A word of wisdom for those younger women...

Or may be this post should be titled - "Dear men - tip one on how not to drive us crazy when it comes to housework."

We all know the term "boy look" don't we? You know when a male of any age or stage asks you "where is..." and you say "look there..." and they say "I can't find it" and you go and there it is - if not exactly where you said it was within a 10 cm radius. The kind of thing that makes most of us want to scream with frustration particularly if there is any suggestion that their inability to find it is because (a) you put it away, (b) you didn't put it away or (c) they don't think that is the best place to put it.

And of course that lack of competence seems to inevitably play out into other aspects of household management. Yesterday it struck me that maybe part of the core of "the boy look" and "the boy clean" is a fundamental lack of appreciation of household management as a planned sequence of tasks. So for instance my "helpful" male cleans up around me (and my daughter) when we are in the middle of cooking - this invariably leads to him putting things away before we have finished using them and almost as invariably creates a burning desire to attack him with the sharp knife which he has just helpfully put in the dishwasher 30 seconds before we reached for it.

So anyway - we have painters coming to our house prior to our new carpet being laid. In order for both these tasks to be completed some bookcases need to be moved. The carpet layer will move them as they go on the condition they are empty of books. So yesterday I suggested to my dearly beloved that we pack the books into some old packing boxes for the duration based on the information already mentioned. Oh yes he thought that was a good idea...

So what happened? In the afternoon I was clearing out youngest child's bedroom which involved implementing the logical process of checking that DVDs and games were in the right covers before they were packed away, that library books were sorted out so they could be returned rather than put in the boxes for a month collecting overdue fines, that clean clothes and dirty clothes, summer and winter clothes all had their appropriate home. DB came in to help and what does he start to do? Repeat the task already 90% complete with the DVD's which included asking me where the cover was for the one that I hadn't already found, put books in the bookcase and then put the library books in the bookcase. Hello - which part of "we're packing the books up so we can move empty bookcases did we miss here?"

Anyway to my tip - Boys please learn to walk in to a significant cleaning task and ask "what's the plan?" and then "which bit do you want me to do?" OK I acknowledge that in a perfect world you should have an itemised household management list in your head as well and I shouldn't have to ask or direct but sometimes you have to go with the flow. I also think it's a two way thing and in this respect we can be just as guilty walking into a task they have started and applying our approach without checking first. The main point is - the whole thing will go a whole lot better and a whole lot smoother if one person has a plan and the other person cooperates>

Well we did baking so now onto some craft

OK so there will be the kitchen section - with all the useful stuff about making Christmas cakes by now so they have time to mature by Christmas (favorite family Christmas cake recipes anyone?)

My daughters have been unimpressed with early Christmas decorations in the mall but I must admit that at least it gets me thinking about the plan for the season. My favorite site coming up to Christmas has got to be Organized Christmas - unfortunately with each passing year it gets more ads but there are some wonderful ideas there underneath the Americanisms. I particularly like a planning task for around this time of the year where you think about what went well and not so well the year before and think of areas you want to focus on.

However every year I get caught in the trap of the Christmas craft magazines - the Christmas quilting and cross stitch magazines have an irresistible lure that sucks me in every time. Not only that but they are the ones I find hardest to throw away. It was no different this year - I even commented to the newsagent that I had to overcome the addiction as I never actually got to do the projects (and in this case I'm not convinced my newly balanced lifestyle will make much difference) However his response to my joking comment about contributing to his profits was a really insightful question in the context. He asked me if I enjoyed reading them and when I said I did, he suggested that maybe they had served there purpose well for that alone. So this year I am going to just enjoy the browsing and not create a mental list of all the things I am going to make.

Choosing how to use effort wisely is a much under recognised skill.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

I was just thinking today that the third term for any political party is the killer ... every time we have had a three term cycle (in my memory and thats about 4 occasions) the last three years is the killer. The party with the majority just cant get it right. I think we have a short attention span - we get bored, the politicans get bored and then being back in opposition sharpens them up.

I dont know if there is a better way and still be democratic - I wonder what would happen if we made grand coalitions a requirement for the third term e.g. National or Labour would hold the majority and get to have the prime minister but the coalition partner would have to be the next highest polling party. Then the next election cycle the leadership would probably still swing but the whole process would be more informed - plus we'd probably get a few more decent ministers in the meantime.

