I was in the supermarket, at checkout line with my sister, right after we talked about the difficulties of dealing with people who work in our home, the advantages and disadvantages of having help at home, when I heard the customer ahead of me in a negative comment about people who had household help, especially help with the laundry.
For her it is absurd to have someone washing her clothes for her! Her words: imagine! Someone going through my clothes, folding and storing for me, going through my closets!
I mention this example for a question that my Brazilian friends always ask me: how working mothers, who want to regain a part of life, can balance work with home life and not live exhausted without time for themselves.I was a professional before moving to the US and since I left Brazil I started taking care of the home, do all the chores including cooking, laundry, shopping, cleaning and, of course, children. It was actually very strange and if I knew anything it was from observing Leda, my mom"s housekeeper. I grew up with a lot of help in the house and my mother is an M.D. and Medical school professor, a full-time professional. So, I did not expect that, when choosing to stay home with the boys, I would have the bonus of house cleaning etc! However, over time I learned how to do everything and on my first visit to my mother, it was actually very strange to have a house full of "people": nanny, maid, housekeeper! We were all bumping into each other, everyone working, a very unproductive choir of "order and counter order", and worse still, my mom and I unhappy with how the "team" did everything.
These days, here in the U.S., I maintain a cleaner who comes once a week. The house is cleaned and stays like that until normal life begins to happen again. I do the daily maintenance of the house, which is to vacuum the floor with a small vacuum, clean the kitchen daily, leaving everything clean and beautiful. I make the beds in the morning and keep the bathrooms clean. This is all done in the morning, so when I take the kids to school, the house is clean and tidy, ready to receive us when we returned later in the day. Even if I go back home after taking them to school, I keep this ritual, because then I have time to devote myself to what I really like: my study of Feng Shui and organizing, reading, blogging, gardening etc..
By my nature, the issue of domestic work has never had a the negative sense that it often has in Brazil, where it is still relegated to maids and over time I learned to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing-how, of being able to keep my house as I like, with my energy, and it's also a way of teaching my children how to take care of our space, which in Brazil is unheard of.
I'm not saying we have to do everything, but there are positives in knowing how, in appreciating the services that are provided to us, the knowledge of how to take care of our own space, of what and how we eat, the energy we keep in our house, which is actually our temple, where we re-energize daily. It strengthen our belief in our own ability to do things and provide to ourselves.
This may sound foreign to us in the US where we do all ourselves, where hired help as the model in Brazil, is quite expensive, but The beauty of doing this work ourselves is us to take our space, our food, which today is given to someone who we don't even know, who often we do not trust and even dislike, but for the needs created by ourselves, we believe we need to submit to them. The truth is, if it was so good and convenient, it wouldn't bother us at all.
What I believe is that it is important to explore new possibilities. Not creating a structure that actually traps us instead of helping us, that does not satisfy us and actually slaves. By relegating the complete care of the house and even of our children to third parties, we are actually excluding ourselves from our own lives, creating an obligation to work more and more to sustain an increasingly expensive structure that does not feed us and makes us resentful of the very life that we created.
Everything is relative and how culture influences us. For that client, who is working out of the house all day, it was preferable to wash, dry, fold, iron and store her own clothes, since having help would mean an invasion of her most intimate space, creating the need to deal with a stranger. For others, having this service may represent the possibility of having time to take up even more stuff to get busy with.This holiday, let's take the opportunity to review what no longer serves us, which we no longer need in our lives and make room for the new. Perhaps, after all, putting the clothes in the closet can be a nice ritual, of silence and responsibility.
Always grateful,
Helena.
For her it is absurd to have someone washing her clothes for her! Her words: imagine! Someone going through my clothes, folding and storing for me, going through my closets!
I mention this example for a question that my Brazilian friends always ask me: how working mothers, who want to regain a part of life, can balance work with home life and not live exhausted without time for themselves.I was a professional before moving to the US and since I left Brazil I started taking care of the home, do all the chores including cooking, laundry, shopping, cleaning and, of course, children. It was actually very strange and if I knew anything it was from observing Leda, my mom"s housekeeper. I grew up with a lot of help in the house and my mother is an M.D. and Medical school professor, a full-time professional. So, I did not expect that, when choosing to stay home with the boys, I would have the bonus of house cleaning etc! However, over time I learned how to do everything and on my first visit to my mother, it was actually very strange to have a house full of "people": nanny, maid, housekeeper! We were all bumping into each other, everyone working, a very unproductive choir of "order and counter order", and worse still, my mom and I unhappy with how the "team" did everything.
These days, here in the U.S., I maintain a cleaner who comes once a week. The house is cleaned and stays like that until normal life begins to happen again. I do the daily maintenance of the house, which is to vacuum the floor with a small vacuum, clean the kitchen daily, leaving everything clean and beautiful. I make the beds in the morning and keep the bathrooms clean. This is all done in the morning, so when I take the kids to school, the house is clean and tidy, ready to receive us when we returned later in the day. Even if I go back home after taking them to school, I keep this ritual, because then I have time to devote myself to what I really like: my study of Feng Shui and organizing, reading, blogging, gardening etc..
By my nature, the issue of domestic work has never had a the negative sense that it often has in Brazil, where it is still relegated to maids and over time I learned to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing-how, of being able to keep my house as I like, with my energy, and it's also a way of teaching my children how to take care of our space, which in Brazil is unheard of.
I'm not saying we have to do everything, but there are positives in knowing how, in appreciating the services that are provided to us, the knowledge of how to take care of our own space, of what and how we eat, the energy we keep in our house, which is actually our temple, where we re-energize daily. It strengthen our belief in our own ability to do things and provide to ourselves.
This may sound foreign to us in the US where we do all ourselves, where hired help as the model in Brazil, is quite expensive, but The beauty of doing this work ourselves is us to take our space, our food, which today is given to someone who we don't even know, who often we do not trust and even dislike, but for the needs created by ourselves, we believe we need to submit to them. The truth is, if it was so good and convenient, it wouldn't bother us at all.
What I believe is that it is important to explore new possibilities. Not creating a structure that actually traps us instead of helping us, that does not satisfy us and actually slaves. By relegating the complete care of the house and even of our children to third parties, we are actually excluding ourselves from our own lives, creating an obligation to work more and more to sustain an increasingly expensive structure that does not feed us and makes us resentful of the very life that we created.
Everything is relative and how culture influences us. For that client, who is working out of the house all day, it was preferable to wash, dry, fold, iron and store her own clothes, since having help would mean an invasion of her most intimate space, creating the need to deal with a stranger. For others, having this service may represent the possibility of having time to take up even more stuff to get busy with.This holiday, let's take the opportunity to review what no longer serves us, which we no longer need in our lives and make room for the new. Perhaps, after all, putting the clothes in the closet can be a nice ritual, of silence and responsibility.
Always grateful,
Helena.
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