The I Hate to Housekeep Book with Miranda Zickler
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You know, like if I keep putting stuff on my hands, will I prove to myself that I love myself? And it's like, maybe a bit. But at a certain point, could your hands get any softer? What if they just melt away? Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where...

Sometimes we just want to talk about housekeeping and the history of an allegedly normal but secretly extremely fascinating concept. And today we are talking about the I Hate to Housekeep book by Peg Bracken herself with Miranda Zickler herself. Hello.

I love it when you do that. Is that a crowd sound? Yeah.

I think it's kind of, I'm also emulating Mike's Mike because I think I probably started doing that when I was watching like his Pretty Little Liars summary videos to maintain my own sanity. I was just like, Mike's Mike is going to see me through this. And he would like reveal something insane, you know, he would be like, meanwhile, Myrna passes out at choir practice. Ah!

It's like you're screaming, but you can't actually have to whisper scream because your parents are asleep upstairs. As you're watching Pretty Little Liars. Yeah. And is it true that you've never actually watched Pretty Little Liars? Nope. But I love the recap. If you watch the recap, you don't have to watch Pretty Little Liars. I'm like the grandpa in The Lost Boys. That's right. That's the secret. Well, Miranda, tell us about who you are. You edit this show and you make...

amazing music and when we do our massive seance shows in collaboration with American Hysteria, you are the ghost of Stevie Nicks. I am the living ghost of Stevie Nicks. Yes, I am a longtime editor, first time caller,

And I worked for five years, five plus-ish years as a professional house cleaner, which makes me some kind of something appropriate for this episode. Someone who is right about some stuff. I'm right about some stuff.

Some stuff. No one's ever saying more than some stuff or else they wouldn't be on the show. That's right. And you also taught me to clean my house and also was like, you can just watch videos of like nice ladies and they can teach you how to clean your house. And you told me about Vanessa Amaro. Oh, she is a nice lady. Yeah, I don't watch much.

clean talk. I don't watch much TikTok in general, but there were a few house cleaners on the internet that I did become interested in in my tenure as a

I'm sorry. No, it's my favorite thing in the world.

But I think one of the things that made me skilled at editing podcasts was how many podcasts I listened to while I was cleaning other people's houses. Yeah. So it all feeds into itself. Yeah. Because podcasts are like such a big thing for jobs or hobbies where you have to spend long periods of time doing something kind of by yourself or not talking to anybody. Yeah. Which is a beautiful way to do it. And I was lucky enough to work

for one of my favorite people. Her name is Allison Van Horn. And she was the one who taught me how to clean. And my mother really tried. My parents both tried. But it just never really clicked for me until I had a system. And that is one of the things I wanted to get into today because it's

It's really very simple once you have a system. I hated it. I, like Peg, hated to housekeep. Yeah. And we're talking about this book, which for people who haven't listened to it, we, a couple months ago, I talked with Sarah Archer about the I Hate to Cook book, which is one of my favorite books. And this is another of my favorite. And I truly learned, like, in the pie chart of, like, where I learned how to, like,

you know, keep a house at least not infringing on my sanity. You and Peg Bracken have like equal sized slices. And I guess that's why it's so nice to put you in conversation with each other today. Oh, it's so nice. Yeah, I...

to that episode that I did work on with Sarah Archer and the Is Your House Too Clean episode. And this is kind of a triplet sister episode to those two. Yes, they're beautiful triplets like those scary dancer girls who did the...

Solid potato salad number. And it's such an honor to be in league with Sarah Archer. We are the potato triplets. The potato girls. Yep. And all we need is a barn and we can make magic. That's right. My first question, because we're talking about the I Hate to Housekeep book as a text and kind of getting into the history of housekeeping as a construct, which is one of my

things to throw grad school words at, you know, because it's like an aspect of gendered history that we live each day, really interestingly, among many other things. I feel like I'm like Stanley Tucci in The Devil Wears Prada being like, because it's art you can wear. And it's like, all right, I'm almost convinced. I mean, not really, but for a moment. Cerulean. But also, I just want to know, like, what you think of the I Hate to Housekeep book as, like, advice and, like,

If it's good and also sort of where it stops being a value to the modern person or where we would like it to stop being a value, but where it is, in fact, alarmingly relevant. Well, I mean, one of the things that also came up in the I Hate to Cook book is.

I mean, I guess the big thing is that it's really both these books are mostly about depression. Yeah. And how your husband won't do fucking anything. So don't bother trying, which honestly, I kind of appreciate as well.

because it's not the greatest advice, but given sort of the constraints of publishing at this time, because Peg Bracken mentions in the preface to this book that she... Do you know what I'm talking about? I do. Tell us. Childbirth pain. Yes, she tried to use the word pain to refer to childbirth, and they changed it to discomfort. I mean, give me a freaking break. It's like how in I Love Lucy, they couldn't say she was pregnant. She was expecting. Yes, of course. So...

Peg Bracken got divorced and my mom did not. And I feel like I grew up watching my mom trying to get my dad to do just like the tiniest things. Like there's an old Margaret show routine that's like, you know, being in a long term relationship is like being a sex worker who works for really low rates. You're like, I'll lick your balls if you mow the lawn. Yeah.

Or no, it's actually I'll lick your balls if you open this jar, which is a much lower exchange rate. The whole Peg Bracken thing is like, I like how bleak it is because in this book, she's very, I have quotes in my notes that we can look at, but like, oh,

overt in terms of being like, don't try to get your husband to do anything because he won't. And you'll only, you know, cause strife. Like, trust me, husbands will not do a goddamn thing, basically, in much nicer language. And it's like, you know,

If you actually let your husband be as useless as he is and like see it and believe it, then like maybe you'll get rid of him faster. So that's nice. Or you just have to use the same attitude you're supposed to with dogs, which is just being calm and assertive. And rewarding behavior you like and ignoring behavior you don't like. And then if he's jumping all over you, being like, I'm not petting you until you have all your limbs on the floor at once.

And then making them eat out of a bowl on the floor. And I do think people have moved away from that mindset to some extent. My parents were very egalitarian in sort of the household. And, you know, I think that this book is very of its time. Which is the early 60s. Which is the early 60s. The Mad Men times, the long, long ago. Mm-hmm.

And I think that a lot of the cleaning tips are as such not super useful. I also love how she's really used the like

Caroline Calloway method of like recycling things she's already published to bulk up the book. She's just like, and here's a recipe because that's housekeeping too, right? She's like, look, why not? Why the heck not? It's efficiency. Yes. Yeah. Well, and would you like to maybe start us off by reading us some of this little preface here? I would love to. Yay.

Sixth Faucet Crest Printing, December 1967. Nice. And here's the foreword. Okay. For a number of long years, through no fault of my own, I have been shin deep in the business of giving advice on housewifery. Would you say housewifery? I was saying housewifery in my head because it's midwifery, you know? Right. And it's more fun that way. Okay. Yes. Mm-hmm.

This is a better name for it, I think, than homemaking, which is rather too pretty, like nuisance abatement officer for dog catcher. Housewifery is more honest and more inclusive. Housewifery isn't among the seven lively arts, though it can certainly be regarded as the eighth. It is lively indeed in the same way sand hogging is. They both take courage, muscle, and endurance.

Go off, Peg. What do you think of that line?

I mean, that's like once again, this brings me to the question. Did Sylvia Plath have any Peg Bracken in the house? It feels like she did or she were like on a similar wavelength, right? Yes. And maybe they got together for lunch. I would like to think so. I think you could write that play. Peg and Sylvia. Sylvia and Peg. Peg and Sylvia go to lunch. Peg and Sylvia go to lunch.

