The other day, I was pondering my neighbors’ condos.

I was wondering what Jeanette’s (not her real name) kitchen looked like—if it was as bad as mine was. And, I was wondering what Laura’s (not her real name either) parlor looked like—if it’s as bad as mine. This morning as I sat determined to read the entire New York Times, as I determine every morning and fail as often, I wondered what I would do if someone came to my door at that moment I thought to myself: sure, I’ll just start tidying it up a little when/if someone knocks at the door. So, with another cup of coffee to cruel my gut a little bit more, I persisted in my goal to find a feature story about cleaning, women, men, marriage and feminism 40 years after.

It was so ironic to realize that one, I have become a total slob since I determined to focus on work and career about ten years or so ago, and, I remembered that I was a slob as a child as I focused on my life then too—much to my mother’s chagrin who expected me to use a toothbrush to scrub the corners of the baseboards when washing the floor and sinful to use a handle-mop. There was only one way to wash the floor and it was with Brillo pads, urine-smelling ammonia and a toothbrush.

I apparently fall into the “rebellious category” in this story or have returned to my pre-Cinderella experience before I was old enough to clean (about seven or eight, If my memory serves me correctly.)

The writer said that although men and women approach the old story in completely modern ways, there’s one thing that has remained the same:

A common thread through so many of these stories, though, is that of men doing what they want (Mr. Thompson wanting the house clean and simultaneously wanting to leave his dishes in the sink; Mr. Gussman wanting to do chores in the dark because during the day he is a competitive cyclist) and women doing what is left, a thread that still makes this conversation all about women.

What men want to do, they say, is most often a domestic version of something macho. Mr. Chethik enjoys the laundry, he said, not only because he gets to watch television while he folds, but because "it's basically working with heavy machinery: picking up big loads of stuff, moving them from one place to another, setting buzzers and timers and then hitting the on button."
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