Modern Housewife

Modern Housewife | 80cm x 110cm | 2009

Housewife as a modern artist

HOUSEWIFE AS A MODERN ARTIST

40 – 50 years ago, maybe in our present too, the housewife was consider like a “slave”, the man all day working and the woman at home, take care to the house and to the children, making everything comfortable.

The housewife is seen as a guardian angel of the house; a figure of mother-lover-housekeeper-housewife, a woman that does everything by herself.

For centuries the women inherited pail and broom, but their work remained always in the collective indifference.

Housewife does everything by herself.

 THE GOOD WIFE’S GUIDE:

(How to act perfectly)

-       Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favourite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

-       Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

-       Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

-       Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.

-       Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper etc and then run a dustcloth over the tables.

-       Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of a rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

-       Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimise all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.

-       Be happy to see him.

-       Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

-       Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of this arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

-       Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.

-       Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

-       Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.

-       Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

-       Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

-       Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

-       Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

-       A good wife always knows her place.

TODAY

Today’s housewife needs to learn everything about the house; she grew up in the ’90s family getting everything ready without any domestic instruction.

She wants to have her own independency and she can’t have time for the house leaving everything to other people.

In an age when self-sufficiency is no fad but a stern, practical necessity, the proper care and management of a household offer a highly-skilled, challenging and responsible occupation. The average housewife is expected to brew the family's beer and bake its bread as a matter of course, to spin, weave and make up the wool and linen cloth for clothes and household use. She must know all the techniques for preserving food - how to cure bacon and hams, to salt the meat from the autumn slaughtering which must last through the winter, store apples and vegetables for the long months when no fresh produce would be available, make jellies, conserves and pickles to vary a monotonous diet and help to conceal the taste of anything that was going "off". The housewife who failed to plan her winter stores adequately would know the ultimate shame of seeing her family go hungry. In most households the rush or wax lights which provided the only illumination were made at home, and so was soap - a laborious process involving mutton fat and lye, obtained from wood ash. Washday itself was hard labor, steeping and then beating the heavy linen sheets with wooden bats, before bleaching, smoothing and folding. Not surprisingly, this immense effort was undertaken only every three months or so. The dairy was always a good housewife's special responsibility, and she have to know enough about animal husbandry to be a judge of a milk cow. She do her own milking, reared the calves, and made her own butter and cheese. She looked after the poultry, carefully hoarding feathers for pillows and mattresses, grew her own vegetables, herbs and flowers, and all this on top of the daily chores of cooking, scrubbing, sweeping, and caring for her children.

Any housewife worthy of the name would have a general knowledge of sick-nursing and rudimentary doctoring, and this in turn often meant a wide knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs. In many families recipes for salves, cordials, poultices and other sovereign remedies were handed down from mother to daughter, and some women with a special gift or interest would experiment on their own account. The really dedicated housewife also find time to embroider her linen and bed-hangings, distil perfume, make wines and syrups, potpourri and pastilles to be burned in a sick-room or to sweeten the air.

This is the real housewife art.

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE HOUSE

Plan your house cleaning

The worst is leaving the house in dirt, mess level. The better way is do things day by day with a schedule. In this way it will possible to have few hours free in the weekend.

Shopping

Of all the domestic tasks shopping is the pleasant moment, not boring at all.

It needs to be a relaxing moment, stopping by alimentary brands safeguarding health and wallet.

Using natural products

Detergents, dishwashing liquid and perfumes: it has to be the most as possible natural. White vinegar, onions and lemons are excellent stains remover; oranges and cloves can scent the cupboards in natural way; and fichus Benjamin is the best antidote against smoke.

The beauty case of the house

The tools box, after domestic works, allows us to give an artistic touch to the house, satisfying our ego. Organize it and using it give huge satisfactions.

Personalize your space

The house doesn’t need just to be cleaned and furnished; it has to be the right atmosphere, it has to become a “nest”.

Many feminists have criticized the marginalization of women as 'homemakers'. Feminists generally suggest that 'homemaking' should be an appropriate role for a parent of either sex, believing that gender roles do not have any basis other than social conditioning. Also, they maintain that women can become socially isolated by being tied to their home. While some feminists denigrate and insult "stay-at-home moms", at times coming as far as calling them slaves of the patriarchy, others argue that feminism respects all choices people make. They would argue that the goal of feminism is not to close off any options for women, but to create opportunities for women to pursue careers in traditionally male occupations, as well as providing males an option to pursue roles that so far have been perceived as "strictly female".