Yeah. But like, let me just say this again. She must simply keep tunneling. Yeah. Tell me your thoughts as a dramaturg and so on. You know, this book really makes a lot of the, I mean, she talks in the first chapter about there being three kinds of tunneling.

housekeepers. And one is the, what is it? The spotless, the spotful, and the random. Yes, there it is. And this book is for the random. And I, myself,

actually really prefer to do a deep clean all at once rather than always going about it as like, oh, I have to do a little bit every day. And you obviously do have to do a little bit every day. You have to keep things relatively clean. But like,

You know, the whole clean talk thing of wiping down your counters with a sponge every night is really not for me. Nice. I find that liberating. I kind of thought I had to do that. I thought I had to do it too. And my friends would get mad at me for the ways that I would like just sweep crumbs into my out turned palm and call that clean. Well, it's cleaner. That's what I'm saying. But what I learned from being a house cleaner is...

is that if you just put everything on the floor, then you can vacuum it up. This is your big breakthrough, I feel like. It's a huge breakthrough. Yeah. Tell us about, do you have an, is there a name for this? I mean- Trickle-down cleaning. Trickle-down cleaning economics. Left to right, top to bottom.

is the way I like to do things. And it really changed everything for me because it's like so overwhelming to be a random housekeeper and just kind of do things as they come up, as opposed to like,

I'm going to dust the corners. I'm going to clean the walls. I'm going to clean the counters. I'm going to put it all on the floor. And then I'm going to use my nice shark vacuum to clean it up. And that's the other hill I'll die on. Yes. Is shark vacuum cleaners. They're like the Toyotas of cleaning products. This is a little pointed because you and Chelsea gave me a shark vacuum for my birthday and I have yet to really use it because I'm scared of vacuums. That's completely fine. Because my mom used to vacuum so angrily.

Oh, yeah. Well, and there it is. There's so much emotion tied up in cleaning, too. Yeah. I would suspect that a lot of women specifically, and I bet you probably have some anecdotal evidence of this just from like conversations you've had over the years and stuff that like a lot of women have associations with like deeply repressed female rage about housewifery based on our interactions with our female relatives. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And Chelsea doesn't like to vacuum either. Chelsea is a broom guy and I can't. I can't with a broom. I'm a broom guy. I will get down on my hands and knees and clean the floor with a rag before I'll vacuum it, you know? And that is fair. And I would like to learn how to tolerate vacuuming the same way I'd like to learn how to tolerate a lot of things. But it's, you know, it's a process.

It's less important than other things, other kinds of exposure therapy we maybe need to take part in. Yeah. Well, it is a bit embarrassing to be afraid of the vacuum. You know, it makes me feel like a beagle. My grandma had an Australian shepherd growing up and you could just say the word vacuum and she would jump onto a couch. Yeah. It is your God-given right not to use a vacuum cleaner, Sarah Marshall. Well, I still love it. You know, I still feel loved when I see it. Yeah.

And as long as you're not using a Dyson, I'm happy. I'm sorry to any Dyson loyalists. No, the Dyson has gotten really bad, I feel. Well, and to talk about Peg for a second, she mentioned Sandhogs. And Kelsey and I did a live show at Sketchfest last year where I talked about Sandhogs a little bit because we were talking about alligators in the sewer and I got to talk about

Sand hogs, which in the 60s, I assume, was a much better known term for basically guys who made tunnels and tunnels under bridges and, you know, and I think also and just like worked in caissons under the river. And so, yeah.

We're dealing with a lot of extreme workplace danger and workplace incidents, including being shot up into the sky by pressurized water and stuff like that. I'm really glad you explained what a sandhog is because I just imagined a groundhog. I was picturing a javelina when I first read this. What's a javelina? Well, it's like a cute little pig that lives in the desert. Oh.

Hold on. I'm going to like, let's look up javelinas just for fun. Sure. Javelina. Or peccary, I guess. But yeah, aren't they cute? Oh my God. Oh yeah. I know these guys. Yeah. Sarah, would you continue on with this forward? Ooh, sure. So to reiterate again, my favorite line, she must simply keep tunneling. She is faced constantly with mute but persistent supplicants for attention. There are several choices. Move it, clean it, shine it, brush it, wash it, or hide it.

I have been doing all this by myself for about 20 years, and I find it hard on the manicure. I've found, too, that none of the books about it does me much good. The household experts hand out cures that are worse than the ailment. They expect you to do things that depress you merely to think about, let alone do. They think you'll actually keep an orderly file of all the washing instructions that come with the family clothes once you've been told to.

The efficiently organized expert makes the mistake of assuming that you too want to be one. My own goals are more modest. I only want to make it around the clock, that's all. And I don't want to think about it too much either because I'm thinking about something else. If you're a bit nervous in the service anyway and your mind is on raising the African violet or running an office or painting a picture, reorganizing yourself into an efficient housewife is a giant step you're not about to take. You want an aspirin, not radical surgery.

Mm hmm. What do we think of that? I like it. And I also think what's emerging is that I like this book so much because I am a random housewife and that part of this is like housekeeping for the depressed and or ADHD brain where it's like, I know you don't want to do anything, but just like do it a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. Here we go.

So though I admit hastily and gratefully that many of the things in this book were discovered or invented by experts, even the experts slip up once in a while and recommend something you'd consider doing, just as many of them weren't. Indeed, some of the ween nuggets herein are ones that I mined all by myself. Also something I'll say about this little section is...

It does bring up clean talk, which I did watch. I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning for no good reason, and I decided to watch some clean talk videos. Yeah, that's what I do at 4 in the morning. In preparation for this recording. And this whole thing about not needing to listen to what the experts tell you to do, I think is very important. It's a very important takeaway from this book. Mm-hmm.

Insofar as like, I mean, for one thing, the cleaning product industry is so huge now. And it's like we're being forced to buy all of these products. Has there been like noticeable change since you started working as a house cleaner? I think so. I think, you know, as our company, because Allison, who runs it, is so...

invested in these ideas, we use a cleaning solution that we make, which is literally dish soap and tea tree oil and water. And we use it for everything. Miranda, let me tell you something. I, based on that advice, got a giant Costco container of dish soap and have been using, as per the instructions, by the way, the actual instructions when you read them, a teaspoon of

diluted into a giant sriracha container. It specifies that it needs to be a sriracha container in the directions. It does. Yeah, actually, I was very lucky that that worked out. And I believe that I might be able to use it for dishwashing for like a year and a half. For the rest of your life. Yeah, maybe. We'll see.

see, you know, who the hell knows? Let's start a pool. I'm not implying that the rest of your life is a must. We don't know. We don't know. We can never know. And that's why we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about our houses. And I like smells. But as you pointed out, you add a little bit of essential oil to the thing. I mean, another really sweet thing that I got really into doing in my

house cleaning days was getting different

scents for different seasons. So I would get some of that. I would use like a stronger soap, but then also use the Mrs. Meyers, you know, like a geranium in the spring and pine in the winter. And I find that very satisfying because I love a theme. I do love a theme. As I know you do too. Yeah. The rooms in my house are themed. And I would like to say that your house is one of my favorite places on earth. So I

Good job with your housewifery. Thanks. My compliments to the housewife. Your house is one of my favorite places. Aw. It's always been an inspiration to me. I was thinking about the first time I was over. I was like, they have a little lamp in the bathroom that's a nice color and it's projected on the wall. It was the first time I'd seen a sunset lamp. Yeah, I just think we can really pare down what we use. We don't need to fill our houses with...

