Put down your hammer 🔨 Danusia, because you nailed it! I don’t have Instagram for this exact reason, but I still know about performative home making. Show me someone scrubbing a toilet or cleaning up vomit or breaking up another bloody fight with a peaceful and fulfilled smile on their face and I will fall down dead from shock 🤪
Right?! The day I see someone deep-cleaning a toilet with serene joy, I’ll assume they’ve been possessed by the spirit of a 1950s housewife—or just really into chemical fumes. 🤪
Performative homemaking is all candle-lit corners and artfully placed blankets. Meanwhile, the real home battlefield is littered with half-eaten toast, rogue LEGO pieces, and a suspicious stain I’m too afraid to investigate.
I attended a dinner party a few weeks ago, and the host said to the other guests, “Laura and Daniel have a highly curated home. There’s nothing in there that they don’t want.” I was at once incredulous, flattered, and wanted to burst out laughing. The host had only seen our home after eight hours of cleaning (and hiding messes), but this pristine, “highly curated home” was the only picture he held in his mind. I can create that home a few times a year, but had to give up on sustaining it daily.
Oh, that’s brilliant! The power of one perfectly timed deep clean—suddenly, you’re living in a ‘highly curated home’ instead of a place where life actually happens. Love that you got to bask in the illusion for an evening… before reality crept back in. Appreciate you reading and sharing this—it’s so spot on!
Such a refreshing perspective!! I feel better romanticizing by beautifying my home, but more so as a creative outlet than turning it into the sanctuary it isn’t. I love that I get to be home with my children BUT only because I also have a fulfilling career that is separate from my children and which I can do in the messiness of home.. it was very important to me to not involve the kids in the marketing of my business, which tends to happen a lot for those using social media for their work. But then the lines blur before we have time to even reflect (or so I think…)
What’s ironic about the whole marketable home sanctuaries is that those displaying it have that as their businesses, which makes the experience of being home vastly different than if they hadn’t had it as their work to show it…..
Elin YES to all of this! Using home as a creative outlet? Absolutely. ❤️
But selling it as a sanctuary when it’s really a ‘set’ for a marketable brand? That’s where things get murky. And you’re spot on—when your home itself becomes the product, the experience of ‘being home’ shifts entirely. The lines blur before we even have a moment to ask who benefits from that blurring.
Appreciate you reading and sharing your thoughts, Elin! Always love the way you cut through the noise with such sharp insight. 🙏🏻
Love this article. you got my attention. Yes!!! 👏🏽 I am a homemaker — but I’m also a medical caregiver (unable to work) both options were not by choice. “Because for many, the home is not a peaceful sanctuary. It is a demanding, unpaid, never-ending job—and one we’re still expected to do with a smile.”
Thank you! And yes—so much of what happens at home is work, whether it’s caregiving, homemaking, or both. And yet, the expectation is we should do it with a serene smile, as if it’s a privilege rather than a full-time, unpaid, emotionally taxing job. I see you. ❤️
Thanks so much for this article! You hit the nail on the head.
I think it's just that women have forgotten what it's like at home. They have gone out to work outside the home, which started in the 1960s I think? And now view the home as this marvellous sanctuary, wishing they could stay at home 24/7 like these 'very lucky women who can do that.'
But...that was the whole reason women wanted jobs in the first place! To get away from the grind of being at home doing housework, caring, managing 24/7. They didn't want to remain dependent on their husbands, they wanted independence, to get away from being the dependent stay at home non person, on duty 24/7 cleaning and washing everything.
But being the mum at home is relentless, like you said. It's not artwork, it's drudgery.
Right?! The home-as-haven myth has some serious amnesia baked in. But I wouldn’t say women forgot—more like the reality of domestic life got repackaged, Instagram-filtered, and sold back to us as ‘aspirational.’ The drudgery never left, it just got better PR!
Yes, Instagram and the rest have a lot to answer for, don't they. Or maybe it's a mixture of that and forgetting. I've been told so many times that I was so lucky to stay at home, get up when I want, do what I want all day.
Erm...no. Kids get up at 5am then we're on their timetable all day, we don't get to do what we want all day, do we?
Ah yes, the ‘you’re so lucky’ brigade—because obviously, loving our kids must mean we love being unpaid domestic managers too. As if enjoying time with them magically erases the never-ending logistics, the unpaid labour, and the mental load of running a home. Raising kids? Love it. Being the default CEO of All Things Laundry, Meals, and Chaos Control? That’s a different job entirely—and funny how no one ever calls that lucky. 🫣
P.S. This isn’t talk—I am one of those single mothers raising disabled kids. Let’s be real—who exactly gets to treat home as a curated aesthetic rather than unpaid, unrelenting labour? Because it sure as hell isn’t single mothers, working-class parents, or anyone juggling survival. This ‘home as art’ fantasy? It’s white woman privilege wrapped in a Pinterest board! 📣
Oh god, the spice jars. The decanting delirium. I’ve been there—lost hours to “order” that was secretly a cry for help. That wild oscillation between rebellion and aesthetic control is so real. You’ve got it: there’s no escape but surrender—and maybe a little turmeric on the floor. 🔥
I’m a solo mom with three boys. My house is 92% mess.
That is all.
