Kim Knight is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a keen interest in the appropriate division of household labour.
OPINION
Milk should not approximate yoghurt. Yoghurt should not have matured into cheese. And cheese should definitely not be a small planet hosting furry micro-organisms plotting to overthrowthe condiments shelf.
In my experience, people fall into two categories: adults and those who are still alive because they live with adults. Sometimes, these people are the same age.
I long to float, wide-eyed and wondering, in a magical world where the dishwasher is always empty and the fork drawer always full. Tragically, I know exactly where all the forks are at all times and also that it is illegal to stick one into the person who never unloads the dishwasher.
A colleague told me recently about a flatmate who wanted to ban dish racks. I imagined a kind of Jenga situation for 20-somethings with too much op-shopped Crown Lynn transformed into an oasis of calm where mid-century modern crockery is washed, dried and put back in the cupboard at least a week before its expiry date. Bliss. (Who quietly shuts those cupboard doors and/or wipes residual Marmite from the handles? Nobody knows.)
Flatting is where you really discover what kind of adult you are going to become. It’s where you learn, for example, that not all toilet paper is created equal, but that some toilet paper is always better than an emergency partially used tissue retrieved from the depths of your jeans pockets.
Sharing a home is tricky and compatibility is not always about the obvious. Sure, you’re both Aquarius-rising Geminis who loved Bodkin but, if only one of you hangs up the bathmat, this relationship is doomed. (I know it’s called a “mat”. English is a complex language. For example, some people think “dusting” is a light application of icing sugar on the birthday cake you made for their mother when they forgot their own mother’s birthday. Hypothetically.)
An incomplete list of things that don’t happen by magic would definitely include the removal of all pocket tissues before washing. Also, an apparently never-ending supply of clean underwear, paired socks and work shirts. I’m not suggesting anyone in particular needs to know this, but steam irons cannot walk to the tap to refill themselves, hanging a shirt over a door handle for four days is not the same as washing it, and socks, unlike humans, are not magnetically attracted to their opposites. (There is a “no wash” movement that suggests jeans only need to visit the laundry once every two years or so. These jeans are 37 years old and still live in their parents’ basement.)
Of course it’s nice to feel useful. It’s also nice to discover that the peanut butter jar in the pantry actually has peanut butter in it and that the only loaf of bread in the house is not still in the freezer.
When I asked the members of my whānau WhatsApp to comment on the things in their house that happen as a result of mysterious forces, my nephew (17) replied: “There’s this really magical basket in the laundry where you put dirty clothes into it then by the end of the week they’re folded and clean on my bed, no idea how it works.”
His mother: “Your sister misses that basket.”
His sister (20): “Can I move home?”
Her grandmother: “Even Grandad believes in the washing basket fairy.”
Despite its name, 'washing' will not wash itself. Photo / Annie Spratt, Unsplash
The most recent Stats NZ Time Use survey is 15 years old (too young to know that mandarins do not keep indefinitely in the bottom of a school bag and that wet towels will not, effectively, dry anything).
It shows that, in 2009-10, men spent 1.34 hours a day engaged in household work and women, by comparison, spent 2.45 hours. Men also spent less time on childcare (15 minutes, compared to an average 40 minutes for women) and buying goods and services (28 minutes versus 43 minutes). They did spend slightly more time on “mass media and free time” – 11 minutes, or definitely long enough to empty the benchtop food scraps bin and replace the compostable liner. (New Zealanders throw out 160,000 tonnes of food annually and when I say “New Zealanders” I don’t mean all of them.)
Have you ever wondered whether you are the only responsible adult you know? Consider these questions from a completely made-up survey that was not authorised by Stats NZ:
Are you the non-parent emergency contact for children you are not related to?
Have you been a bridesmaid so often you could sew a queen-sized quilt from single-wear blue silk dresses?
When you go on holiday, are you the only person in your household who knows what time the flight leaves, what hotel you are booked into and the emergency services number for your country of destination?
If you answered yes to all of the above, I’m grateful you have taken precious time away from tipping the expired milk down the sink to read this far.