Tell me about bleach because I'm scared of bleach. So I really don't use it at all. I'm scared of bleach, too. I don't use it at all. We had a kind of a policy against it unless the clients really wanted us to use it. We would just use our cleaning solution for everything and like some bar keepers friend sometimes. But we kind of refused to use bleach unless it was

something that the client really wanted because it's not good for you to fill a room with bleach and... It doesn't feel like it's good. ...inhale it while you clean. No. And, you know, I'm no chemist, but... Yeah, me neither. ...it doesn't feel good. No, that's the thing. If you're like, wow, this chemical feels bad, that might mean something. If you have a headache...

while you're doing it, maybe it's not the thing. Well, and so you, and you listen to the, is your house too clean episode where I basically make a very strong case for random housekeeping. So you're here to kind of, you can make a rebuttal case for, you know, a more organized approach to that or a more like systematic approach. Cause really, I think the answer is like, you know, something either works for you or it doesn't, you know? Exactly. You can do it however it works for you. And that, I don't remember, I've, I've consumed a lot of

and housekeeping material in the last couple of weeks. So it may be, maybe it was Peg that said, or maybe it was you that said that

your house should work for you, not the other way around. I think Peg said that. And then I also said that because I had learned it from Peg and then kind of forgot about where I learned it from and thought I had figured it out all by myself. So there you go. It's really good advice from Sarah Marshall and Peg Bracken. Well, let's go to the

where Peg says this because I think this is pretty early on and she actually just to be helpful puts it in block letters. Thanks, Peg. I know. I love her. And this like the I Hate to Cook book has beautiful illustrations by Hilary Knight who did the Eloise books. Ah, Eloise. So this is Peg advocating what I think now is kind of known as the five...

minute rule, which is that if you see something and it will take five minutes or less to do, you should just do it now rather than adding it to the list of things you have to think about. To sum up, forget the old cliche to the effect that anything worth doing is worth doing well. This isn't true.

When you're going at a high lope, a fast swipe at the sink is a lot better than no swipe at all. But back to the spotless housekeeper. The truth is, and you must remember this, you don't want to be one, even though you may have an occasional qualm as you watch the pile of unironed clothes rising like bread dough. The question you must ask yourself at these times is this, who or whom

Are you keeping house for all caps? You want to read what follows here? Certainly not for your friends and neighbors. If their windows are shinier than yours are, it will make them feel all warm inside and they'll like you for it. You never heard a woman say, I simply adore Marsha. She's the most meticulous housekeeper.

Certainly not for your children. You don't keep house for them, but in spite of them. No, what you keep house for is for you and your husband, but mainly for you. Because if things get too cluttered, you won't be able to think straight and you never will get past record two in your conversational French course. And this is so true. Nous allons inventer une histoire.

Je suis la jeune fille. And yeah, this is so true. And she talks about this in the preface too with the African violet. I think that it is like, you know, we've really...

stressed ourselves out about cleaning so much, but there is something so head-clearing about clearing out your space and clearing out the garbage and the dust. I guess picking up the evidence of the day you've had, even. Yeah, and I think that's why I really like the big clean, because it's like, and cleaning other people's houses, it's such a special love language to me. Like, one of my

close friends, parents recently passed away and we cleaned. That was how I helped out was by helping to clean the apartment out. And it was really emotional and it was

you know, like this is the remnants of your past that you're clearing out of your space so that you can make new space and new life. And I think that that's a really special thing to help with and to have a skill set in and to be able to do for other people. And also, again, to do for yourself because it's just like, yeah, you're not cleaning for other people. You're cleaning so that you can enjoy your space and feel kind of

clear-headed about it, which I think is really nice. Yeah. I think we could, what if we could sell learning how to clean to the manosphere type sensibility by being like, listen, do you want to be dependent on women for your whole life? Because like, don't you want to like cut them off from the power they have over you by being able to clean? Yeah.

We trick them. We can write like the pickup artist guide to cleaning. And here, yeah, it goes on. Husbands, with a few grim exceptions, don't care much. They want a modest modicum of order. That's all. They'd rather not see how it got there either. And they hate the whine of a vacuum cleaner only slightly less than the wail of a policeman's siren heard behind. I love that. Do we think this is true then or now? Do we think

I mean, I guess we can't generalize about men. So all men are different. It's true. There are a lot of different types of men, but like...

I do think that based on the sort of gender narrative that has been handed down for a few generations here and which is surprisingly upheld in just sort of anecdotally a lot of cases that I've observed, that that dynamic is alive of men having a certain and relatively low standard for how the house needs to be. And women, I think, more identifying with the house. Mm-hmm.

You know, because men also famous, you know, there's like maybe even counter this on TikTok, the thing of like a woman's touch versus a man's touch and like and decorating an interior design where it plays like this one like theme of like the black swan coming out, you know. So like it cuts to like a gaming setup and it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Because like I used to be, I mean, my apartment in Madison, I mean, it was actually very easy to keep clean because I had a mattress and a box spring, which I gave to friends when I left who they immediately were like, we got bedbugs from the mattress you gave me. And I was like, am I immune to bedbugs? Am I unbreakable? Because I never had bedbugs.

Actually, I am. Yeah, that is a thing. When I lived in New York, I was the only person on the lease of a five bedroom apartment and I was not allergic to bedbugs. So when we got bedbugs, they didn't affect me. And yet I was still on the hook to pay for the heat guys who came and destroyed the bedbugs. Well, I mean, I guess the answer is that I'm just I'm a street rat who can't feel bedbugs anymore. So...

Same. We are together, both of us, street rats. Oh, well, I'm happy with that. I love to be a street rat with you. So wear a purple vest with nothing underneath.

Because I had my street rat mattress, and then I just had a loveseat from Ikea that I had inherited from another grad student. And I had also gotten a mattress from another grad student who was leaving. And then I just had stacks of boxes that I used as end tables and as my desk. And I didn't have a kitchen table.

I just had like a box that I use as a coffee table and a box that I use as an end table. And I look back on it now and like I had bought, I got like plastic silverware when I got to town. And then I was like, I

I don't know. What if I just keep using this plastic silverware for the whole year? And I did. And it's like, boy, I could have done I could have made it big on under consumption TikTok had that existed 10 years ago. But did it work for you? It did work for me. I really loved it. I was very happy that year. And I also really like the stuff I have now. I love my house. I love my couch that I'm sitting on. I love my three.

throw pillow of Totoro that I'm looking at right now, you know, but it's like in a culture where for a few decades now, the consolation prize for, um,

The government screwing the American working class and just like manufacturing in general by moving all of that overseas is like, well, we took all your jobs, but you can buy stuff at rock bottom low prices. And now they're taking away the stuff, you know? They sure are, yeah. And so our relationship with stuff as Americans is like unbelievably fraught. And I feel like it's natural to have...

as people coming into adulthood during the last few decades and certainly now like a sort of maybe emotionally complex relationship with like how much stuff do you want to have and during that year it was like imperative to me to be tied down by nothing like I remember I got I brought home a chair just like a wooden chair not even a heavy chair and

from Goodwill and brought it home or actually in St. Vincent de Paul you know and then just like maneuvered it upstairs and then I was like I feel trapped you know

Yeah. We are so pressured to both over and under consume. Yeah. Simultaneously. Why the fuck not? And buying things in order to under consume, which is a very strange phenomenon. Yeah. Or like, you know, like 10 years ago, we were in the full throes of like the

the zero waste aesthetic. And it was like, now to go zero waste, you have to buy a whole bunch of shit, obviously. Exactly. Exactly. Well, and was that feeling for you? Did that have to do with being able to leave at any time? Yeah. Or what do you think that feeling was? Yeah. Yeah. And just also like not having anything to maintain. Yeah.

you know, to get to the housewifery aspect of it where it was like, I didn't like, I had, you know, like one set of sheets. I had like one or two towels. I had like two plates or something. It was ridiculous. You know, I look back on it now and it was like, I remember having friends over and they were like, Oh, Sarah doesn't have chairs really. And so the next time they came over, they brought like tailgating chairs with them and,

Well, there you go. Then it works. It does work. It's community, which actually is an element of Peg Bracken that I want to talk about because there's a big emphasis and part of it on like, ask your butcher, ask your baker, ask your neighbor, talk to people about stuff. And it's like, Peg, in America today, your neighbors will shoot you on sight. Yeah.

Your butcher plays scary classical music so nobody spends the night outside their doors. Yeah. Yeah. It's very difficult to follow that advice in this economy of socialization. Well, and just talking about like this book and how it feels like it has aged like forever.

