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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3575 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 19, 2024

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God, I hate doing chores. Ah yes, take a significant chunk out of your day just to fight entropy, and do the same thing for the 10,000th time. Why are they seen as some sort of noble act and not a necessary evil like having to sit in traffic? Something we should eliminate?

Edit: I just bought a rice cooker, food processor and airfryer. I'm declaring war on chores and daily mundane drudgery. I'm sorry mom, but I already know how to cook, clean and do the laundry, in fact, I can do those things pretty well, but that doesn't mean I will pretend to enjoy doing them every day, especially when there are better things to do. I will probably achieve most of that by slowing entropy down for the most part,I will have to optimize how things are done around the house, will report back in a month or so.

Look into a thermomix? (70s solution of engineering societal problems away)

Or just hire a cleaner? (Modern solution of importing cheap labour)

I don't mind chores too much, as I don't have too many I generally need to do and they can break up more cognitively demanding tasks. It's also a nice way to help out if I happen to be visiting my parents. On the other hand I really don't like cooking.

This seems relevant to the other threads about why many women seem to prefer being in the workforce and making a legible amount of money for doing somewhat tedious things with peers to staying home, deciding on what chores to do themselves, and feeling vaguely bad about the outcomes.

I ought to clean a bunch of surfaces in my house and cut back some weeds that are still there from last fall. Instead perhaps we will buy a couple of cottonwood trees and plant them, because it's way more satisfying of the trees manage to survive and grow. There's also a dead fruit tree to cut down, but I feel entitled to not do that, as the pregnant woman in the family.

Feeling that today.

Its a combination of the repetitiousness and the fact that if you slip behind a just a little bit, the difficulty of the task seems to grow at a slightly exponential rate. Its manifestly unfair that if you don't devote X hours per week to keeping up, tasks will accumulate at the rate of X + Y², where Y is some variable representing the amount of additional complexity added by undone tasks feeding into each other.

I do have symptoms of ADD, but I assume "doing chores is boring" is the way every right-thinking person feels. I would prefer to be bored by boring things than to 'cope' by taking drugs that make you not care about the drudgery.

I'm not saying Mary Poppins lied to us but when I sit there folding/hanging up clothes that I know for a fact I'll be folding and hanging up again in about a week it doesn't feel like I'm building towards anything. Cleaning out gutters at least feels like I'm maintaining a system that will provide benefits down the line. Laundry in particular feels like a directly sisyphean task. And its also the one that is hardest to justify hiring someone else to perform. There's no special tools or skill needed, just time. I wish Elon Musk wasn't 70% hype and 30% delivery about most of his companys' products.

In contrast, mowing the lawn is one of the easiest to farm out to a specialist, but I actually enjoy it (4 times out of 5, anyway) because the act of wielding mechanical blades to beat back nature is pretty satisfying, and the act of pushing a mower isn't particularly stressful if I have an audiobook to listen to.

Finally, it is annoying to try to prioritize chores because there's several different metrics that have to be 'optimized.' There are chores you need to do in order to facilitate other chores, there are chores you do because it is necessary to keep a functional schedule/routine, and then there are chores that don't achieve much other than improve the aesthetics and comfort of your local environment. If you are running short on time, you can really only do the chores that are necessary, and those that are prerequisites to the necessary. But as the 'aesthetic' chores pile up, your general comfort level decreases which is particularly distressing, and hard to ignore.

And these can be combined in various ways. If I want to cook food for the week, I usually need to have clean dishes and utensils, which requires emptying the sink of all dirty dishes and running a load through the washer. Which sometimes requires manually soaking and scrubbing out pans and such. THEN I can make sure I have sustenance.

Hence why I am not surprised that tons of younger Millenials and Zoomers opt to doordash more often.

I want to clean my windows because I hate seeing streaks and stains but find it hard to justify bothering with that when the floor that I'm walking on is covered with light filth and dog hair, but oops turns out the vacuum cleaner filter needs to be changed and there's a clog to clear out, so maybe I'll just ignore that for another week and instead work on removing the rust spots on my bedframe, which is a completely aesthetic matter but not having to look at them will take a certain load off my mind.

Anyhow, last week work took up all my time and energy so I didn't complete a few daily tasks that I normally do during the week and its all coming due at once, so frustrated that the more time I put in at work the less time I have to keep my home in order, and have to come home to a reminder of my empire's slow decay every day. And I can spend some of the money from working longer to offload some of the chores if I wanted, but dammit the *WHOLE REASON * I worked extra was to take home more money to do or buy fun stuff (and pay down debt). Spending it on getting menial chores done is a betrayal of my past self.

This hits home. I had a plan of entropy reduction tasks laid out this morning, but because I let my spouse sleep in 2/4 were rendered impossible before the weather came in.

Whenever I'm laying another 4,000 pounds of mulch to inhibit weeds, replacing burst pipes, cleaning leaves out of gutters, trimming hedges, all I can think about is how the western white picket fence fantasy is such a fucking racket. The previous owners of this house apparently had a landscaping team coming out twice a week which would be an unbelievably exorbitant expense.

