I live in the Welsh countryside. It’s beautiful, but it means that when we have visitors, they often travel far to see us and will stay for a night, a weekend, or longer. That might sound nice, and it is, but whenever my husband announces an old friend is visiting from London, or that an in-law is booked in for a week, my jaw clenches.
It has nothing to do with how I feel about them. It’s because I’m tired of cleaning, cooking and prepping for my husband’s houseguests. To be clear, I resent having to clean for my own guests too – but it seems particularly unfair when I’m scrubbing the floors for arrangements I was never included in.
For me, visitors mean cooking, cleaning, decorating, putting fresh sheets on the guest bed, digging out the only decent set of towels I have in the house, a thoughtful weekend itinerary – the extra pressure to make sure the children look presentable. Making sure no one is bored.
It means remembering Guest A won’t eat cheese, but will eat pizza. That Guest B won’t drink from the tap, will bring her own food, organic milk, and will silently swap the things in my pantry. That Guest C hates Tetley teabags, and remembering to stock his preferred brand.
It’s not just a quick tidy up we’re talking about. It’s an act – and it’s why, though I love having friends to stay, I always feel exhausted at the end. Why don’t I just relax, and not bother with any of it? Well, my husband says the same thing. He says not to worry, because the things that need to get done always seem to get done.
He says that “no one cares” about the things I’m stressing over, and they don’t matter. He’s half right: society doesn’t care when he doesn’t do them. They absolutely do when I don’t.
Studies show that not only do women, consistently, do more housework than men when they live together – they’re also criticised for the house being messy while men aren’t. One 2019 study found that people judged messy homes more harshly when they believed a woman lived there, compared with when they thought the occupant was a man.
Now I’ve certainly never noticed anyone come to our joint home and mention the dishes in the sink, or a child’s toys on the floor to Alex. But I had a visitor point out the lint in our living room carpet to me, like an accusation. And the problem is that women internalise these expectations, so we really can’t relax until we’re satisfied we’re presenting a clean, comfortable house, a great home-cooked meal, and so on.
When I visit friends, I see the same act. A frantic scream when I open the wrong door, a cry of “you weren’t supposed to see in there!” because I accidentally opened the door to the utility and witnessed a filled laundry basket and some children’s shoes. A man would never feel shame over out of place footwear. But women are taught to.
It is known, and understood, that anything undone in the house is my personal failing and not my husband’s. He has nothing to do with it. He just lives here.
I could just resist the pressure, the fear of judgement, I’ve tried to feel the fear and (not) do it anyway. But it’s impossible, and it is not worth the cortisol spike. The anticipation of judgement is more painful than the work itself.
The scientists who conducted the study explained that the social standards imposed on us influence our behaviour even when we don’t believe in them. Which I don’t. It’s the most frustrating part. I see the imbalance, the double standard, the unfairness, and at the same time feel the need to go along with it anyway. I comply, even though my guilt does not benefit me – it only benefits the patriarchy. I don’t share these ideas! These aren’t my beliefs. It doesn’t matter. The pressure is unbearable.
Our gendered ideas about cleaning have been some of the slowest to change. A 2023 study showed that women report doing nine more hours of housework a week than their male partners. Gender was the biggest influence on household responsibility, regardless of pay or employment status. When both partners work from home, women do more housework. And even when we earn more, we still take on a greater share of the domestic load.
This bank holiday weekend, we have my in-laws visiting, and I decided to try a new approach to balancing the domestic load of hosting. My husband and I talked about ways to ease the burden. We have planned a meal out for one night, and a takeaway for another, which only leaves one dinner to cook. We booked the cleaner the day before the grandparents arrived to ease the load, which means the floors will be mopped and hoovered, the bathrooms scrubbed.
I also found solutions with the help of the internet. One woman advised that you don’t actually have to stay in the house the entire time when your husband invites relatives to stay – a thought that had truly not occurred to me, even though he leaves when mine visit. I can’t feel guilty about a bored guest, or a full sink, if I’m not in the house to see it! I might take a leaf out of my husband’s books and go on a two-hour trip to the corner shop for some eggs.