I don't know, I guess, what are your thoughts? And we can kind of go anywhere with this in terms of the different chapters and the things that they're about. Or, you know, if you want to be more left, right, top to bottom, we could do it more that way. But what is like maybe some good advice and some bad advice in this for you? Oh, man. I mean, my favorite piece of not necessarily bad advice, but extremely of its time advice is she's like, you can't get your husband to do chores, but you can't get your children to do chores. Right.

Think of all the things a five-year-old can do, and one of them is empty ashtrays. Oh, she does have a really great tangent about ashtrays and how you shouldn't have...

big or nice ones. It should just be an ashtray, which is fine advice. Let me tell you, my dad had a big, nice ashtray and it does certainly create a certain ambiance, you know, if somebody feels like they don't have to throw it out that often. Yeah. She also has this, um,

the useful box, which is kind of fun. And it's just like, get a bunch of cigar boxes because your husband inevitably smokes cigars. Yes. And then put things that you might need in them. She has a little list and I love a little list. Should we hear the little list? The little list says equip each one with a pair of cheap scissors and

parentheticals. If they were good ones, someone would take them elsewhere for other purposes. That's true. A roll of cellophane tape, a pencil and a ballpoint pen, a small notepad, spools of white, black, and beige thread, each with a needle, and a nail file. And then you just put one in each room or as many rooms as you have cigar boxes, and then you just have these things

It's like, I guess, like a junk drawer. Yeah. That's everywhere. I do love that. Oh, here's the ashtray section. It says,

That's very true. Yeah.

She's so funny. I know. I love this book. Yeah. I think the writing is so good. And there are so many I've been reading, as you know, Blythe Spirit. And there are so many great just like two word phrases that I've underlined and been like, that's so great. You know, and also in Peg Bracken, there are so many phrases like. Like you might at one point have a rug and a puppy. Yes. Both of which you like. Yeah. Something like that. Is that really what you were going to say? No.

No, but I love that one too. And that is something I think of when I think of how much I love this writing. But the one about like basically the uselessness of husbands and how isn't it interesting how they're perfectly able to wash their own drip dry shirts when they're on a business trip. But then when they come home, they become all helpless and fluttery at the sight of one. Helpless and fluttery. Do you think that she had any kind of like

ghost writing help? I think she was in it for the writing, you know, because she was in advertising, you know, as her like day job. And so I feel like that is where you would learn how to use language really efficiently like this. Yeah. Will you tell me a little bit about Peg Bracken's biography? Because I don't think we've gotten into that in any of the other triplet episodes. We

I might have gotten into it a bit in the first one. I can't remember. But she lived in southwest Portland. Yeah, just that she was in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. She had a first marriage that ended in divorce. She worked in advertising and her partner for a while was Homer Groening, the father of Matt Groening. Right. Yes. And...

You know, just that these books were hugely, hugely successful. You know what we should do? What do you want to do? A newspapers.com search? Oh, my God. Let's see if we can find something in real time, folks. Okay. What should we, are we diving on Peg Bracken? Yeah, I think just Peg Bracken and see maybe what comes up from the 50s or the 60s because she would have been getting her feet wet, you know, in like the late 50s.

Okay, the first thing that comes up is from Victoria, British Columbia in 1958. And it says, Monty Roberts, writing in the current issue of the Saturday Evening Post, a housewife named Peg Bracken takes an extremely dim view of housewives. Oh no, we're reading a negative review. Should I go on? Yeah, go on. I'm intrigued. Okay. Okay.

She says, as far as her own operations as a housewife are concerned, her husband ought to fire her.

Mrs. Bracken believes that housewives do not earn their way, and without saying it in so many words, implies that the average housewife is not worth the powder to take the shine off her nose. Oh my God. What if we deserve to not try very hard? You ever think about that, Monty? Montregard? Monty. Montregard Roberts, you idiot. Okay. With many of Mrs. Bracken's statements, which I will not repeat here. Oh my God. Too inflammatory for Victoria. Yeah.

But by and large, I must arise to the defense of the housewife. Oh, good for you. Not that I have ever been a housewife. That's right, Monty. But on certain emergent occasions, I have functioned as a house husband. Interesting. Okay. You know, husband means historically comes from the word house and the word bond are the roots of Sark. So he's saying he's a house house bond. That idiot. It's like saying ATM machine, you idiot. Yeah.

So this part is in bold. Oh, the reason is nothing more nor less than plain, stark, unvarnished frustration. Okay. I'm confused about what he's saying. This would have been, I guess, pre the I hate to housekeep book. I think maybe she published something in the Saturday evening post that he's reacting to. That's like some of the material that maybe ended up

making it into these books that she published. Right. I just don't, I wouldn't characterize her as someone who's criticizing housewives.

But maybe at this point she was in the 50s. And maybe that kind of evened out to what we have in the I Hate to Housekeep book, which is more of unity. Well, okay, let's find out. So what year is this? 58, you said? Mm-hmm. All right. Found it on the first Google. Kissed remarkable. Amazing. Let's see. So this is from the Saturday Evening Post archives.

Here, for example, is Peg Bracken in 1958 telling readers, my husband ought to fire me for not being a cost-effective source of domestic help. And then Peg has written, if you were at all attuned to the times, you know that a housewife isn't a housewife anymore. She is a versatile expert, a skilled professional business manager, practical nurse, house cleaner, child psychologist, home decorator, chauffeur, laundress, cook, hostess, all of it.

All this besides being a gay, well-groomed companion. And she is therefore worth, at prevailing wage rates, about $20,000 a year, or anyway, a lot more than her husband. A lot of recent literature has tried to establish this point. Some of it is written by men, and I can't decide whether they are chivalrous or just cowed. But that quiet tittering you hear in the back row comes from the women who know different. Housewife, homemaker, it's still spinach. Women

Women are honest about the important things. This is one of their many lovable qualities. Well, it is fun to be checked under the chin, but reaction sets in the minute we housewives, and I think I'll just continue to use that dirty old word, the minute we housewives really look ourselves in the eye. Practically, any housewife who tots up, as I have just totted up, what she'd be worth in today's labor market is apt to find herself in a nervous condition bordering on the shakes.

From my own computations, one salient fact emerges loud and clear. All my household skills together wouldn't earn enough to maintain one small-sized guppy. In a word, nobody would have me except a husband. What is more, I'd call this a fairly general state of affairs.

Yeah, I don't love that. Yeah, I think she changed her tune over time. Yeah. And I think Monty is siding with the housewives, so I guess that's fine. Well, she's kind of toeing the line by being self-deprecating. Right. But given that the idea of paid domesticity became part of at least the conversations within women's lib, it's like, well...

Wait a minute. What about the hands across the pantry peg? Yeah, exactly. And also, what is she working through about herself by saying that? Because even if you're doing it in like a less systematic, less sort of home economics story, like,

kind of a way. It's like you're still, you know, the labor that you're doing and the kinds of labor that you're doing are possible to calculate in terms of how you would be paid if someone was paying you, which they don't have to just because of how, you know, history has worked out and in whose favor. But also just in terms of how you aid in the production of capital in a more sort of calculable way, maybe. Right. Yeah.

Because the idea is that you're either also working yourself or you're supporting your husband in his capital production. Right.

And also like the statistically significant number of housewives who have also worked, you know, like there was never a time when all women were at home. Like women have always had to work. So yeah, we got, she's got some skeletons in her closet. She does. Yeah. I mean, and you know, we've all got them. Yeah. And also it's like, it's part of any writer's kind of gestation to write wrong things that they then come to disagree with, which is perhaps what happened here. Absolutely. She's also written here.

The blunt fact is most housewives are pretty good at a couple of things, fair to middling in a couple of others, and as for the rest, they do them when and if they have to. And lousily. A man never knows which one or two housewifely talents he's getting when he marries, either. No matter what good fudge she made in her bachelor girl apartment, he can't be sure. That is one of the things that makes marriage so exciting. Let's face it, we housewives are jugglers who, trying to keep a dozen nice big fresh eggs in the air, spend most of our time skidding in the shells.

once in a blue moon for the fast wink of an eye, all the eggs stay up. So I feel like it's like there's also a cry for help in there, but it's like a cry for help that comes in the cost of taking down other women. Right. And it is interesting that we have here. I'm sorry, Monty. I spoke too soon. Yes, me too. That's what I was going to say is like we have this rebuttal from Monty. So that's nice. One point for men.