92% mess? Sounds like a home well-lived in. Nothing but respect. 💋
Put down your hammer 🔨 Danusia, because you nailed it! I don’t have Instagram for this exact reason, but I still know about performative home making. Show me someone scrubbing a toilet or cleaning up vomit or breaking up another bloody fight with a peaceful and fulfilled smile on their face and I will fall down dead from shock 🤪
Right?! The day I see someone deep-cleaning a toilet with serene joy, I’ll assume they’ve been possessed by the spirit of a 1950s housewife—or just really into chemical fumes. 🤪
Performative homemaking is all candle-lit corners and artfully placed blankets. Meanwhile, the real home battlefield is littered with half-eaten toast, rogue LEGO pieces, and a suspicious stain I’m too afraid to investigate.
Solidarity in the un-Instagrammable chaos. 🛑✨
I attended a dinner party a few weeks ago, and the host said to the other guests, “Laura and Daniel have a highly curated home. There’s nothing in there that they don’t want.” I was at once incredulous, flattered, and wanted to burst out laughing. The host had only seen our home after eight hours of cleaning (and hiding messes), but this pristine, “highly curated home” was the only picture he held in his mind. I can create that home a few times a year, but had to give up on sustaining it daily.
Oh, that’s brilliant! The power of one perfectly timed deep clean—suddenly, you’re living in a ‘highly curated home’ instead of a place where life actually happens. Love that you got to bask in the illusion for an evening… before reality crept back in. Appreciate you reading and sharing this—it’s so spot on!
Such a refreshing perspective!! I feel better romanticizing by beautifying my home, but more so as a creative outlet than turning it into the sanctuary it isn’t. I love that I get to be home with my children BUT only because I also have a fulfilling career that is separate from my children and which I can do in the messiness of home.. it was very important to me to not involve the kids in the marketing of my business, which tends to happen a lot for those using social media for their work. But then the lines blur before we have time to even reflect (or so I think…)
What’s ironic about the whole marketable home sanctuaries is that those displaying it have that as their businesses, which makes the experience of being home vastly different than if they hadn’t had it as their work to show it…..
Elin YES to all of this! Using home as a creative outlet? Absolutely. ❤️
But selling it as a sanctuary when it’s really a ‘set’ for a marketable brand? That’s where things get murky. And you’re spot on—when your home itself becomes the product, the experience of ‘being home’ shifts entirely. The lines blur before we even have a moment to ask who benefits from that blurring.
Appreciate you reading and sharing your thoughts, Elin! Always love the way you cut through the noise with such sharp insight. 🙏🏻
Love this article. you got my attention. Yes!!! 👏🏽 I am a homemaker — but I’m also a medical caregiver (unable to work) both options were not by choice. “Because for many, the home is not a peaceful sanctuary. It is a demanding, unpaid, never-ending job—and one we’re still expected to do with a smile.”
Thank you! And yes—so much of what happens at home is work, whether it’s caregiving, homemaking, or both. And yet, the expectation is we should do it with a serene smile, as if it’s a privilege rather than a full-time, unpaid, emotionally taxing job. I see you. ❤️
Thanks so much for this article! You hit the nail on the head.
I think it's just that women have forgotten what it's like at home. They have gone out to work outside the home, which started in the 1960s I think? And now view the home as this marvellous sanctuary, wishing they could stay at home 24/7 like these 'very lucky women who can do that.'
But...that was the whole reason women wanted jobs in the first place! To get away from the grind of being at home doing housework, caring, managing 24/7. They didn't want to remain dependent on their husbands, they wanted independence, to get away from being the dependent stay at home non person, on duty 24/7 cleaning and washing everything.
But being the mum at home is relentless, like you said. It's not artwork, it's drudgery.
Right?! The home-as-haven myth has some serious amnesia baked in. But I wouldn’t say women forgot—more like the reality of domestic life got repackaged, Instagram-filtered, and sold back to us as ‘aspirational.’ The drudgery never left, it just got better PR!
Yes, Instagram and the rest have a lot to answer for, don't they. Or maybe it's a mixture of that and forgetting. I've been told so many times that I was so lucky to stay at home, get up when I want, do what I want all day.
Erm...no. Kids get up at 5am then we're on their timetable all day, we don't get to do what we want all day, do we?
Ah yes, the ‘you’re so lucky’ brigade—because obviously, loving our kids must mean we love being unpaid domestic managers too. As if enjoying time with them magically erases the never-ending logistics, the unpaid labour, and the mental load of running a home. Raising kids? Love it. Being the default CEO of All Things Laundry, Meals, and Chaos Control? That’s a different job entirely—and funny how no one ever calls that lucky. 🫣
P.S. This isn’t talk—I am one of those single mothers raising disabled kids. Let’s be real—who exactly gets to treat home as a curated aesthetic rather than unpaid, unrelenting labour? Because it sure as hell isn’t single mothers, working-class parents, or anyone juggling survival. This ‘home as art’ fantasy? It’s white woman privilege wrapped in a Pinterest board! 📣
Oh god, the spice jars. The decanting delirium. I’ve been there—lost hours to “order” that was secretly a cry for help. That wild oscillation between rebellion and aesthetic control is so real. You’ve got it: there’s no escape but surrender—and maybe a little turmeric on the floor. 🔥