Chores Quotes

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. ~ Amy Clampitt

[I have] a deeply entrenched rule that I cannot rest or relax until all my work is done. What a deal. I could die of old age before I have met all my responsibilities and done all my chores. ~ Mary Pipher

History conditioned you for epic-scale calamity. Once, when she was studying the death tolls of battles in World War I, she'd caught herself thinking, Only eight thousand men died here. Well, that's not many. Because next to, say, the million who died at the Somme, it wasn't. The stupendous numbers deadened you to the merely tragic, and history didn't average in the tame days for balance. On this day, no one in the world was murdered. A lion gave birth. Ladybugs launched on aphids. A girl in love daydreamed all morning, neglecting her chores, and wasn't even scolded. ~ Laini Taylor

Yet Laudan's mother had no choice about whether to be a good cook or not. It was simply what was expected of her, and of every other farmer's wife in England at that time. She did not cook because she 'loved' cooking but because this was the role that life had allotted her.
There was nothing unusual in the way that Laudan's mother cooked. If anything, her life in the kitchen was easy by the standards of the day. At least a farmer's wife had access to plentiful meat and vegetables, whereas city cooks in early twentieth-century Britain were expected to produce the same quantity of meals but with meagre ingredients and limited equipment, often in single-room dwellings where there was no kitchen and no escape from cooking. We idealise the homespun meals of the past, imagining rosy-cheeked women laying down picturesque bottles of peaches and plums. But much of the art of 'cooking' in pre-modern times was a harried mother slinging what she could in a pot and engaging in a daily smoke-filled battle to keep a fire alive and under control, on top of all the other chores she had to manage.
Before we offer too many lamentations for the cookery of the past, we should remember how hard it was – and still is, for millions of people – to cook when you have no choice in the matter. ~ Bee Wilson

Now he turned the radio on to the news. As we did our separate chores, we listened and commented idly to each other on what we heard - the politics, the plane crashes and crimes, the large disasters of the day, which we all use to keep the smaller, more long-term sorrows at bay. ~ Sue Miller

Ensure that your daily chores, thought, actions, speeches and steps are taken with the purpose of giving you a good brand. Decide to be who God wanted you to be. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Good morning! The sun is up! Wake up! Time to eat," said the birds.
"Good morning," Ashlynn said back.
There was a clink of glass slippers against the wood floor, and then her mother appeared in the doorway. She had the same strawberry-blond hair and green eyes as Ashlynn. Her mother was already dressed, but Ashlynn didn't notice the clothes she was wearing. As always, her eyes went right to the glass slippers. Oh, how she loved those shoes.
"Chores, dear!" her mother said, leaning over to kiss the top of Ashlynn's head. "And then you should pack."
"Yes, Mother!"
Ashlynn washed her face, put on an apron, and then opened wide the door to her shoe closet. This princess wouldn't care if she wore a burlap sack every day, so long as she had dozens of footwear choices. Today she settled on a pair of scrappy teal wedges and went to start breakfast. Even though her father's grand house came fully stocked with servants, her mother believed in good, solid, character-forming chores. After all, Ashlynn would inherit her mother's story and become the next Cinderella someday, and there would be lots of floors to mop and hearths to sweep before her Happily Ever After. ~ Shannon Hale

Smashed fly or the dead pig, gone stiff in the sun. It made his stomach feel funny even trying. "I don't think it's fair we've got to do Luke's chores now," Luke's other brother, ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

If you can kill it in the bedroom, chances are you can kill it in the kitchen, too - and studies have shown that men who help out more with the chores have more sex with their wives (really!). We know, gender roles run deep, which is why women in hetero relationships still end up doing the vast majority of the domestic work despite being the breadwinners in two-thirds of American homes, leaving them burned out, resentful, and, nope, not really in the mood. But it doesn't have to be this way - and, in fact, we might want to borrow a page from our LGBTQ sisters and brothers (or those who identify as neither): research shows they split chores, decisions, and finances more evenly ~ Jessica Bennett

Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Asking why had somehow led me to the thing that I loved - the feeling of moving over the earth, with the earth, the sensation of being in the present, free from chores and expectations and disappointment and worry. ~ Scott Jurek

Some people may find material chores irksome; they would prefer to use their time to talk and be with others. They haven't yet realized that the thousand and one small things that have to be done each day, the cycle of dirtying and cleaning, were given by God to enable us to communicate through matter. . . . We are all called to do, not extraordinary things, but very ordinary things, with an extraordinary love that flows from the heart of God.