Does Monty say anything else that you like? He sort of ends the bulk of it by saying, the housewife does her best to teach the children their ABCs, but by the time she gets around to the Bs, the kids are convinced she's strictly for the birds.

Take even the simple everyday automatic matter of making the beds. What happens to beds when they are made? Somebody goes and sleeps in them. That's what happens. And the made beds are immediately unmade. And so she tunnels on. He didn't say that, but I'm editorializing because it does almost seem like maybe she was inspired by this bad review of her own article because Monty does appear to be saying the same thing that she ended up coming around to, which is

that housewives are not overpaid because they have to be literally constantly working in order to tunnel on. Yeah, so they're constantly in golden time, actually. And also in the Saturday evening post, kind of archives blog post, it finishes saying,

with this piece of Peg Bracken biography. The I Hate to Cook book changed Peg Bracken's life by making her a celebrity. It produced another unexpected change when she showed the manuscript to her husband for his opinion. It stinks, he said. She decided then that she ought to fire her husband. They were soon divorced.

yeah, I mean, that's as good a reason as any to leave your husband, I guess. I agree. If he thinks your life's work stinks, dump him. I mean, yeah. And sometimes it's nice to get

a clear-cut piece of evidence, which also makes the husband's being useless stuff in her subsequent book feel just a tiny bit more pointed. We also have a PDF of this article. Let me send it to you because we have pictures of Peg in here, actually. Oh, great. Oh, it just occurred to me that I haven't seen Peg. I only have this picture on the front, which is how I've imagined her. Right? I know, me too. This illustration.

Okay. I see Peg with a vacuum wrapped fully around her body while her children play with a telephone and a boot. And?

And I guess that's her husband who she fired. Yep. Roderick Lull. Come on. That's not a name. I see an ad for what the hell is that? Oh, it's an ad for remote control and early remote control, maybe. Yeah, you can't see Peg's face in either of these pictures.

She's the faceless housewife. Yeah, that's true, huh? A housewife frankly estimates her true market value as a domestic necessity. Her conclusion? My husband ought to fire me. Interesting, Peg. Wow, but then she fired him, so it all worked out. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh, my God. I also feel like this is the kind of thing that you might write, you know, and not to like overly defend or engage in special pleading for Peg Bracken. But a lot of magazine pieces are written not because people deeply believe what they are saying, but because they like need a car payment or something. Very true. Yes. Which is not to defend, you know, the player so much as to hate the game or to recognize the game for what it is, which is a game. Right. Which is a game. Yeah.

Let me, I have something to read on page 22 that we can read just here a little bit. Okay. So we have the first section of this book is the bride's own ABCs, which is very fun. We've got A is for alphabet, B is for burn ointment, C is for code. And there are a lot of sentences in this book begin, I know a lady. Again, the community. Yeah.

I love it. And in this case, we have, you must fix upon one sure permanent place at home for leaving messages on a bulletin board or a mantle or under one particular clock. I know a wife who decided she was tired of both housekeeping and husband and determined to leave them. She left a letter somewhere, but he didn't find it. When she came back the next day to pick up a few things, he was understandably puzzled. And so was she because she couldn't remember for the life of her where she'd put it.

They became so engrossed in looking for the letter that they got quite friendly again, and they're still married. So you see what can happen.

So the idea there is that if you don't have a permanent place for your messages, then if you break up with your husband, he just won't know it. Yeah. What if your breakup might not take? So you'd better make sure he gets your letters. Right. I don't think that story's true. Yeah.

Oh, my God. My God, Peg. What an imagination. Yeah, I think it's really cute that chapter two is just the alphabet. It's like, okay, we need some methodology here for talking about housewifery. And I guess we'll use the alphabet. Well, speaking of that, this reminds me that when I realized this book had an index, I was like, oh, we should read the index. Yeah.

If you're writing a book, I hope you consider having an index. And I'll read some and maybe you can take over if you want. Okay, great. Okay.

Basic cleansers, bathroom hints, bathtub rings, beans, kidney with bacon, with cheese, cranberry jelly, ham and fruit, meatballs. These are all under beans. Bean soup with minestrone, beanestrone, beanerinos, brandy, brass, bread, breakfast. Bride Zone ABCs is next in the index. If you were looking for the Bride Zone ABCs, there they are. Do you want to continue? Sure. Okay.

This is poetry. This is poetry. Bulletin board, comma, substitute for. We just read about that sort of burn ointment. Calories. How expended. Camouflage. Personal. What is that? Great question. Let's see. Page 138. Oh, well, this is the beauty section of the book, which is very interesting. Yes. What do we think about that? I was thinking about how this relates to sort of

the clean girl aesthetic and how we have historically related hygiene to beauty and like hygiene to moral purity and therefore beauty and how that was sort of a thing in

Like, you know, during the first big advertising boom and how it was like, oh, yeah, you've got to be clean and soap and stuff in order to be beautiful. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What do we think of of that part of this? And I guess that relates back to how the woman identifies with the house. Yeah. Your face is part of the house. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, here's something she writes that I also, as a random housekeeper, identify with. I've noticed something else. If you conscientiously prepare and apply your face as the beauty people tell you to do, and I have tried this, you spend 900% more time at it than usual, but you look only 6% better. This seems to me to be a poor return on the investment.

Yeah, I feel like it kind of cuts both ways, you know, because that idea of like the clean girl aesthetic is that you shouldn't need makeup. And it's like, everybody needs makeup to do certain things. But do you need it around the house? That's like, then it's up to you. It's whether you want it or not, you know, or whether you have needs that you're

meeting that way in your day to day kind of around the house life. But I do really also see and there is, I mean, speaking of clean talk, some material in this book, she's got the rock bottom eight, which are like the eight cleaning products that you can do basically everything with. And one of the things that she articulates that is like very real today, and it feels like it's coming back in as an issue in a bigger way because of just inflation and how expensive everything is and is getting, you know, seemingly expensive or whatever.

although in hard to predict ways, that like there is this kind of lifestyle creep of cleanliness and the beauty industry where, you know, the marketplace will be like, buy this mattress freshening spray for 89 cents. And then you're like, well, I never thought about my mattress before. But now that it's being marketed to me, maybe my mattress is not so fresh, if you know what I mean. Right. And it also goes back to

consumption for the sake of underconsumption and being sold this idea that you shouldn't need makeup. So you need to spend all of this money on skincare products so that you don't need makeup or you need this special makeup that makes it look like you're not wearing makeup. Yeah. And this whole idea of...

selling you under consumption. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also I guess that it makes me think of, and I don't know how relevant this is because like every other experiment that we use as an allegory for stuff, it was like non-repeated and sort of like a better story than scientific results, I think. But the scientists who did the weird mouse utopia experiment in the 60s where these mice had like an infinite supply of

Wow. And it's like, we're the mice. We're doing it. We are. You know, and part of the apathy came allegedly from the fact that all of the social roles were full. Oh.

Oh, so we need fewer people filling social roles? Explain to me what we do with this mouse utopia. Well, I mean, I don't know, because like a lot of 60s science, it's like, well, what are we? I feel like it was presented as an argument for like avoiding population growth, which is, of course, an argument that can, you know, practically is sort of like,

throwing the ball over to like white supremacy and eugenicism just based on, you know, the way people historically interpret it and try to politicize it. But I feel like maybe part of what we have the urge to do is like we can recognize like because, you know,

I think a lot about overconsumption is represented on social media and that we're kind of in, we've seen sort of the moment of the morning shed routine, you know, where like, and the idea is like, I just slept with so much uncomfortable stuff on my face and now I'm taking it off because beauty is pain. And like, and I can see like the appeal of like treating your body as if it's like a Renaissance painting that you're restoring. Like it's kind of like, you know, sometimes it's like we just do stuff because we want to feel something. Mm-hmm.

