I reckon it was a good thing that all learners had to endure the lessons of the Home Economics class back when I was still in school. I wonder if they still have that nowadays, but it was a great window into the world of what home management is all about, albeit it offered only a brief peek into this rather intriguing and challenging world.
It is indeed a full-time job managing a home, which is why, in my humblest opinion, I reckon the old-school model of the husband going out to work and the mum staying home as a housewife proves to stand the test of time. Don’t get me wrong – as much as a part of me embraces the independent career woman thing, in many respects, I just think it’s more natural for there to be a breadwinner and housewife scenario. Because there must be someone in the house to take care of it. Imagine both the people going out and having little to no time for their household chores.
Would that turn out to be beneficial for the house? Financially, yes! But mentally, no! Remember that there must be someone to take care of the structure– someone needs to be aware of the condition of the house and call for help. For instance, if both husband and wife go out, there might be no one to call for window repair personnel during the hour of need or contact a local pest control firm to exterminate the little buggers. Nobody would want to come back to a house with an uninviting sight of ants invading their basement or flies ravaging their kitchen.
No one would like to live in a house, where they have to co-inhabit with mold inside their bedroom or where they have to coexist with squirrels that eat out the electrical wires. But if nobody is at home to contact a pest control expert, a mold remediation firm, or a squirrel removal company, then pests, fungus, and wildlife would be a frequent sight at their abode.
The gravity of the situation can be better understood with the example of snakes. A home with an unkempt backyard or a lawn can be prone to visits from carnivorous reptiles like the Trans-Pecos Copperhead, Mottled Rock, and broadband copperhead, as overgrown grass can offer them perfect hiding sites. Their stealthy movements and camouflaged appearance make them tough to spot. If someone is not at home to mow the lawn or trim the thick growth of weeds in the backyard, mishaps related to snake bites can become a probability. Hopefully, by now, you no more consider the job of managing a house trivial. It needs a lot of patience, skills, and understanding to be a homemaker, and not everybody can do that.
Of course, a female staying back at the house is more of a traditional way of looking at it, but it’s becoming more and more common for the traditionally defined roles to be switched all the way around, with the term “house husband” becoming an actual thing. What’s wrong with it? If it works for your family then who on earth would you be trying to please otherwise?
Anyway, that escalated rather quickly into something of a rant, but what I’d really like to discuss today is just how much hard work goes into managing the domestic situation at home. I really do admire those career women who balance their professional careers with their motherly duties, but I simply cannot imagine how they manage because it’s exhausting just taking care of the domestic duties at home. I guess how it ultimately plays out is that there are specific areas in which some compromises are inevitable, such as resigning to the fact that you might just miss some important milestones in the development of your child.
Can you imagine not being there when your child takes their first steps, for example? I most certainly couldn’t!
Such is life though – we all make our choices and in many instances, it’s just sad because we don’t really have a choice to make. It’s just the order of the day – your career or other aspects of your life dictate to you that you have to be at a certain place at a certain time…
Nonetheless, the full-time home management job is one I reckon everybody should experience at least once or twice in their lives, for an entire week or so, just so that they can learn to appreciate the role someone like a housewife takes. I swear, your mind is always working, considering things like when the best time to bring in the pest controllers is so that their work doesn’t interfere with the regular running of the household. Speaking of pest control Salem Oregon residents are lucky in that regard as they have the option of pest control service providers who specialise in specific pests, allowing them to plan better with regards to considerations of things like how the chemicals used are going to affect the kids, pets, etc.