office in particular) as organized and clutter-free as possible, including clear surfaces, simply because it’s more pleasing to the eye and therefore less mentally draining to be present in. It’s not really about “hiding” work or making the evidence of labor invisible for me at least; I do the same thing in spaces used primarily or solely for leisure.
Basically, all work is visible where I live.
When my life partner needed 24/7 care because of memory and cognition issues, the cabin where we lived -- one 12x24' room plus an entry hall/laundry/closet and bathroom addition -- was organized for her best quality of life. Crucial was a "command center" with her desk and a bookcase and extra storage that she knew was ALL hers -- and she could see from her desk anyone coming in the room, and watch the entire kitchen and area -- and the bird feeders on the deck. Our bed was also right there -- naps any time. Lighting changed at dusk from super bright daylight to dimmer yellow lights -- big proven effect and definitely worked. If I worked at night (as a writer) after she went to bed, she could see me from bed -- zero isolation!
I moved my office to the second floor of another building here, where she used to have her office and napping area and where she used to see psychotherapy clients. So big furniture exchange. The first floor of that building became her exercise area, then a drum set was added, then her old computer setup was added. So all this was an ongoing thing -- definitely all things good for her left out, anything distressing locked up or up in what had become my office. No mail ever went directly to the cabin -- so I could screen it all in my office first. (I could still do a bit of part time work though about half the income went to the paid personal aide so I could be in my office.
Now, ten years later, the cabin looks mainly like a painting studio, which it is. The whole main room is almost all painting stuff, and yes, the big table is usually left clear. The cabin has so many windows (22 plus a sliding glass door) that there's very little closed storage, but some things are in labeled plastic drawers and boxes. Kitchen end is mostly for food prep, but one corner is for brushes and cleanup. I sleep in the sleeping loft, to which stairs fold down or up as needed. (My partner made that "ladder" over 40 years ago, when we thought the cabin would be a "temporary shelter while we built a real house.)
The area I tend to be ashamed of is the entrance hall, because I read all of Christopher Alexander's books ("A Pattern Language" and the others) -- which says an entrance should be totally different from looking at a washer and dryer and two laundry bins! And when I had a studio show, I covered those with a nice tablecloth.
When life is at its best and I'm working well and having good friends over -- or even new guests -- I'm more and more fine with the cabin being what it is, including the laundry area. (And I have to say, having the closet and clothes dressers right there, with plenty of counter-height area for folding clothes across the washer and dryer -- is mighty convenient.)
I grew up in a very clean, tidy home (which I now appreciate more than I did then) -- and also loved my parents' sign studio which was semi-organized mess. I'd say most of the time, my spaces are semi-organized mess -- sometimes just chaos, sometimes at least ONE room will be neat and clean -- painting area first, kitchen next. Or if guests are coming, bathroom first.