I cannot wait to move into a house without a beautiful, feature-rich backyard. I just want carpet of grass, a patio to keep grill implements, and that's it.

That's not even getting into the inside of the house, where the tight garage means that every maintenance task requires I pull out one or both vehicles, uncrate my tools and supplies, accomplish it, and then have to put it all back. Dogs and kids and wives constantly underfoot, grabbing each tool and consumable as soon as they hit the ground to fuck around with.

If I organize any room it doesn't matter - over the next few days someone is going to come in and fuck it all up.

Jesus Christ, if I think about it too much I'll put a shotgun in my mouth. Or I'll go to a friend's pool, ignore the chaos, and drink some beers.

I'm seeing more and more 'low maintenance'* yards when I browse properties. People are sick of yard maintenance.

I finally moved into a suburban house not too long ago and my number one bugbear is lawn mowing. Its probably only about 2 hours once a month, but it is just so monotonous. I have to do it though, otherwise pests start building up in the undergrowth and it could cause problems with the neighbours.

*- Think gravel/stone yard surfacing with low maintenance 'desert/scrub' native plants and rock gardens etc. Heck its not uncommon to see fake grass in front and backyards or even just concreting everywhere.

It surprises me that we don't see more robot mowers for this exact reason. "Roomba for your lawn" seems like it should sell itself.

I guess hiring a service is still the overall cheaper move.

Whenever I'm laying another 4,000 pounds of mulch to inhibit weeds

trimming hedges

I cannot wait to move into a house without a beautiful, feature-rich backyard. I just want carpet of grass, a patio to keep grill implements, and that's it.

Why not let native plants (=weeds) to grow? Carpet of grass seems to take more effort than that.

What is wrong with trimming hedges once a year or twice a year at most?

(note: maybe you are in climate where things grow much faster than in mine? Or land is not owned by you and they rule how often you must trim hedges?)

A couple folks are suggesting "let it go". I get it! But a few things:

  1. If you lived in my neighborhood you'd be pretty reluctant to be the guy who replaced everything with a bunch of concrete padding and cut down all the trees in your yard. Standards are high - yes the boomers are at another level with their yards, but other young families are handling their shit. Mine's a bit tougher than some others unfortunately. Frankly I'm already embarrassed with how much I've let it fall off!
  2. The yard's a significant store of value. I suspect it cost 6 figures or more to get to this point - there are many places that can't host grass due to elevation changes + shade (where the mulch goes) and it's clear an expert designed the whole thing. If I let it go to seed it'll cost me some $ on sale.

I think the trick is going to be me just holding on for dear life, making more money somehow, and getting it right the next time.

Fact is that most boomers enjoy working around the house. Fixing up odds and ends and getting a perfect green lawn are hobbies not chores.

If it's not for you then by all means flatten your yard and have a concrete slab patio poured. The point of the american dream is that the land is yours, so you can do what you want with it.

Fact is that most boomers enjoy working around the house. Fixing up odds and ends and getting a perfect green lawn are hobbies not chores.

Part of this may be an age thing. I'm not sure why, but my attitude in the last few years has flipped from "ugh, housework" to "maintaining a nice home for myself and my family is worthwhile in itself." I think it's an age and maturity thing.

Yeah. Even my previous, smaller house, had a next door neighbor with a lot of "advice". Two retirees with a cumulative 100 hours a week more free time than the young couple they were advising.

I used to have a neighbor (not a Boomer, a Gen Xer) who mowed his yard a minimum of three times per week, and sometimes even daily. I’d occasionally come home and find that he’d mowed my yard for me, having apparently decided that I was letting it get a bit too long. (I think he also knew that I didn’t care for yard work, so I always appreciated his donated time and expense.)

Fact is that most boomers enjoy working around the house. Fixing up odds and ends and getting a perfect green lawn are hobbies not chores.

Or they move to Phoenix and get one of those yards with gravel and river rocks winding their way around cacti, and a community pool, and only have to work on it twice a year.

flatten your yard and have a concrete slab patio poured

Environmental permit granter: Do I smell an excessive amount of net impervious surface?

I cannot wait to move into a house without a beautiful, feature-rich backyard. I just want carpet of grass, a patio to keep grill implements, and that's it.

One think I'm very appreciative of on my land is that the lot behind me is completely undeveloped and forested, so I let the last ~40 feet of my property as it approaches the boundary of the parcel just fall to nature. It is chaos, but it is beautiful in its own way and I don't have to do hardly anything to maintain the appearance.

There's an approximately a 1200 sq foot patch of actual landscaped area that I put effort into maintaining, and even that is basically just killing weeds and pruning back errant branches, I'm not trying to win any contests, I just want a nice space to host friends on occasion.

Fighting entropy is a noble act. It's sitting in traffic that we should eliminate

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