THE BOOK

 How to be the Perfect Housewife: Lessons in the Art of Modern Household Management

About the book

Your home should be somewhere you look forward to spending time. It should be a haven from the stresses of the world. You should be proud to have your friends round for dinner and they should leave impressed by your comfortable, clean, homely home. Nowadays, we don't all have the time or energy to make the most of our homes. But with a little help from Anthea, the queen of clean, you too can have a beautiful, clean and comfortable home to be truly proud of. With tips on everything from decluttering to dry cleaning, storage solutions to spring cleaning, dinner parties to brunches, this is an indispensable guide. There are simple lessons on each aspect of home making from cleaning to ironing to washing to tidying as well as top tips on entertaining. You will learn to entertain in style, with little effort and cost. Whether you're a housewife, or a young professional or student just setting up home, the Perfect Housewife has helpful hints to get you organized. You can save time and energy and turn your house into a home with Anthea Turner!

More info

Contain tips on everything from decluttering to dry cleaning, storage solutions to spring-cleaning, dinner parties to brunches. This guide includes lessons on various aspects of home making from cleaning to ironing to washing to tidying as well as top tips on entertaining.

“MAKE ART, NOT TRASH"

Aesthetics are homemade. That is, the formation of taste comes from the home. From homemakers, from our mothers; the way they feed us, the way they dress us, the way they decorate our homes, the way they care for us.

The domestic arts, the so-called applied arts, were really the first arts. Initially art was, as norm given value because of its utility but now art, as luxury, is given value because of its futility. So today art's ontology is that of existing for itself. And not for others. That's why sometimes art is lonely and feels nostalgia for the housewives of it's past.

When art was based on everyday objects, art existed every day. Its relationship with the quotidian was symbiotic. Art was, subsequently, related to the home. Now art, if important, is at home only if it's away from the home and in a museum.

In the house is good to utilize things that we think are without use anymore;

The housewife loves recycle things and sometimes we found million of objects in the house.

She likes to make her own art transforming domestic items and electronic gadgets into sculptures. She rescues discarded objects that are textured by time and gives them life as pieces that evoke multiple associations such as, domestic labor.

For centuries, housewife have been at the centre of the art of keeping homes, creating clothes for their families and artful objects for their homes. Housewife have in the past, and in some cases still do, turned the things that they touch into art during the course of their daily work. Take women of Rana Tharu in Nepal for example. They’ve been dressing themselves in beautiful embroidered garments, making pots for grain storage, ornately plastering the family home and weaving delicate fishnets since settling in the Tarai in the 16th century. They still do this today. And while in the west many housewives have lost the crafts of their ancestors.

“Waste not, want not. Women were the first real recyclers. True bricoleurs. Like making omelet’s using leftovers, like making quilts from scraps. But today, we consume more and, in the process, waste more. We all create massive amounts of trash every day. And most of it ends up in ugly landfill sites. However, much of this household waste could be reduced, reused or recycled. All it takes is just a little imagination.”  (Cynthia Korzekwa)

                                                                    

We are part of our environment whether or not we want to be. When you react to your environment with your own aesthetic code, you change your rapport with the environment. You, in some way, possess the place where you are just by being there. Because by being there, you, too, are part of the environment. So, if the world around us becomes a part of us, why not turn it into art?

Creating personal daily aesthetics implies creating a rapport with our environment. Art should be integrated into daily experience because it enhances life. Art is a form of consciousness and consciousness transforms us.

The use of the imagination in everyday life is fundamental. Imagination is a form of insight; it helps us interact with our environment.

Aesthetics are ideals that help guide us, it don't come from what's in front of us but from what's inside of us.

Art helps us integrate with our environment, it is the fusion of the inside and out.  Reacting to our environment helps maintain the flow of consciousness. Attitude determines our aesthetics.

If we change our canons of beauty, we change our rapport with our environment. Our destiny is, in part, determined by how we interact with our environment. If the gap between ourselves and our environment is too wide, psychology or physically we die.

Our thoughts keep us company. That's why we must cultivate them. Stasis does not lead to experience. And it is experience that shapes our sense of aesthetics.

Jean Renoir said that 'true art is in the doing of it'.

                                                                                    Davide Durjava | 2009

  

Bibliography

- Luxton, Meg & Rosenberg, Harriet (1986), Through the Kitchen Window: The    Politics of Home and Family, Garamond Press,

- Luxton, Meg (1980), More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women's Work in the Home, Women's Press,

- http://www.makeartnottrash.com/endnotes.htm

- http://www.366cm.com/

- http://www.thisintothat.com/secondeditions.html

- http://www.cynthiakorzekwa.org/

- http://50shousewife.blogspot.com/2008/06/easy-wall-art.html

- Women in Transition, Andrew J. DuBrin – 1972,

- Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s, Cécile Whiting – 2006,