Playing as a housewife

Attention! Boiling water inside the wailing kettle

In Indonesia, ‘housewife’ or ‘ibu rumah tangga’ is the only free of charge occupation acknowledged by the government in Indonesian identity card. It’s considered an occupation funnily, a job but earning no money (truly hilarious, especially it’s printed on your national ID card).

A housewife works under unlimited time, without paid leave, oh revised, no admitted leaves actually. Without given time break, the whole day, she is standing while making beds, preparing lunch box for her husband (and her kid(s)), feeding-bathing-milking the baby (my neighbour in front of me has a baby who cries quite a lot the whole day), cleaning the windows, cleaning the dust, sweeping and mopping the floor, cleaning the bathroom, washing the dishes, cooking, washing-drying-ironing the clothes, sweeping dried leaves, gardening and watering the plants and flowers, doing errands, at night forced to have sex and serve the husband sexually, physically, and mentally etc. etc. etc. 

It’s an idiotic (or a mean, I suppose) question asked by the husband with a sarcastic tone when he gets back from work, “Ngapain aja di rumah?” (What have you been doing at home?)

DO try those above at home and you’ll say that 24 hours leave you no you-time because of never-ends house work that keeps continuing like a cycle, stopping when you rest-in-peace state.

I have been starting to live alone and becoming responsible on the housework for the very first time in my life. I used my day offs to get myself used to being in new routines. The impact was that I became a sick person who needs to take full bed rest! Kelelahan or over exhausted so I developed cold and flu. I wasted my day offs *argh*  

I have been doing those above for about a week now but of course for my own because I’m single. The exhausted and bored feeling is wrapping me. Only a week playing a housewife, I began to suffer a disease which Betty Freidan called “a disease you can’t name.” So, I killed that symptoms before corrupting me by continuing to write my thesis which hasn't been finished yet *noooooooooo*. 

So, I’m thinking to have an understanding consent between a couple in doing housework. For example on Tuesday, wife sweeps the floor and husband mops the floor. On Friday husband sweeps the floor and wife mops the floor. On Monday and Thursday, let the dish washer and washing machine do their job. Each has to clean their own plates first. Have a zig zag day in delegating wife or husband to prepare bento or lunch box for work. On Saturday both do shopping and cook as reserve meals for the rest of the week. House work is indeed a lot, I can’t point out one by one and divide per day for each person in the house but when it is being shared well, the burden is lesser for the wife. A wife is the victimized-patriarchal-socially-constructed role, an occupation said Kartu Tanda Penduduk.  

To do the housework, if the wife (either herself or her husband) has abundant of money, she can pay a maid (in Bahasa now we call maid as Asisten Rumah Tangga because Pembantu Rumah Tangga/PRT has a sense of minoring a person, revealing a master-subordinate relationship too obviously). Purchasing electronic home appliances like washing machine, dish washer, robotic dust cleaner, can also be good option. However, those options surely take lots of money that is uneconomical for limited earner.

Being a full time mother and deliberately offering herself as a house wife in low or middle class society is such a courageous act.

December 15, 2013

RUSUN Bandar Kemayoran