I do homework. Daily.
I live in my home, like most people fortunate enough to have one. I also work in my home.
Some of my work is the kind of work people associate with offices and classrooms: writing, editing, teaching, lecturing, researching, dealing with spreadsheets and databases, interviewing, contract neogtiation, and the like.
Some of my work is the kind of work people associate with homes, namely “housework” or “domestic labor”: cooking, cleaning, laundering, chores, home maintenance, errands, scheduling, entertaining, pet care, gardening, food preservation, and the like.
As many people do, I consider my work to be simultaneously personal, a part of who I am, and professional, a manifestation of what I do. I’m also aware that the fact that my working life combines “domestic labor” and “skilled labor” is both political and symbolic.
(Another thing of which I am quite aware is that most domestic labor is skilled labor. And that much skilled labor is more or less identical to domestic labor, just performed in other contexts.)
My working life, combining two spheres many people perceive as distinct and mutually exclusive, has many other aspects too: intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, aesthetic, and — at root — pragmatic.
This blog is about homework. All of it.
Those who pooh-pooh the worth of any type of homework are cordially invited to either read and learn, or else get stuffed. It’s entirely up to you.
– Hanne Blank
