Robo Maid

Ever wish you had a robot who could do your housework? Well, your wish may come true.

Scientists in South Korea have invented a robot that can tidy up your house, dust, do laundry, and even heat up meals in the microwave.

Apparently, the walking robot maid has a rotating head with a three-dimensional sensor so it can figure out what work you need it to do. With a human-like body over 4 feet tall, the robot weighs 121 pounds and can supposedly recognize people.

The robot's head, arms, and legs rotate and its six fingers allow it to pick up sandwiches, cups, or any other rubbish lying around the house. There's no guarantee, of course, that it won't mistake Little Jimmy for garbage.

Sorta creepy if you ask me. Check it out yourself here.

It won't be available to the public for some time. Would you be interested in purchasing one if it sold for a reasonable price?

Personally, I wouldn't mind a robot who could cook dinner from scratch on nights when I don't have my act together.

My So-Called Undomesticated Life

I have been a fan of Claire Danes since I first saw her on "My So-Called Life," in which she played Angela Chase, an awkward, sensitive high school girl trying to find her place in the world.

Now she's all grown up and engaged to Hugh Dancy, a hot young British actor I'm embarrassed to admit I've never heard of before.

Why am I writing about celeb gossip on Undomesticated Me?

Because Ms. Danes recently surprised herself by announcing publicly that once she and Mr. Dancy marry, she will take on domestic responsibilities (not sure if they'll hire a cleaning person).

"I think back to the 10-year-old me, and it's amazing that I'm ever prepared to do the washing up because it didn't used to be my favorite thing in the world. Housework is not my raison d'etre," said Ms. Danes.

As a former entertainment journalist, I know that it's likely that this quote was taken out of context. Still, it has the ring of truth to it.

Certainly, when I think back to the 10-year-old-me, washing up was not my favorite thing in the world. Is there a ten year old in the world -- or grown-up for that matter -- who actually loves housework?

I get a kick out of the fact that not only is Ms. Danes discussing housework at a movie premiere, but she coined a phrase worthy of being printed on a T-shirt.

I may steal the line for my new mantra: "Housework is not my raison d'etre."

Plus, I like having an excuse to say "raison d'etre."

A victory for housekeepers everywhere

A self-proclaimed clean freak who suffers chronic pain from a car crash made history Monday with a court victory in Ontario, Canada that upholds her $60,000 award for being unable to do housework.

Claudia McIntyre became the first person in the province to be awarded compensation for injuries affecting a person's ability to clean their house, according to a story from Canwest News Service.

It's a pretty big deal for women, who traditionally, do the bulk of the housework.

As McIntyre's attorney put it:

Although anyone could lose housekeeping capacity as a result of injuries, in our society traditionally women have fulfilled that role. Our courts have traditionally recognized that if somebody loses the ability to work, that's worthy of compensation. Now people who work in the home are entitled to the same consideration.

In the judgement, Justice Susan Lang said that losing the ability to do housework amounts to a loss of identity for the plaintiff.

You can read the whole story here.

Thanks Mom

When people learn I don't know how to cook or clean properly, they invariably assume my mother never taught me.

Don’t blame my mother. It’s not her fault. She did her best to try to teach me how to cook, clean and be useful around the house. But I did my best to ignore her.

Even though it was the 1970s, my mom typified the perfect 50s mom. She had dinner on the table promptly at Six p.m. every night, cleaned our split-level suburban house, sewed, ironed, vacuumed, did laundry, designed and sewed original Halloween outfits, helped build cardboard dioramas for school projects, regularly threw cocktail and dinner parties, and still managed to greet my father with a smile and a martini when he walked in the door.

Me, I wanted to do something with my life.

I didn't understand how anyone with half a brain could be satisfied performing such menial, mindless tasks. Even at ten, I considered myself a liberated woman. I wasn’t going to chain myself to the stove like my mom. If I didn’t learn how to cook, clean or sew – or type, for that matter – I reasoned that there was no way I would end up as a housewife (or a secretary).

A psychoanalyst might conclude that my “issues” with housekeeping stem from my ultra-stable childhood. Clearly, growing up in a loving, two-parent suburban household with a stay-at-home mother and a financially successful father was too much of a strain on me.

I was an A student. I had friends. I had ambition. But I was terrified of potholders, thimbles, and everything in between.