. . . A community which has a sense of work done well, quietly and lovingly, humbly and without fuss, can become a community where the presence of God is profoundly lived. . . . So the community will take on a whole contemplative dimension. ~ Jean Vanier

After a time Ara had to do her chores, leaving me on the porch with a fresh infusion of tea to drink, her garden to look at, and her words to consider.
Not that I got very far. There were too many questions. Like: Where did those guards go? Azmus had overcome one, but I didn't remember having seen any more. Then there were the unlocked doors. The one to my cell could be explained away, but not the outside one. If there was a conspiracy, was Azmus behind it? Or someone else--and if so, who; and more importantly, to what end?
It was just possible that those dashing aristos had contrived my escape for a game, just as a cruel cat will play with a mouse before the kill. Their well-publicized bet could certainly account for that. The wager would also serve very nicely as a warning to ordinary people not to interfere with their prey, I thought narrowly.
Which meant that if I'd left any clue to my trail, I had better move on. Soon. ~ Sherwood Smith

The secret of surviving housework is simply to do it. Pull the plug on the part of your brain that always wants to negotiate everything. You need to change a diaper, rinse a bottle, clean a spill, fluff a pillow? Consider it done. It's a no-brainer. End of conversation. End of story.
Not postponing chores-and not spending any mental energy equivocating, temporizing, or stalling-is actually a lot more restful than worrying about what needs to be done. ~ Veronique Vienne

My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors. ~ Bette Midler

During those times, only under piles of blankets did she feel substantial enough not to drift away; they kept her weighted down and a part of the world. But eventually her dog's persistence and her own strong will would win over, and she'd drag herself up from the thick bog and go back to her chores and her books, carving the missing days into the wall so they did not escape entirely. ~ Sere Prince Halverson

You're a tough one, Katie Macauley. But I mean to talk you round to enduring me at the least. Take a ride with me. I'll be a perfect gentleman, my word of honor." An afternoon away from her endless list of chores would be nice. But only if Tavish behaved himself. "A perfect gentleman?" The devilishly handsome grin he produced was not terribly reassuring, yet there was sincerity in his eyes. "You'll hardly recognize me I'll be so well behaved. ~ Sarah M. Eden

One thing I think kids need to do is more chores, and take care of their own rooms. Responsibilities are really important to start them with. If they have animals, they have to feed them and care for them. That's the only way I think I could do it. ~ Faith Ford

My list of chores is a little too important to include in my list of life's goals. ~ Jarod Kintz

One morning when he was about thirteen, Den and I were in the barn doing the before-breakfast chores. I was in the milking stall, Den in the driveway.
He must have been thinking about Maury, for after a while he said, "Dad, Maury Telleen is not very tall. Did you ever notice that?"
"Yes," I said. And probably I was about to tell him he should mind his manners, but he wasn't finished.
He said, "But you never think of him as a little man. Did you ever notice that?"
"Yes," I said. "I have noticed that. ~ Wendell Berry

It would be hard. After all, I'm working. I'm a mother. Number one, I'm a mother & housewife, so there's the house kind of chores. In the evenings, I might attend some meeting, & then late at night, I would be either writing to the brothers & sisters in prison or working on the leaflets of their cases. Then on the weekend, at least every other weekend, we'd visit the political prisoners...I mean everybody has their whole life & things they have to do at home. But I'll tell you, we were busy during this time. Every week, more brothers & sisters would be arrested. We were working on scores of cases at the same time--trying to keep up with visiting, writing, attending court hearings. If I could show you all the leaflets we made, you'd get an idea of how expansive the work was. ~ Diane C. Fujino

Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. ~ Markus Zusak

Ellie had a feeling he thought she was exaggerating. "I am not jesting. Yesterday she presented me with two lists. The first consisted of chores I must perform in addition to those I already do."
"What, did she have you cleaning out the chimney?" Charles teased.
"Yes!" Ellie burst out. "Yes, and it was not a joke!" ~ Julia Quinn

By exempting your child from all chores, as many affluent American families now do, you are sending the message, "Your time is too valuable to be spent on menial tasks," which easily morphs into the unintended message "You are too important to do menial tasks." And that unintended message puffs up the bloated self-esteem that now characterizes many American kids. ~ Leonard Sax

Have you ever taken anything out of the clothes basket because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing? ~ Katharine Whitehorn