And as long as we can do it in a way that we can afford, I think that's fine. But I think that there's also maybe an element there of like, you know, maybe we're just obsessed with cleaning ourselves over and over again.

Because things are really scary right now. But maybe we just couldn't get any cleaner. Maybe we're as clean as we're ever going to get. That's a great point. Yes. And like before germ theory, we thought that we got sick from demons. So it's...

So, you know, and some people think that's still. And I think they're trying to pass a bill that you can teach that in school somewhere in America. I mean, I made that up, but it could be. It could be. I would believe you.

That is an interesting thing that Clean Talk has sort of done is make the unseen more seen. You know, like everybody got really into it for a while where it used to be, you know, something that you did very privately and kept away from, you know, your husband or your friends or whatever. And you just wanted to create the illusion that your house was always clean. And you hire a housekeeper to come in and

You know, you keep that part separate. And then the clean talk thing for all of its flaws did kind of make everybody excited about it and like talking about it. Yeah. And talking about the invisible hours, you know, where a house. Yes. According to everyone else, just sort of magically cleans itself. Mm hmm.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, housekeeping is one of those jobs that is sort of stigmatized and, you know, like the unskilled labor problem and quote unquote unskilled labor and people like Vanessa Amaro, who we were talking about, really struggle.

took some wind out of those sails and made it a fun sort of shiny project that we could all relate to rather than making it a traumatizing experience to learn about cleaning. Yeah, because it does feel like I remember

growing up, you know, just from when we all observed different things, but it was my mom was sort of clean in a frenzy before there were people coming over. And it was with, you know, like famously the I think probably the all time biggest Chris Fleming video company is coming. Yeah. One of my favorites, which I yeah, I loved that video long before you ever showed me the magic that is Gail. Yeah. Via Chris Fleming. And, you know, if you want to see 40 episodes of that of company is coming.

his main character going on a whole emotional arc, you know, that you have Gale waiting for you. But just the thing of like, you know, everybody throw out your beds. Throw out the chairs. People can't know we sit. Put them in the cubbies. I need no evidence of life in this house, you know, and like that is to a certain extent.

type of person you know and i mean many types of people but certainly like millennial women who i know like there is something so cathartic about that video and that character because it's like that's what the message always was like there can't be any evidence of life in this house we have to stage it like it's on a home hunting show

Right. And that really set a lot of people up for failure in terms of ever wanting to clean their own home for their own sake. Right. It became this really scary thing, not from Gail, but from people. Yeah, it's not Gail's fault. Gail's inspirations. Yeah.

And it doesn't have to be that way. Well, and what was it like for you to then like learn your systems and to and like, how did that change the way you inhabit your own home? Tell us about the system. I have my little cleaning bag and I have a scrub daddy, which I will name by brand. Scrub. I mean, yeah, I believe in scrub daddy, too. I believe in scrub daddy and microfiber towels. And you just

carry around your garbage bag and your cleaning bag and you do room to room, top to bottom, left to right. What about clutter? And I realize this is more of a personal question than a professional question, but you know. Clutter is much harder for me because my brain really wants to just stream

streamline the system and not think. I think that's the goal when dealing with clutter, probably. Totally. Yeah. And a home for every item and every item has its home. And I've never been that's that's a skill I have yet to master. But I don't know if everything ever truly has a home, but you can, you know, you can get close. Try to approach that. Yeah. Everything deserves a little home. Everything, at least maybe at some point, will have a basket.

Right. Because when you're looking for something and you're like, I know I put this somewhere because I knew it was important. You have a basket for that. That's really good. What do you have in your house that you like? Like as kind of, you know, just a way that you have it set up where you're like, these meet my needs. Oh, I have always had like an old clothes chair. Maybe you grew up with this too. Like in my room, I would just have a chair that

where I would throw clothes that I had already worn but didn't want to wash yet. I don't have so much of a system for that. But now that you've said it, I'm like, yeah, I think probably. Yeah, it just got, you know, yeah, it just got piled up on a chair when I was growing up and all through my 20s. And now I have just some bins where I like some like nice fabric bins that

in my room where I put like, here are sweatshirts that I'm gonna wear again and I need pretty regularly.

But I don't have a specific drawer for them. I don't want to like put them away. So I can just shove them in this basket. And then I have the pants in the next one. And I have all of my important undergarments, as Peg would refer to them, in another bin. And so everything is just there. And I can rather than using a chair and just throwing everything on top of that till it's just a pile. I organize just very vaguely into these nice fabric clothing bins. Mm hmm.

Because I feel like the goal for me and kind of based on peg theory is to like have it feel like your house is working for you because you've set up systems that then are not that difficult to maintain. You know, whether you do the deep clean method, which like I, you know, I like to like go to town on the house on certain days, too. Although it's just like I can't rely on myself to be as thorough. And I do more the thing of like doing something that reminds you of something. It's like if you give them a mousse a muffin and I'm the mousse.

Right. And like that was something that came with a lot of practice from just cleaning other people's houses. And this is this comes back to the clutter thing is like, I don't want to I'm not putting away other people's clutter because I don't know where it goes. Right. So I'm just doing the clean. And so this is.

To the question that I have seen asked on the Internet, should I clean my house before my house cleaner comes over? It depends on how clean you want your house because I'm not going to put away your clutter, but I am going to do a great job cleaning what was underneath the

the clutter. What if a person got a laundry hamper, which clearly I believe can solve all of life's problems and just put all the stuff that they want, the surfaces that they're on or like, you know, all the stuff that could get in the way of cleaning, just like put it in a hamper and put the hamper somewhere out of the way. Could that work? Put it in a hamper. That's the tagline. Put them in the cubbies. Put them in the cubbies.

Yeah. And I find that I have a similar thing with my own clutter is like when I'm cleaning, I want to just turn my brain off and clean and I don't want to think about where things go. So that's

That's my struggle. I really like the linear path of the deep clean. That's the appeal of it, I think. And I think probably I like decluttering much more than I like cleaning because that is like a little mystery that you get to solve of like, what is this? Where does it want to be? Who are its friends? You know, like what kind of a... You're such a good detective. Sometimes a case will take me years, but like...

But it's just because I'm so thorough. I also like how there's a significant, I think, component of this book that's like...

whatever, you can't do it anyway, so don't bother trying. Which, like, for a lot of stuff is, like, good advice, you know? And I think there's also an element of talking about the spotless housekeeper as someone who creates their own problems in order to solve them. And so one of the things she recommends is getting an automatic dishwasher, as we called them at the time. Mm-hmm.

Because, and of course, it's a debate that rages on incredibly. The spotless housekeeper will say that it takes just as long to use a dishwasher because you have to pre-rinse everything first. And Peg Bracken is like, well, yeah, it takes you just as long. But there are a lot of people who will just put the plates in after they've scraped off, I think she says, anything large like a turkey carcass. And then...

You know, if there's like a, to quote the movie Singles, a big little globby problem, then like you deal with that as it arises. But it's still going to be like a glob on one plate rather than having to wash all the plates. It's true. Is her argument. And, you know, automatic dishwashers have come pretty far in the past 60 years. Yeah, absolutely. What is an organizational system in your house like?

Now I'm really curious about it because you have lots of nice little organizational systems that I admire. It makes my...

Yeah, really like it's like scritches my brain behind its little ear. I have pegboard in my kitchen, which is inspired by Julia Child. Pegboard. So many, all the pegs. And I have a bunch of hooks just on my walls in my kitchen where I keep my most used utensils. So I just like they're there where I can see them and I know where to put them back. So like I know where my little like spacer

Mm hmm.

I don't really know if we can actually meaningfully control how many of them are entering our bodies, but you know, they're fun ice cube trays. They make a cool sound when you pull the thing and then you dump all the ice out.