While I possess common sense in other areas of my life, for some reason, I seem to lose all reason when it came to cooking and cleaning. Once, as a kid, I got the ingenious idea of drying my Barbie doll’s clothes on my desk lamp and started an electrical fire.

Another time, my older brother and I “roasted” marshmallows in the toaster using forks. Luckily, neither of us was electrocuted and the Fire Department arrived in record time.

When I ripped a pair of jeans during my sophomore year of high school, my mom volunteered to teach me how to sew a patch on. I refused – and instead, used a stapler to get the job done.

“Well, it’s a look,” my mother sighed. “Very Young Frankenstein.”

Not surprisingly, my mom eventually stopped asking me if I wanted to help her cook and clean. Nevertheless, she continued to entrust me with the task of setting the table for dinner – presumably, because she had faith that I couldn’t break the silverware.

Only now do I realize the errors of my ways. I see now I was wrong to dismiss all of the work she did as "nothing." As a mom with a home of my own, I can now truly appreciate all that my mom did to make our household run so smoothly (corny, but true). She took her responsibilities quite seriously and she was very good at what she did.

Why was it exactly that I didn’t let my mom teach me a few things about housework? If being domestic will grant me independence and self-sufficiency, then I’m all for it.

Maybe mom will consider giving me a few lessons after all. I promise to be a more attentive student.

The Housework Workout

Why pay big bucks for a fancy gym when all you need to exercise and get in shape is right inside your home? No, I'm not selling the thigh master or any other home fitness equipment.

Just wanted to let you know that by doing housework you can burn about as many calories as walking on a treadmill for the same amount of time. Seriously. Believe it or not, all those dreary household chores you do burn a significant number of calories. Now if that isn't incentive to do more housework, I don't know what is.

To be honest, I haven't counted calories since high school and I don't plan to start now. But knowing that heavy vacuuming burns as many calories as a Chinese spring roll (120) certainly helps to motivate me. Next time I plan to go out for Chinese food, I'll vacuum the house first!

Amazingly, cooking burns 40-50 calories, although I wonder if that's still true if you're just microwaving a frozen dinner. And do you burn the calories while cooking even if you're munching on potato chips at the time?

Not only does mopping floors burn over 110 calories, but it also helps to tone your shoulders and biceps. I'm going to be a buff mopping mama.

The domestic activity that burns the most calories is gutter cleaning, at 320 calories per hour. It also gives your shoulders, upper back, arms, and legs a good work-out. But it's also a real pain in the ass. And it could be dangerous too, so I don't recommend it unless you know what you're getting yourself into.

I found some housework exercise regimes online. It's worth a try since even if I don't lose any weight, at least my home will be clean.

Do you have any household fitness tips? How about using a jug of detergent as a free weight?

The Housework Blues

Housework getting you down? It’s no surprise.

"There is a strong positive correlation that exists between housework and depression," writes my friend Andrea, who majored in Psych in college. In other words, the more housework you do, the more bummed out you get.

"Housework can cause distress because it offers less recognition, less likelihood of being thanked and lower levels of work fulfillment than paid work," concluded the Brown University sociologist who conducted the study.

The study also reminded me why I'm so lucky to have found a guy who helps out around the house. The researcher found that married women performed 14 hours more housework each week than their single counterparts. By comparison, married men performed only 90 minutes more. Now that's a reason to stay single, gals!

Other research showed that regardless of how much work your spouse does, as the hours of housework goes up, the depression increases. "So if you think about it, Andrea wrote, "it's in your best interests to avoid housework as much as possible. Think of your mental health!" Good point.

Of course, as with any research, you can usually find another study that contradicts the findings.

Still, it makes sense to me that doing an unequal amount of housework would lead to resentment, anger and depression. But taking care of household responsibilities and feeling good about your home might help boost your mood. So both studies are right (how's that for simplifying complex research data?).

On the upside, housework helps burn calories. More on the "housework workout" tomorrow.

Don't Hate Me Because My Husband Cooks and Cleans

All day yesterday, I talked about changing sheets. I thought about changing sheets. I wrote about changing sheets. I even managed to remove the sheets from the bed and toss them on top of the overflowing laundry basket. But still, the bed lay naked and the pile of laundry sat accusingly.