In spite of lip service paid to domestic duties, in 1881 the Census excluded women's household chores from the category of productive work and, for the first time, housewives were classified as unoccupied. ~ Gabrielle Palmer

Those who romanticize war often like to think of it, at least in areas of mortal peril, as nothing but "guts and glory." Those who are inclined to pacifism, by contrast, often think of it as an unbroken sequence of horrors. Actually, however, people in wartime still fall in love, do the laundry, worry about pimples, drink beer, and do most of the same things that they do in times of peace. The patterns of daily life may be mundane, but they are remarkably tenacious.
But, while people in wartime still go about their daily routines, the prospect of imminent death can give even quotidian chores a heightened intensity. When the first bombs were dropped on London in autumn of 1940, the population bore adversity better than almost anybody had expected. The danger was mixed with excitement, and the terror had a sort of apocalyptic magnificence. ~ Boria Sax

They've been lying from the start. From the first time we read the words 'once upon a time,' we're fed the idea that these girls - these gorgeous, demure, singing-with-the-wildlife girls - get a happy ending. And I get it. Poor thing had to do some chores around the house, fine. But the idea that she needs a magic old lady to come down and skim off the dirt so the prince will see her beauty? That's ridiculous. Maybe she should have been working on her lockpicking skills instead of serenading squirrels. She could have busted out, hitched a ride to the castle, and impressed the prince with her safe-cracking prowess. Sorry, magic-fairy lady. She didn't need your help. ~ Kelsey Macke

For many people, music is here to let them forget the daily chores of life. ~ Daniel Barenboim

I am often amused when women with little or no experience in housekeeping and/or unaccustomed to performing household chores, upon stumbling on a man almost miraculously become domesticated. ~ D. Cypriani Regis

In a way, being raised on the farm and doing chores and stuff it's a natural thing for me to want to work outside. It's almost kind of like a rehabilitation for me with doing that. ~ Hank Williams III

Feminists of my mother's generation argued that both mom and dad should work a little less and each do some of the household chores. My parents, for example, split everything 50/50. Even though my father is a terrible cook, he still made dinner exactly half the time. ~ Emily Oster

During the morning chores, you look forward with love, during the evening ones, you look back with nostalgia."

-Roland of Gilead, Wolves of the Calla, Chapter 6, Part One, Verse One ~ Stephen King

I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling. ~ May Sarton

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived. ~ Rose Macaulay

Southern people are raised with a work ethic. My son is 5 years old and does chores. My mom was a dance teacher, and the training and discipline it takes to be a dancer I've carried with me in Hollywood. ~ Jaime Pressly

look at the painting again. Despite the obvious differences, this girl is deeply, achingly familiar. In her I see myself at twelve years old, on a rare afternoon away from my chores. In my twenties, seeking refuge from a broken heart. Only a few days ago, visiting my parents' graves in the family cemetery, halfway between the dory in the haymow and the wheelchair in the sea. From the recesses of my brain a word floats up: synecdoche. A part that stands in for the whole. Christina's World. The ~ Christina Baker Kline

Do you know what separates adults from children? Self-discipline. We don't want to go to work, we don't want to do our chores, and we don't want to make unpleasant decisions, but we do all those things because we're aware of the consequences which will follow if we don't. ~ Ilona Andrews

I find it is a challenge being a student athlete, but I am the kind of individual that loves challenges. I see this as my job rather than a chore so it makes it easier to get through the day. Regular students don't spend 4 hours at the track, 2 in the training room and they especially don't have to watch everything they eat. I enjoy what I do immensely and take the good with the bad. ~ Perdita Felicien

No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that's why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting. ~ Emily Oster

Chores are easier if forethought is given to them and they are looked upon as little pleasures to perform instead of inconveniences that steal time and try the patience. ~ Richard Proenneke

I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality. ~ John Kennedy Toole

When it comes to housework the one thing no book of household management can ever tell you is how to begin. Or maybe I mean why. ~ Katharine Whitehorn

It won't be a chore, it will be a garden,' Holena said. ~ Jeannie Mobley

We mark the days by chores that need to be done, the way farm families have always done. Al feeds the hens and horses and pigs, splits wood in the fall, slaughters a pig when the weather turns cold, cuts ice in the winter. I collect eggs from the laying hens and Al drives me into town to sell them. He times the planting so that by the Fourth of July we'll have new peas and by September there's a whole field of corn. Gulls lunge for a feast, ravaging the crop, so Al kills a few and hangs them from poles as warning. During haying season in midsummer, I see him from the dining room window in his visored cap, scything the hay by hand with six hired men walking abreast, forking the newly mown hay onto the hayrack. They haul the hay to the barn, where a block-and-tackle hoist lifts it into the mow. ~ Christina Baker Kline

