One of the first Italian medical terms I learned while working as an au pair in Italy eight years ago was "esaurimento nervoso". I had heard it mentioned so many times in conversations between the middle-aged woman who had hired me and her friends in reference to other friends that I looked it up in my Italian/English dictionary. It meant "nervous breakdown".
In my previous Milanese life when I got dressed up in the morning to go to work in an office with two thousand other dressed-up office people, there was a very sweet, attractive administrative assistant who had recently married. She once mentioned how she had "disinfected all household surfaces" on Saturday with that smelly pink rubbing alcohol they sell in big, fat tubs in stores here. I thought that was weird. A fun, cute girl like her, she should be out doing something more interesting, I thought, as I nodded, fully pretending that disinfecting my home with stinky alcohol was something I too did on a regular basis, or had once done at some point in my life.
I married a very "modern" man, as far as Italians go. He can cook, for one thing. If required, he can iron one of his shirts. I have witnessed him vaccum, mop, but not dust. However, he is extremely demanding when it comes to "hygiene", as he calls it. I will never forget the time we were lying in bed and he said to me in all seriousness, "I want to be sure, I want to know for certain that the last time that spot on the wall over there (pointing to corner of the bedroom) was disinfected at least one month ago, because it gets done every month." Yes. He actually said that. I've mentioned it before on this blog, but how could I not bring it up again? He said it in all seriousness, and very innocently, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to say. As if those were the very words a young wife would want to hear from her husband in bed.
Currently, he is obsessed with the oven. At least once a day we have a conversation about how the oven must be cleaned and how it is absolutely essential that I ask the cleaning lady to do it. Tonight after dinner he brought up the filthiness of the oven once again. His exact words were, "I had to use the oven last week and the smell of something left in there burning was so bad I had to open all the windows to air the house out." I found that very interesting, first of all because if I had smelled something burning in the oven, I would have reached in with a mitt and pulled it out, and second, because this evening I made quite a nice little succulent roast if I do say so myself, and there was no burning smell whatsoever. I told him that if he wanted the oven cleaned, he could do it himself. Or give me € 8 to pay the cleaning lady when she stays an extra hour to clean the oven.
Poor martyr that is he is, he whined, "And I will! I'll end up having to do it myself!" I'm sure you can imagine the pity I felt for him at that moment. Poor man. Forced to clean his own oven. What has the world come to?
Before the oven, it was refrigerator. And before that, the shelf in the bathroom where he keeps his shaving gear and I keep my basket of make-up. Before the shelf, it was the spot in the corner of our bedroom wall. I still don't know what was so dirty about that spot, and I imagine neither does he, because I haven't disinfected it and he hasn't mentioned it since.
On a variety of occasions he mentioned how the bathroom shelf needed to be cleared off and dusted. "It would only take a minute," he remarked.
"I know," I replied. It would only take a minute for someone tall like him.
Until now I have shrugged all this off. It didn't make much sense to me. Until tonight.
Corriere della Sera published an article on April 26, 2006 on the average hours an Italian woman spends doing household work in comparison to the average hours an American woman spends cleaning her house. G showed me the article online this evening after we had discussed the oven.
In brief, a Procter & Gamble survey found that on average, American women spend four hours per week cleaning their homes while Italian women dedicate a whopping twenty-one hours to domestic chores, not including meal preparation.
Twenty. One. Hours.
Per. Week.
Twenty. One. Hours.
That's a part-time job. And the survey included women with paying jobs.
Not that this comes as a big surprise to me. I had my suspicions. For me, the most shocking aspect of the article was not the sheer amount of time Italians allegedly spend cleaning their homes rather than doing other things (like sleeping!). No, what alarmed me was that it could easily be deduced from the article that the writer (a woman) was proud of the findings of the survey, since she referred to the findings as having confirmed "our supremacy over our EU peers". She also stated that "This not only makes us the indisputable winners of the sought-after international record..."
The article quotes Federica Rossi Gasparrini, chairwoman of the Italian Federation of Housewives as saying, "No woman is willing to give up a clean home, even if she works. It is part of loving her family."
Shucks. All this time I've been showing my love in all the wrong ways.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
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9 commenti:
OMG this is too funny. I totally remember my grandmother making the bed, pulling every single crease out and smoothing it down with her hands. If we got near the bed, she would chase us with a broom.
My husband is very much like G.
Now go disinfect that spot. ;*)
Ha, that's great! Do they iron their sheets and hankies like the French too?
Ooh, I must not love my family very much!
I just found your blog about a month ago and now faithfully read every day. I love your writing style!
In regard to this post, I shudder to think what the Italians would think of me and the dust bunnies that live in our house.
Wow. Outrageous. Your husband did know you were an American before he married you, right? So you can point to the article, shrug and say, "Hey, I'll give it four hours a week and nothing more. I'm an American, after all." ;^)
Seriously, though, I wonder if your husband is just demonstrating the prevailing Italian attitude toward household cleanliness, or if he perhaps is demonstrating OCD tendencies. This isn't a criticism at all -- just a thought. Whatever the case, I like that you have stood your ground on this issue. There are too many other more worthwhile things to spend 21 hours a week doing, besides cleaning house. :-)
They have a federation of housewives?! LOL.
This post amused me no end. Thanks!
OMG, my husband is from an Italian family and his mother's house is so ridiculously clean.
And yes it is a source of strife. I don' think he has ever cleaned a bathroom or dusted. Lately he has an obsession with the kitchen, which is under renovation... how can you keep it clean?
but 21 hours? eghads... I try to keep it under that a year.
I worked for a housecleaning service when I was single, and I know how to do that kind of rigorous cleaning schedule, but it means giving up so many other things.
I realized by the time my first child was 9 months old that I could keep a clean house or I could enjoy my daughter, but I couldn't do both. Anything put in the dishwasher is instantly removed by a curious little one, and every swept up dust pile is immediately dispersed again by a toddler who wants to "help." The only way to keep a house spotless is to be a scowling termagant with your children.
And what kind of childhood is that? "Yes, my mother was angry with me all the time and she never smiled, but she kept a clean house. Ah, good times."
I found this today from your post about the pants and loved your perspective. I actually blogged about this the same day, since the Wall Street Journal ran the same story from the American perspective that day. Thought you might enjoy it:
http://robandjulie.blogspot.com/2006/04/cleaning-chatter-from-freak.html
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