That's not a system. I just like those ice cube trays. It's technically an ice cube organizational system. So we're on topic. Yeah. Oh, and I built out of cardboard one of those shirt folding things. Oh, my God. And this is a thing that I think I learned like through the trickle down effect of like learning it from YouTubers who learned it from Atomic Habits, which everyone who runs a like, you know, girly pop fitness channel seems to have read. Yeah.

but the thing of like make habits attractive, easy and obvious, right? So like because I have my shirt folding thing, I like to... And this is actually something Peg says is a myth where it's like, you'll never learn to enjoy ironing. Sure, some insane women say that they like to put on a cute fit and do a bunch of ironing all at once, but they're crazy. And like, I think you...

What it comes down to is that, and again, she also says this, there's, and it's, she'll often say something quite deep and like a prosaic little section, but there's somewhere, I forget which section, but she's like, now on the matter of canning, only do it if you think it's great fun, you know, like maybe you'll save a little money, but like probably

Probably not. It's really just about like, do you enjoy it? Because like you just do it because you enjoy it. But like you don't have to do it. I have the kind of mind, the kind of beautiful mind, if you will, where I really get...

vast amount of pleasure from like letting all my t-shirts pile up and then folding them with a cardboard shirt folding thing and pretending I work at the gap in 1991. And it's, it's so satisfying. And it's, and to me, the sort of lesson there is like, if you have to do something anyway, and you probably, you don't actually have to fold shirts. You can just jam them all in there, you know, or you just like put them on hangers or something. But if you have to do something anyway, you,

Yeah.

and like inherited like feminized trauma which is a work in progress for everybody probably a lot of them are like quite fun you know but it's like you have to make them fun for yourself

But like, I think one of the things I've come to believe is that like our relationships with our houses deserve to be more fun and to serve us in better ways. And also for us for it to be more in the spirit of like, wow, it's so cool that I have this house that offers me shelter from the elements, you know, or an apartment or, you know, a corner of a basement or whatever. And, um,

the maintenance that I do on it is, you know, much like the maintenance I do on my body, which again, it's like we all pretty much have a fraught relationship with this. And it makes sense to overcorrect into overconsumption because it's we're like, is this love? You know, like if I keep putting stuff on my hands, will I prove to myself that I love myself? And it's like maybe a bit, but at a certain point, could your hands get any softer? You

Exactly. What if things melt away? There's a 6% return here, as Peg says. Exactly. But this thing of like, that I think often like those efforts we make are like, we are trying to like heal the relationship between like our soul and our body and ourself and our house, which is ultimately maybe the same thing. It's like the...

The thing that the spirit resides in and that gets hard water stains on it. Yeah. It's our little crab shell. Yeah. Yeah. It's our crab shell. Hermit crab shell. Did you ever read anything in like the clutter bug school? No. It was a decluttering guide that I listened to an audio book of a few years ago and that also helped me a lot.

But the clutter bug approach is like there's different types. Like you're a butterfly type or you're like a ladybug type or something. I'm a butterfly. And that was where I learned that I have to see all my stuff. And that was why I put up all those hooks. But there's this concept in it of like every night give your house a hug. Yeah.

which is like you walk around tidying things up for like 15 minutes or like you do some dishes or like here you know it could be five minutes it could be one minute you know yeah but i love seeing it that way instead of like your house is this like oppressive shell that you can never escape and you have to keep servicing and it'll never be clean and then men keep coming home and putting things there

You know, and just this feeling of like rage and revenge, which like also like maybe you can't maybe that's not something you can change with your own attitude, in which case fire your husband or something. But I love recalibrating. It is like, you know what? Like, give your house a hug. I love that. And I was saying to you when we were talking about recording this episode that I think actually one of the lessons of the substance is that.

Give your house a hug. Tidy up for, you know, just tidy up before you go to bed. Because then when you wake up, you maybe won't be so motivated to seek revenge on yourself. Yes. Wow. Yep. It's a great point. Yeah, I love that attitude. And I think the major thing that both of us have taken away from this experience of studying and reading this Peg Bracken book is that motto of...

Maybe it's not even making your house work for you, but working together with your house. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Collaborating with your house and like having the equitable relationship with your house that you don't have with your husband that inspires you to find a better one. Marry your house. Marry your.

Marry your house. Are we getting somewhere? I'll marry my house. I would marry your house too. Aw, let's all marry my house. Also, my favorite chapter, I think, is called Don't Just Do Something, Sit There. Would you like to talk about that one? I have a lot of thoughts on that. Sure, let's see.

We have a quote from Christopher Fry at the top that says, what, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean. I love that. It is a fine and heartwarming thought, if it be a random housekeeper who is doing the thinking, that there are numerous household chores you don't need to do. Many problems, if you don't face up to them, will go away or will, in one fashion or another, solve themselves. So this is what you were talking about earlier with, yeah, you don't have...

to do all the things. Or there's like an earlier section that's like how to get dings out of furniture. And he's like, well, look, you can try this if you must. But also like furniture gets dinged. It's up to the table now to heal itself. It's out of your hands, basically. And if you can't do it, you can't do it. And it's fine. And if you can't, then just put a doily over it. I think we do need to remind ourselves that like

chips in counters and like things that you can't necessarily solve without a lot of effort are not anything that anyone's going to fault you for. It's up to the furniture to heal itself. This is a quote from that section. She says, anyway, there's nothing the matter with a few battle scars. Exactly. Peg. In the case of both furniture and human beings. That's right. Let's okay. We have some block text in a couple of pages I'd like you to go to. Yeah.

For the purposes of clarity, this chapter has been neatly divided into three sections, the first of which is things you needn't do at all and things you needn't do half so often as the experts would have you believe. Now that's clean talk in a nutshell, you know? That's right. Let's have some more if you would like. I think this might be, I think, terrible advice. I would love your thoughts on it. You really needn't scrub bathtub rings. Ah,

Oh, just go on. You haven't any, you see. Oh, I see. Okay. All right. All right. If you keep a plastic bottle of liquid detergent handy on the tub rim, and if you rigorously train people to pour in a capful after they've closed the bathtub stopper and before they turn on the water. So she wants... To be bathing with detergent. Yeah.

in the liquid detergent. I think it's terrible advice. Yeah. And I mean, maybe I'm sure detergent used to be less. Well, I don't know. I'm not sure actually who the hell I'm some people know if you're measuring in detergents, let me know. But like I, I,

when I think about getting in the bath with a Tide Pod... Oh, my God. Mm-mm. It's terrible. But people are also... But then there are trends on Clean Talk that are like, use a Tide Pod to clean your sofa. And it's like, should... I mean, I guess we put it on our clothes. So, like, it's not, like, hazardous exactly. But it's like...

Using chemicals for not their intended purpose when they have been manufactured for a highly specialized job and at a certain concentration on that basis feels kind of dangerous to me. It's because we're obsessed with hacks. Yes. Whether they're actually helpful or not. And Peg is big on hacks. Yes. Well, but she also...

In the chapter on penny pinching talks about hacks that aren't worth it, which I appreciate. But yeah, it is like this book is like basically hacks before anyone called them hacks because we had nothing to hack because computers were still busy with mimeographs or whatever they were doing. Whatever they were doing. So don't bathe with detergent for the love of God. No.

No. But if you're going to, you didn't get the idea from me. I'm pretty positive you got it from some other influencer who's telling people to do that right now. This is also, this is very of its time. I just want to read this for like the don't bother section. Also, you need

iron pajamas or tea towels. Oh, don't worry, Peg. I wasn't. For the record, I do not own an iron. I would never. I don't either. And I haven't had an iron since a time in my life when I was pretending to be a grown up because I was 24. I don't believe in irons. Get yourself some wrinkle spray and give it up. Dress in non-wrinkle

wrinkly material go for the hyanispor look if you must you know right i just don't think there's anything wrong with wrinkles no me either me especially in linen you know linen linen with wrinkles has character you know don't you want character exactly our battle scars don't you want your battle scars in your linen so what have we learned sarah what have we learned anything let me

I mean, yeah. What are your thoughts on like this book being about depression as a theme? This again was something that was you and Sarah covered really beautifully, but I think it really all comes back to the last line of the preface of that book, which was, it is nice to know you're not alone. Yeah.

