Do men or women better clean a house?
When I clean the bathroom it takes ten minutes and I think it looks great! When my wife cleans the bathroom it takes several hours and it looks spectacular!
I believe we both do an outstanding job; my beloved wife, however, believes “her way” is the only way and when I ask her to teach me her cleaning secrets she says, “I shouldn’t have to tell you” to which I then reply, “I guess you’ll have to live with my great 10 minute cleaning job”; that comment results her not speaking to me for the next several hours.
Frankly, I think she’s jealous I can do in 10 minutes what takes her 18 times longer to accomplish!

19 Comments

  1. I’d have to say that it really depends on the individuals.
    Elizabeth says that I do a much better cleaning job than she. Despite this my flat can be quite a mess when I get too deep into work.

  3. My wife has a stricter standard for clean than me. I’ve read somewhere that women tend to be like that. The home is the true centre of their spatio-temporal domain, and the further they get from it the less they pay attention to the spatio-temporal. Men are a little bit inverted; they remember routes a long way from home, but miss the details in the home. So they don’t actually perceive things the same way.
    There’s even research on this :

    Another brain region now known to diverge in the sexes anatomically and in its response to stress is the hippocampus, a structure crucial for memory storage and for spatial mapping of the physical environment. Imaging consistently demonstrates that the hippocampus is larger in women than in men. These anatomical differences might well relate somehow to differences in the way males and females navigate. Many studies suggest that men are more likely to navigate by estimating distance in space and orientation (“dead reckoning”), whereas women are more likely to navigate by monitoring landmarks.

    So does the larger female hippocampus mean that extra spatial mapping means better eyes for that which is clean in the immediate surroundings?

  4. Hi fruey!
    Thanks for the link to the research! That is really helpful.
    I agree men and women have different standards by which something is determined “clean” and the conflict comes when one forces their “clean” on the other!
    I say, if it isn’t clean enough for you, then clean it yourself or show me EXACTLY what you want and I’ll do it!
    :mrgreen:
    My mother navigates with landmarks and it makes me crazy: Turn at the big tree on the corner up ahead. THERE ARE TEN BIG TREES ON SEVERAL CORNERS UP AHEAD! I do prefer “go .234 miles and turn left.”

  5. I think it’s that I have a system of putting things where they ought to go and the like – whereas she often just puts things out of the way and then later gets irritated because those things have now ‘disappeared’ as it were.

  6. Dave!
    What a story! There’s a movie in there somewhere! What do you do when you find a fetus in the trash? Do you call an ambulance or the police?
    I never knew about squatting instead of sitting. That sounds miserable with even more sorry results!
    I just asked Janna what she does. At work, they have a clean bathroom with lots of cleaning stuff so she sits. In a department store if the bathroom is filthy she’ll turn around and leave. If she’s having an “emergency” in the department store bathroom she will, indeed, squat instead of sit! It took quite a bit of cajoling on my part to get her to admit to ever squatting.
    :mrgreen:

  9. Dave —
    Yes, they do squat, but it’s hard to get that info out of them! :mrgreen: I didn’t ask about the bad aim, because Janna can throw a really accurate punch. 😉
    People are amazing and our uncontrollable bodily functions are spectacular in their animal base.

  10. Hi David!
    Here is someone who can give you a hard time in the contest of obtaining a golad medal in bathroom cleaning (squeaky clean restroom in 10 mins!!!) – I take 15/20 mins and my toilet is much more cleaner at times than my own bedroom. I think I can atleast claim a siver! 😀
    And if someone else offers to clean my toilet? I am the happiest person in the world because I don’t have to do it and as long as he follows the basic rule of hygiene – I am fine with that, even if it is done in 10 secs!!

  11. Heya Katha!
    Nice to see you here again! You’re becoming a regular! Yay! Happy New Year!
    I agree the best way to clean a bathroom is to have someone else do it for you. Harr!
    😀
    The toilet is a favorite of mine to clean, too, usually because the results of your effort are immediately in evidence!

  12. Well, I can see I’m going to have to come here and discuss this with you guys because lord knows what kind of assumptions you’re going to make. 😉
    Think of it this way: If we sit in a nasty bathroom, what we’re exposed to is what your aimer thing is exposed to.
    In college I encountered the nastiest bathroom I’d ever seen. There’s an annual spring horse race in the midlands of SC called the Carolina Cup, and my friends and I went and hung out in the infield with some other friends. The going joke is that being in the infield is where you can stay all day and not see a horse. Anyway, we had to go, so we make our way to the ladies’ room, but it’s not a bathroom, it was an outhouse. The “toilets” were large wooden boxes that were thigh-high with a hole cut in the top.
    Needless to say, I wasn’t even squatting there. I held it until we went on the other side of the track and found a real bathroom that was decently clean.
    And as for the cleaning, I clean the bathrooms in our house. It takes me 30 minutes for each one. I hate doing dishes, so my husband ususallly does those. The first time he did them, I made a comment about filling up one side of the sink instead of letting the water run. He said, “Do you want me to do these?” So I shut up and let him do them. 😆
    I’ve never said another word sense.

  15. Hey Carla!
    Nice to talk to you officially! Have a great 2006! And yes, if someone is helping me in my daily chore – best possible way to handle that is to zip my lip up! At least I can read/ play/ hike/ bike – do whatever I feel like with that extra time!

  16. Carla — Excellent message! I’m with you all the way. I, too, let the water run when I wash the dishes! It must be some kind of phallic idolatry of not wanting to turn off something so powerful in mid-stream! :mrgreen: I also enjoy doing all the cooking because only I know how to do it right. Mwa-haa! The bathrooms — I help — but Janna does them so much better and I stand in awe of her as she never squats.
    Katha — Heh! 😀
    Carla2 — Yeah, Katha needs an Avatar — preferably one with antlers! And then… there’s Chris@…
    Dave — Right on! We think big but when it comes to taking care of sewage and trash most of us would rather talk about God or football. 😀 I’m glad someone thinks about, and takes care of those things, though.

  17. Chris!
    What an experience! Do you regret now not taking a look at the dead man back then when you had the chance?
    I guess I’m lucky I never had to clean the women’s room. I had a lot of muck jobs in my life but restroom cleaning wasn’t one of them.

  18. I don’t regret not looking. I’m glad the police/security officer shielded me from it.
    I did wonder what might have happened if it wasn’t a medical emergency and something different, like a fight. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation. I don’t think I was supposed to help with anything other than my job’s duties because of the union contract, but I was honored that the cop picked me to help out since there were other people that were there.
    I used to not like “daily duties” because I felt I was above them. A bagger who had been there for a long time clued me in on the secret of not being constantly monitored while on that assignment and how it was actually an assignment that provided a little “freedom.” You could decide what you wanted to do, as long as the work was completed.
    On the front end, if you weren’t busy, they’d call you and give you assignments and constantly move you around, especially if you were having a good time with a pretty cashier.
    When you were doing “daily duties” if you were fast, you could dust mop the store and wander aimlessly, usually wherever the co-eds were shopping. If anyone asked, we were keeping an eye out for hazards, such as spills and dropped grapes, which is a legitimate function since people could slip and fall at any time.
    It was nice because none of the front end supervisors would say anything to you. They wouldn’t even call you on the intercom to do other assignments, until your four hours were up because you were outside of their control.

  19. Chris —
    I am learning so much today! I had no idea about front end and “daily duties” and it sounds like you were able to get what you wanted as you wished and that’s a good thing!
    I probably would have liked to see the dead body just because I’m curious and I must know and experience everything that is legal. Illegal stuff has never been of interest to me.

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