“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
“The reason I hadn’t washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly. I saw the day of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue. It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be done with it.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
This is definitely one reason that I hate housework. I hadn’t considered that it was Sisyphusian but yep, that’s how it feels. So why not just sit at the bottom of the hill and do something enjoyable instead?
This is how I feel about housework as well. But I always try to think of Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, where he argues that even if life has no purpose per se, it can still have a meaning. The final lines always bring me peace when I recall them:
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
With this in mind, I try to take on any Sisyphean task with a sense of joy rather than obligation. This is not as easy as it sounds, but I have found that it is possible. For housework, I try to wash dishes or make the bed with a podcast or a favorite playlist going in the background. I may buy soap that has a particularly wonderful scent (this especially helps with showers) or find new ways to arrange the pillows on my bed each morning. Adding small details to mundane processes that can create opportunities for those repetitive tasks to become stimulating, enjoyable, and even relaxing.
All of this is not to say that these tasks cannot also be boring, frustrating, and pointless – they can be, and they often are. But, however Sisyphus feels about his boulder, he is stuck pushing it up and up the hill forever. Might as well have fun with it. :-)
did Camus do the housework, though? did he do the cooking and cleaning and daily shop and diaper the babies and remember the doctor’s appointments and the shoe sizes and also we’re out of toilet paper and those bananas are going bad i need to eat them or make bread this weekend
i don’t mean this as a smartass response. i mean, was Camus referring to some tedious and difficult task that he more or less chose to do? Cooking for oneself, if you live alone, can be a choice of whether or not to skip a meal or bother to prepare food – but if you have small children or a husband who demands food, then there isn’t so much of a choice.
And choosing to push a boulder is one thing; being forced is something else entirely.
Thanks for sharing this point, and you’re probably right! I didn’t meant to imply that this passage was originally referring to housework — it was actually written in an argument against suicide from a philosophical perspective. The reason I included the passage was because it has personally helped me complete self-care tasks like laundry, dishes, etc. when in a depressive state. I wanted to share this perspective with others in case it would help them as well… I don’t think Camus gave a shit about this particular issue, probably. The original passage was talking about suicide and arguing that it would not be reasonable to end one’s own life, even if one felt that their life did not have a particular purpose. The point was to find meaning in repetitive tasks rather than resenting them.