Finally, my husband presumably grew tired of waiting for me to do it, so he put a fresh sheet on our bed right before we turned out the lights. And this morning, I returned from an outing at the playground with our 4-year-old Ruby to find neat piles of clean, folded laundry.

Okay, so you're not impressed. You say housework should be divided equally. Why is it the woman's job to change the sheets and do the laundry anyway?

Honestly, it's my job because Avo does just about everything else around the house.

While humorous “housewife” writers like Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr famously poked fun at their husbands for not pitching in around the house, I feel guilty that my doting husband does more than his fair share.

How many other husbands bleach the grout around the kitchen sink, do the food shopping and cooking AND fold the laundry?

Not only is Avo an enthusiastic and naturally talented chef, but he is also handy around the house. He repairs small appliances, washes the windows, and cleans the toilets and the litter box (a.k.a. "poop patrol"). And if you can believe it, he doesn’t gripe about it (jealous yet?).

It's no wonder I make so little effort to be helpful when it's clear he's got things under control. Still, it's become a matter of pride.

I want to show Avo and myself that I can cook and clean if I make the effort. I have all the best intentions of beginning a new household regimen -- I'll draw one up just as soon as Avo finishes mopping the kitchen floor.

Blame it on the dwarves

Perhaps I should blame my housework hang-ups on that classic 70s' agit prop “Free to Be You and Me," and in particular, on Carol Channing.

“Your mommy hates housework, your daddy hates housework, and I hate housework too. And when you grow up, so will you," Channing promised.

Channing's argument was persuasive. I immediately banished any thoughts of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ advice, “Just whistle while you work. And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place.” Grumpy sure didn’t seem so cheerful.

But where does that leave me now? Luckily, while visiting my aunt and uncle today, I came across a 1993 edition of Consumer Reports Books "How to Clean Practically Anything." In lieu of having someone to clean everything for me, I am hoping this handy volume might be the next best thing.

Since I went to see relatives today, I wasn't able to devote the requisite 15 minutes to domestic tasks (already with the excuses!). But I consider nabbing this book a major coup. I promise to dive into it tomorrow -- and report back to you.

A gloomy vice

In “The Second Sex,” Simone de Beauvoir dismissed housework, writing that “the healthy young woman will hardly be attracted to so gloomy a vice…

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. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present…”

Sounds like a real drag, huh?

Historically, housework has been defined as “women’s work,” which partially explains why it has been undervalued. To me, it’s no longer simply a gender issue.

I want my daughters to know they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up, but that whether they become career women or stay-at-home moms, they – along with their partners – will need to know how to cook, clean and make a bed.

On my first official day of this new endeavor, I managed to accomplish one domestic task. I emptied the dishwasher.

Okay, it's not much, but I still feel proud of myself for taking this teeny step in the right direction. The late Simone de Beauvoir might not have approved, but my husband sure does.

A Simple Goal

It’s time to come clean…I don’t know how to clean or to cook for that matter.

Okay, to be totally honest, I do know how to whip up a few things:

1. Scrambled eggs
2. Grilled cheese
3. Mac and cheese (from the box)
4. Toast
5. Fruit salad

Of course, I'm not a moron. I know how to spritz the bathroom mirror with Windex and occasionally scrub the tub with Comet

But none of it comes naturally to me. Although I'm relatively competent in other areas of my life, I always feel stressed and out of control when it comes to domestic matters.

In this crazy time when so much about the world seems out of control (the stock market, global warming, etc.), I'd like to be able to take comfort from the simple pleasures in life -- clean sheets, an ordered house and warm, home-cooked meal (that I've cooked).

On this blog, I plan to explore issues related to cooking, cleaning and keeping house. For instance, what's the best way to remove cat hair from a rug?. And how do people find time to serve up delicious, healthy meals every single day? Along the way, I'll be asking for your tips about how to make housework more bearable and for recipes that won't stress me out too much.

I'd love to set myself an ambitious goal like cooking dinner every night for a year, or cleaning for 15 minutes a day, but at the moment, both of those tasks seem overwhelmingly daunting.

Instead, I think I'll settle on a simple, more attainable goal -- to do one household task a day. It may just be scrubbing the toilet or changing the sheets, but it's a start. The idea is that my efforts will gain momentum and somewhere along the line, I'll magically metamorphose into a domestic goddess.

Think I can do it?