More is more and less is less. In other words, the more you bring into your life, the more you have to maintain. If you are accumulating things, the initial purchase is just the beginning. In addition to any debt you took on to make the purchase, this new item you now own may need to be stored, dusted, watered, cleaned, oiled, tightened, filled, emptied, refilled, tuned, insured, renewed - or any number of other time-consuming (and possibly expensive) maintenance chores. If you avoid the purchase altogether, you cut out the chain reaction of obligations to this thing. ~ Cristin Frank

I always felt that a marriage works best at a farm ... where you're together and everybody has clear-cut roles; they have chores, 'you take care of this' and you know. But it's hard. ~ Ethan Hawke

Except for the usual house chores, doing income tax, etc., I am free to write whenever I want. ~ Yuriy Tarnawsky

Being a mother is not a matter of running through a succession of chores. ~ Naomi Stadlen

There is my father whispering in my ear, Be still still still. And yet you change everything. What was the marsh like, waiting for the storm before you came and kneeled in the water? It was nothing. Watch after you leave the water, now cold and regretful, miles from home, certain of the belt on your backside, the cold shoulder, the extra chores; watch. Watch the water heal itself of your presence
not to repair injury but to offer itself again should you care to risk another strapping [ ... ]. ~ Paul Harding

Really, I don't like to do any household chores. There was a time when I loved to cook, but that was when I wasn't writing books. ~ Elaine Pagels

Forcing a child into adult pursuits is one of the subtlest varieties of soul murder. Very often we find that the narcissist was deprived of his childhood. Consider the gifted child, the Wunderkind: the answer to his mother's prayers and the salve to her frustrations…

The Wunderkind narcissist refuses to grow up. In his mind, his tender age formed an integral part of the precocious miracle that he once was. One looks much less phenomenal and one's exploits and achievements are much less awe-inspiring at the age of 40 than the age of 4. Better stay young forever and thus secure an interminable stream of Narcissistic Supply.

So, the narcissist abjures all adult skills and chores: he never takes out a driver's license; he does not have children; he rarely has sex; he never settles down in one place; he rejects intimacy. In short, he renounces adulthood. Absent adult skills he assumes no adult responsibilities. He expects indulgence from others. ~ Sam Vaknin

A man is NOT a financial plan.
A woman is NOT a domestic plan.

Money is an essential necessity-
You must have and make your own money. Cooking and house chores are basic life skills- you must be able to make your own meals and put your house in order..... ~ Ian Ochieng

So many people think buckets of money will solve or eliminate the stresses in life. Such is not the case. More is more and less is less. In other words, the more you bring into your life, the more you have to maintain. If you are accumulating things, the initial purchase is just the beginning. In addition to any debt you took on to make the purchase, this new item you now own may need to be stored, dusted, watered, cleaned, oiled, tightened, filled, emptied, refilled, tuned, insured, renewed - or any number of other time-consuming (and possibly expensive) maintenance chores. If you avoid the purchase altogether, you cut out the chain reaction of obligations to this thing. So ~ Cristin Frank

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint. ~ Erma Bombeck

Immaturity means self-centeredness, inability to compromise, to rise above hurt feelings, to postpone immediate pleasures in favor of future benefits, or to do unpleasant chores when they need to be done. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

I love the finished product, but I find working in the studio a chore - I use an old-fashioned setup, so the recording process can be frustrating. ~ Max Tundra

If you ask me what remains to be known in the future, I'll say, 'Memorize all the world's encyclopedias.' Once you do that, forget all that fancy junk and rake the leaves – else I'm gonna take a stick to you, boy. ~ M.C. Humphreys

Even the smallest daily chore can be humanized with the harmony of culture. ~ Alvar Aalto

It is harder for women, perhaps to be 'one-pointed,' much harder for them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented ... the cry not so much for a 'a room of one's own' as time of one's own. Conflict become acute, whatever it may be about, when there is no margin left on any day in which to try at least to resolve it. ~ May Sarton