And I think the emotional level of this book is very solidarity coded in that way. And just comforting other women as she did not in the newspaper articles she wrote in the 1950s. She eventually learned...

that what we really need is to signal to each other that we get it. Yeah. If nothing else, that we're in the same boat and then, you know, do our best to work forward from there. Yeah. And these are the parts of the book that have aged the best of all. I think she writes at one point, never think unkindly about someone else's housekeeping.

which I love, you know, because I think also in that sense of like the boomer norms of like talking about everybody's body for no reason, there's a similar, again, sort of an over-identifying with the house or maybe identifying a normal amount. There's a thing of like needing to complain about people's housekeeping the second you leave and that being, you know, us being raised in this sort of culture of femininity of like,

you know, your house is an extension of your body. And so like your body, it will be mercilessly judged by other women who use it to feel better about themselves. And you're like, oh, no.

am I supposed to feel positive emotions about such a place, you know? Exactly. And if you are judging other people, judge not lest ye be judged. If you are judging... If ye are judging other people. If ye are judging other people's crab shells, then you're going to be constantly thinking about whether or not people are judging your crab shell. Right. And that's no way to live.

Yeah. And if your shell is a beer can, you know, then like embrace that it's a beer can and embrace other people's beer can shells. It was all we could find. That's right. Hermit crabs who ironically shouldn't have a single pets. I don't think I think they like to have friends. And when I see dust in a person's house, I'm

I just think about how satisfying it would be if I could clean their house for them. And I don't think anything negative about it because there's dust everywhere in my house and we can't do it all. And that's the answer to like what happens when someone who is really, really good at

at cleaning houses and does it on a professional level so use your messy house they're like oh yeah let me get in there scratchy scratchy exactly there's no judgment like scratchy scratchy and that's how I feel about organizing you

You know, I would love to just be able, you know, it would be great is if you could go into the pantry of just a random Portlander and just organize their stuff for them. That'll be the crimes that I commit. That's a beautiful crime. Or you could start a business. No. Yeah. Crime business. Not a legitimate business. Those are too complicated. No.

I'll just read some of my notes. You can get some pegbracken flavor. And if people want to read this, you can find it on the Internet Archive or there's many, many copies of it because this was a big bestseller. Mm-hmm. Okay. All random housewives are on good borrowing terms with their next-door neighbors. Eggle-wise.

I think that's a very good recipe writing. Uh-huh. Oh.

And I wrote this on the page that happens to be facing a poem that I had an idea for like exactly one year ago. I was at a wedding with you and Chelsea and Chelsea and I snuck off to read Sylvia Plath poems to each other. As you do. As we do. And I had the idea of like, because I think because Chelsea loves what is it the I forget which but the poem that's like so dramatic. And so as Sylvia Plath was just like full of this like over the top slightly inscrutable imagery and Chelsea's like this poem is about Sylvia Plath.

not wanting to visit someone in the hospital. And then I made key chains that say Sylvia Plath, but in the Waffle House sign font configuration, because it's the same number of letters. And

And so I came up with a joke that was just Sylvia Plath goes to Waffle House. And finally, a year later, I wrote that poem. And are you going to read it for us? I'll try. But I think Chelsea does a better Sylvia Plath. So I would like them to. Should I go get them? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

I'm not getting up. Do less. Chelsea Lou! Don't just do something. Sit there. Okay, here is Chelsea Weber Smith. I'm coming in. And so this poem is called Sylvia Plath Goes to Waffle House.

clam-wristed cooks scoop foam atop blood-glazed towers. I rise up hash brown, covered, smothered, and scattered. Grillmeister, Beelzebub, you wake now, each gloaming to flatten my white liver until it screams.

Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Absolutely stunning homage. And it's amazing. Thank you. It just took me a year of thinking about it. Fucking really good. You're the best. Really good. All right. Peace out, listeners. Here's Miranda. I can't believe the talent I'm surrounded by.

Wow. Neither can I. Okay, let me read a little bit more through my notes. I know a lady who lives in a perfectly lovely house and doesn't wax her kitchen linoleum. Although her system is heretical, we must remember that this lady has an equal chance of salvation with the rest of us. And she does some interesting things with her free time too. I would like to say, and this is I think maybe what kicked off

big years-long conversation about cleaning that we are continuing today is that one thing I learned from cleaning people's houses is that no matter how clean and rich and immaculate someone's house is, they've got coffee stains on their door jams. Check it out, everybody.

That's, and you told me that before. And I love, and I've thought of that so many times. And I would like, what does that mean to you? That, that secret? I just think that there are little pockets of things that don't get looked at and don't get done no matter how scrupulous you are, no matter how spotless a house cleaner you are. There are just little things that happen in everyone's house.

And I think they're really beautiful. I think there's something really beautiful about that particular imagery of like someone just like tottering around with their cup of coffee. And it's like, how does it get on the door jam? I've never acted.

actively noticed myself spilling coffee on a door jam. But it's like a surface too small for you to notice what ends up on it, I feel like, unless you're like, yeah, being truly meticulous. Right. It's just that liminal space that you don't think about. And then there's just a real kind of bonding in that because it's just something that happens in everyone's house.

uh, no matter how much or little money you have or whether you're hiring a house cleaner or all this, you know, cause it's like I clean my house, you know, I do the deep clean every two weeks or whatever or something when I can. And today when I cleaned the whole house this morning, just to get into the vibe, not because I thought I needed to or worried about it,

Lo and behold, coffee stains on the door jam. They're everywhere. I know a lady who says everyone has coffee stains on their door jam. Is that anything? No.

It is. I mean, I feel like it's like in this the idea of like the house as the body, you know, that it's like the house becomes the seat of shame the same way that the body does. And if you try and, you know, and not all at once, but through sort of daily efforts, recalibrate your relationship to it is like this is, you know, the structure that.

that I live in and that is taking care of me and that I get to take care of as well and figure out what I want to do, what I want to bother with and what I want to cut corners on and what actually affects my well-being and my happiness, you know, because I think we're so we are we're clearly so affected by our environments.

And how much of that is just something that I have been doing because I thought I had to do it, but maybe it doesn't matter. And even if people notice it, maybe I can trust them to, you know, not encounter everything in perfect shape all the time and take it in the manner in which it is intended. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love that. And I love Peg Bracken. I'm so happy you love Peg too. And I guess maybe like my closing thought is just like,

I don't care how you do it, but just like as long as you can take care of some of the things that you have to take care of in a way that you enjoy and that rewards you for the way you carry them out, then like that's really what matters, I think. Not maintaining a certain appearance or keeping up with the Joneses, but like

figuring out, you know, if I'm going to do this stuff all the time, then how do I do it in a way that I like? Or if I can't persuade myself to like it, how do I get someone else to do it for me? There it is. Beautifully put. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you, Peg. Thank you, Miranda. Where can we experience more of you? Or just what are you? Any recommendations? You can find me on the internet at

I guess I'm on Instagram and my username is MirandaTheSwampMonster.

which doesn't have anything to do with anything. But I work on this show and on American Hysteria and on You Are Good. You edit this show and you make me sound so much smarter than I would all by myself. Oh my God, you sound just brilliant. And I get to sit and listen to you talk all day long. And that's my job. And it's the best. It's the only thing that could replace house cleaning. I love it.

I also just like, I don't know, thank you for bringing cleaning as a social act and as a love language into my life as a concept, as opposed to something that you do out of the spirit of fear and revenge. Because I feel like the idea of opening up the secret house and making it something that we are inside of together makes all of it much less scary. Yeah. So thank you for being a hand across the pantry.