The rise of Domestic Divadom

Lucy Denyer - 1 Oct 14

The other day I found myself having one of those jokey, faux self-deprecating Twitter exchanges about who is the least domestic goddess of all. Ironing! We laughed. Who does that?! And who really has time to sort whites and coloureds for washing these days?

Oh how we joked. The trouble was, I actually wasn’t really laughing, I was cringing. Because, although I used to think people who cared about things like ironing and laundry were a bit sad, now I have become one of them. I’ve entered the world of Domestic Divadom.

These days, not only do I iron, I also wash the kitchen floor on a regular basis (I am turning into my mother), I like to wipe down the bathroom surfaces after people have brushed their teeth and left spit marks everywhere, and I plump up the cushions on the sofa before I go to bed. I also have a very careful laundry coding system, involving at least five different types of washes, for different clothing types, clothing colours and things that need occasional, very hot washes to disinfect them, like the shower curtain (see? I have gone mad).

I get extremely angry when my system goes wrong, like the other day, when a pair of pink silk knickers accidentally got bundled up in the load of pure whites which included my nicest duvet cover and best linen napkins and turned everything a nasty, streaky, gap-year-style tie-dye effect pinkish colour. The solution? Not just to laugh it off and have another glass of wine. No, I spent the next 30 minutes googling discussion boards on the best product to use to get rid of the stain, briefly considered dying everything navy, and then spent a ridiculous amount of money ordering all the stain removal items that sounded the best on Amazon. I then spent several more hours, several days later, boiling up the pillowcases with foul-smelling powder on the stove to turn them white again, and running the washing machine on the hottest wash with more of the powder several times for the duvet cover and sheets. It worked. I was so proud of myself.

What have I become? When I was younger, I considered having clean clothes to wear on a regular basis achievement enough in itself. I despised people who ironed, thinking they didn’t have enough to do in their lives. And I would happily throw in a white towel with a load of indigo-wash jeans. So it came out a bit grey. Who really cared?

Then, somewhere along the line, things started to change. First I started sorting the laundry. Then it became a mild obsession with dust. Then, when I was living in America with not much to do, the strange addictiveness of the steaming hot iron and the smoothness of clean, newly-ironed sheets made itself truly known to me. It was the beginning of the end.

I blame it, as with everything, on having children, being at home quite a lot of the time, and not getting enough mental exercise through working. The Domestic Divadom, was really exacerbated when I was on maternity leave second time around. Having multiple people to wash, cook, clean for and look after hasn’t helped – I think my laundry sorting probably started in earnest around the time I got married, and has only got more out of hand as our household has grown.

And I can’t quite work out how I feel about it either. On the one hand, I love walking into a tidy room, cushions plumped, ready to receive my bottom in their pillowy embrace. I love getting into bed with clean, ironed sheets, knowing I’m going to sleep really well that night as a result. I enjoy the fact that I don’t, on the whole, have to feel mega embarrassed when friends come round and want to use the bathroom. And I am weirdly proud of the fact that I worked out a way of sorting out my pink laundry without resorting to having to throw the whole lot away or dye it all new colour.

On the other hand, it feels a bit, well, anti-feminist to care so much about all this stuff – to have become a bit so borderline obsessive about it. I’m embarrassed that I have wasted so many hours on cleaning and ironing and tidying when actually, it’s all just going to get messed up again and there are more important things in life, such as saving the world, or, playing with your kids.

There is, I think, some hope in that I have noticed a distinct lessening of the DD since I started working again, which I confess is something of a relief. The reinstating of our cleaner coming every week rather than every other week has also helped, because at least I know that once a week, the house will be clean and tidy and I don’t have to get it like that myself.

But I still have a good stock of that crazy powder stuff under the kitchen sink, just in case.

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Lucy Denyer

Lucy Denyer has been a journalist for 10 whole years, during which time she's written for The Sunday Times, The Times, Red, Stylist, Easy Living, She, The London Magazine and The Lady, amongst others. She is mother to Atticus, 3, and Oswald, 10 months, and lives in London.

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