Kids . . . were hustled through basic training and speedily deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, only to find another army already there - the shadow army of private for-profit defense contractors. Most of them were contracted to do a long list of chores that uniformed soldiers used to do for themselves when, courtesy of conscription, there were a lot more of them. To maximize their profits and minimize their work, however, the private contractors hired subcontractors who, in turn, hired subcontractors from third world countries to ship in laborers to do on the cheap the actual grunt work of hauling water and food supplies, cleaning latrines, collecting garbage, burning trash, preparing food, washing laundry, fixing electrical grids, doing construction, and staffing the fast food stands and beauty salons that sold tacos and pedicures to the troops. ~ Ann Jones

Naive optimism and pervasive pessimism are both to be avoided, therefore. It's not an easy balance to maintain, to be asked to work away in the Ninevehs of our lives without being so conscious of the coming cataclysm that we are not serious citizens of our communities and nations. By living and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are doing the most relevant thing we can do by way of helping. (There are civic and other chores to be done, of course.) Day in and day out, the gospel is the one thing that is most relevant, and we are to be of good cheer. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Young people are experts on leisure, water skiing, dancing, rock music, rapping, TV watching ... by and large, chores are a thing of the past. ~ Billy Graham

In a lifetime of hearing people celebrate weekends, she finally saw what all the fuss was about. By no means did her workload cease on Saturday, but it did shift gears. If her kids wanted to pull everything out of the laundry basket to make a bird's nest and sit in it, fine. Dellarobia could even sit in there with them and incubate, if she so desired. Household chores no longer called her name exclusively. She had an income. She'd never before understood how much her life in this little house had felt to her like confinement in a sinking vehicle after driving off a bridge ... To open a hatch and swim away felt miraculous. Working outside the home took her about fifty yards from her kitchen, which was far enough. She couldn't see the dishes in the sink. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Even (chores and duties) can be connected to larger goals - communicating with our spouse, teaching our kids, or connecting with God. The mundane can become magnificent if we're plugged into each hour and each other. ~ Kerry Shook And Chris Shook

I think women - relative to men - tend to feel that they have to do the household chores on top of everything else. This becomes even worse once you have kids. It's enough to have a full time job; a full time job plus a family is even more. ~ Emily Oster

They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honor, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be. ~ Plutarch

TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn ... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned. ~ Pete Hautman

The slight pull was all it took to completely unbalance his precarious load and dump the manure - all atop her boots.
"Bloody hell! Look what ye done!" the boy cried ... If ye hadn't come along and pulled me o'er it ne'er would have happened.But now ye'd best clean it up afore Devington or Jeffries comes along."
"Me?" she replied incredulously. "I'm not the clumsy oaf who dumped it. It's not my mess to clean."
"Well, I ain't about to be the last to finish my chores. Devington will have me turning over the reeking dung pit instead of breaking me fast wi' the other chaps."
"That's nothing compared to my boots, you ham-fisted lout!"
"Tweren't me what pulled the wheelbarrow arse over tea kettle, ye wantwit! Go bugger yer mother and lick yer boots clean!"
"I'll box your ears, you brazen-faced little jackanapes! ... ~ Emery Lee

On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We'd go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I've always been a big animal person. ~ Krysten Ritter

Maybe now that Elijah was feeling well enough to be interfering in my business, he'd also be well enough to look after his own chores. ~ Laura Bickle

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you? ~ Erma Bombeck

Things settled into a lazy pattern. School, chores, and long hours down by the river. Kiernan talked about the books he read sometimes, even loaned me a few. But I liked it better when he read to me or just told me the stories. The words were more real that way, more exciting. Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Ragged Dick, and all the others seemed flat and dull on the page, but Kiernan was good at making them come alive. ~ Rysa Walker

I had to jump on the tractor and do my chores. I would have just killed to be in town, to be able to Rollerblade hand-in-hand with somebody I had a crush on. I just wanted to get off the farm, to find my outlet. ~ Garrett Hedlund

It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she'd stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like "spite." But it seemed to her that he'd asked her to do more than "one thing" while he was gone. He'd also asked her to make the boys three meals a day, and clothe them and read to them and nurse them in sickness, and scrub the kitchen floor and wash the sheets and iron his shirts, and do it all without a husband's kisses or kind words. If she tried to get credit for these labors of hers, however, Al simply asked her whose labors had paid for the house and food and linens? Never mind that his work so satisfied him that he didn't need her love, while her chores so bored her that she needed his love doubly. In any rational accounting, his work canceled her work. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Men didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release. ~ David Harvey

