My house is an unholy mess but I have always felt too working class to get a cleaner. The living room is strewn with debris from the kids playing Lego, crayons, paint brushes and random works of what might loosely be called art are scattered on the floor. There are piles of paper that have migrated from my wife’s home office desk onto armchairs and the piano seat, along with old issues of magazines that will never be read. And that’s just the living room — the kitchen and bedrooms tell their own tragic tales.
I suppose I could think about trying to tidy up or getting a cleaner. My wife and I are both working flat out and the children are faster at making a mess than we will ever be at tidying up. Hiring a cleaner would be the obvious solution but there is something about paying for domestic help that just feels wrong. Growing up in a working-class family, my parents tasked their children with much of the housework — I was the domestic help. As a teenager I was expected to do my share of the dishes, the vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom. The idea of paying anyone to do such things was unthinkable — and unaffordable. So instead I take comfort in the fact that even Marie Kondo — the world renowned Japanese decluttering expert — admitted recently that she had ‘kind of given up’ on tidying up since having children. “My home is messy” she told the Washington Post, “but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.” I hardly even notice how messy my house is until I visit friends whose homes seem almost gleefully clean and tidy. That is probably because they tidied up ahead of us visiting but it might also be because everyone we know has a cleaner. If we had a cleaner our lives would be improved but I just can’t do it- in the 25 years I have been living in London I have never had a cleaner. When I told Bridget that I was thinking of writing about the subject she was deeply uneasy. She worried that I would inadvertently offend all our friends and everyone reading who do have cleaners. She also wanted to remind me that, in her words ‘the reason we don’t have a cleaner is because you have me.’
In my head my wife and I share the housework equally but when I mentioned this to Bridget she began to laugh uncontrollably. If she does do more of the cleaning than me my theory is that it is has less to do with the historically gendered nature of housework and more because she just cares about it more than me. I have an impressively high tolerance for dirt and mess. I always told Bridget my reluctance to get a cleaner was about cost but recently I have realised it was actually about class.
These days the plain facts are that I live a life that is almost stereotypically middle class but I like to kid myself that deep down I am still working class.
Getting a cleaner would confirm that I have abandoned my working-class roots so I choose to be messy than accept that I am middle class.
Nostalgia trip with Frasier
The Nineties are back.
Gen Z are rediscovering the flip phone and instant cameras, Pulp and Blur are performing this summer and
this week the reboot of Frasier, starring Kelsey Grammer, started filming.
I was in my twenties in the Nineties and at the time I hated the decade and wished I had been young in the Sixties. The Sixties had Sean Connery and JFK. The Nineties had Pierce Brosnan and John Major. I remember being riven with anxiety about my career, miserable about my non-existent love life and depressed by Jive Bunny.
Weirdly, the further I have travelled the better the Nineties appeared. Now that decade brings back memories of magical nights in clubs, the thrill of Oasis in their prime and the giddy optimism of Tony Blair’s first term. I would go back in time if I could — but I will settle for having Frasier back in the building.