When I have time, I'll be a good girl and do my chores. ~ Camilla Luddington

He sent the housekeepers away and had Elon do all the chores to let him know what it was like "to play American. ~ Ashlee Vance

Do you know how you get the urge to clean your room, and it's no big deal? But when your mom tells you that you have to clean your room, you don't want to? That's me, anyway. ~ Bill Konigsberg

To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a 'home' might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation. ~ Emily Post

Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly. ~ Julie Andrews

Time-use researchers call it "contaminated time." It is a product of both role overload - working and still bearing the primary responsibility for children and home - and task density. It's mental pollution, one researcher explained. One's brain is stuffed with all the demands of work along with the kids' calendars, family logistics, and chores. Sure, mothers can delegate tasks on the to-do list, but even that takes up brain space - not simply the asking but also the checking to make sure the task has been done, and the biting of the tongue when it hasn't been done as well or as quickly as you'd like. So it is perhaps not surprising that time researchers are finding that, while "free time" may help ease the feeling of time pressure for men, and in the 1970s helped women a little, by 1998 it was providing women no relief at all.15 ~ Brigid Schulte

Here's why an allowance is good for kids: Having a little of their own money, and deciding how to save or spend it, offers a measure of autonomy and teaches them to be responsible with cash. Here's why household chores are good for kids: Chores show kids that families are built on mutual obligations and that family members need to help each other. Here's why combining allowances with chores is not good for kids. By linking money to the completion of chores, parents turn an allowance into an "if-then" reward. This sends kids a clear (and clearly wrongheaded) message: In the absence of a payment, no self-respecting child would willingly set the table, empty the garbage, or make her own bed. It converts a moral and familial obligation into just another commercial transaction - and teaches that the only reason to do a less-than-desirable task for your family is in exchange for payment. ~ Daniel H. Pink

I was not merely cleaning an oven; I was improving the world. ~ Agnostic Zetetic

We were taught manners and we had to do our chores - Katie and I grew up as normal kids. ~ Oliver Hudson

Merrill Meewee knew his stones. As a boy in Kenya, skipping stones was his favorite free-time activity. There had been an abundance of saucer-shaped missiles on the banks of his father's own fishpond. Fat, river-smoothed disks, they skipped ten, twelve, sixteen times before slipping beneath the surface with a watery plop. His father, a man of little wealth but great forbearance, was not pleased with his boy's solitary pastime, but he never ordered him to stop. Instead, he asked the boy how many stones he thought the pond could hold. I don't know, Meewee remembered answering. A hundred thousand?

Oh, such a big number! And how many stones do you suppose you've thrown already?

Merrill, who was an excellent student, calculated the number of stones he might have tossed in an hour and how many free hours were left each day after school and chores, how many afternoons in how many years since he first discovered the sport. I would estimate 14,850, he informed his father with a certain amount of swagger.

His father was impressed. So many? And all of them have gone to the bottom?

Of course they've gone to the bottom, he had said, embarrassed by his father's apparent ignorance. They're stones. They're heavier than water.

And heavier than fishes?

Of course heavier than fishes.

Good, good, his father concluded, patting him on the head. Keep at it, son, and soon I won't have to work so hard.

Fat ~ David Marusek

That's one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don't go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can't push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren't the same person who was in pain. ~ Daniel Abraham

There is a strong connection between our ability to use our hands in useful work, and our ability to find happiness in daily life... daily repetitive tasks (are) the compulsive calmness that infuses our pedestrian chores with poetry. - Annie Modessitt ~ Lisa Grunwald

Please report to Supreme Commander Leo for your superfun list of chores! ~ Rick Riordan

My parents pushed us very hard to work, both in the home, doing chores and cooking, and at school. ~ Wendi Deng Murdoch

Why can't Tashi come to school? she asked me. When I told her the Olinka don't believe in educating girls she said, quick as a flash, They're like white people at home who don't want colored people to learn. Oh, she's sharp, Celie. At the end of the day, when Tashi can get away from all the chores her mother assigns her, she and Olivia secret themselves in my hut and everything Olivia has learned she shares with Tashi. To Olivia right now Tashi alone is Africa. The Africa she came beaming across the ocean hoping to find. Everything else is difficult for her. ~ Alice Walker

The Continuous Life

What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? O parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost - a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don't really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sendingMark Strand

Poetry