I mean, honestly, in the 21st century - do we really need black/white (or red/blue) partisan politics to this degree? And in a country the size of ours can we really afford to have decent talent languishing on opposition benchs for years at a time. I grew up in a family which was very clear about the difference between party politics and choosing someone who would represent the electorate fairly. One of the great things about MMP is being able to have that choice. But I think we need to take MMP a step further - many of us are still voting with a two party viewpoint (even voting Act or Green for instance is couched in terms of influencing a major party)

One of my delights this election was watching two nine year olds who each had a strong loyalty to opposite sides in the major party stakes get totally engrossed in tracking the Bill and Ben party vote particularly in the electorate seats of candidates they knew. I'm really grateful for a system that allows that kind of idiosyncrasy to happen. Bill and Ben actually achieved their party goal in our house.

In my total idealism I just wish that in some way we could have elections where the outcome is about balancing the values and goals of all New Zealander's into a collaboration that moves our country forward, rather than having winners and losers. We were the first country to give women the vote - maybe we could be the first country that could have a genuine negotiated representative democracy.

It's been a typical busy weekend

With lots of food for thought.

I've been working on developing the skeleton site structure which has been a bit of a learning curve on Dreamweaver. In the meantime I've been thinking about the kinds of content to start with.

This weekend, perhaps because I was set on the path during the week, I was thinking about kitchen wise. I was smiling at all the retro kinds of kitchenware hitting the shops for Christmas and remembering the things we used to laugh about in the 80's from the 60's books that were still stashed away in our mothers piles of cookbooks. But even in the 80's we still had some rites of passage, 21st parties and weddings that were our key "setting up house time". We might have flatted before then but there was usually some event of significance in our early 20's that established our future home.

I was wondering how much that really happens today? I was doing some first steps in Christmas shopping and as I walked through Farmers had a vivid memory of my 21 year old daughter checking out the cookbooks for a new cake recipe. She is planning on going flatting next year and it occurred to me that maybe we could get her a decent cake mixer for Christmas. (Piece of woman wise trivia - check out the power rating when you buy a mixer - if you use it for anything heavy like biscuits, you can strip the gears of the cheaper ones) She was a bit surprised when I suggested to her - it's one of those things she just takes for granted in the kitchen, and hadn't really thought about missing.

Those 60's lists we laughed about in the 80's included the lists of what you needed to set up a kitchen. I'm not sure that is such a bad idea having discovered just how much that takes just recently. I think that could be quite a cool section for our new site - the basics of what you need to set up a kitchen and choosing quality kitchen ware.

This one is for Kate....

A couple of days ago I was just about to leave work when I got chatting with Kate - cant quite recall what started the conversation but somehow it got onto my web plans. Anyway as she was listing the things she thought would be useful she told me the story of how only just recently she had learned the importance of ICE COLD water for making good pastry. One of the wise women in her family had showed her.

I told her that story reminded me of my colleague Hilary a couple of years back, who shared with us over morning tea, that she had discovered the tip that you should stir baking powder before you use it. Kate had never heard this before - and I was bit bemused because this useful bit of information can be found (along with many others) along the bottom of the pages of that great New Zealand institution - the Edmonds Cookbook.

Later than evening I was telling my daughters about my discussion with Kate and they too expressed surprise and a certain level of indignation that such useful pieces of information were being denied their generation (although Ana did feel quite virtuous about the fact that she usually shakes the baking powder before she uses it)

Tonight I was looking for a recipe and ended up tidying the bookshelf. I happened upon my old Edmonds cookbook and would you believe - at the bottom of the page it was open to - was that important little snippet of knowledge so many of my Gen Y and millennial friends felt deprived of. I must have a look (and will update you) to see if it is still in the new editions. I remember feeling quite upset when I discovered that, rather than remaining a sacrosanct institution, the recipes are actually changed on a regular basis in the Edmonds book. Mine is still old enough to contain such classics as Spanish Cream and Marshmallow Shortcake!

So here, from a well-used and smudged 1978 Deluxe Edition, is the famous baking powder tip...

To begin at the beginning....

First there was the chatting with my daughter and her friends about "nana crafts", cupcakes, and sewing. Then there was the dream of a shop where all those things could be bought together and shared.

There was the dinner conversation ... a conversation that touched on many things but included some one-on-one between me and our hostess on the topics of childbirth and breastfeeding. I had just that day taken a risk on a presentation on a parent perspective on ICT and education which I had ended with a historic clip from 1965 with a voice over interview of my son interviewing his grandad. And an earlier presentation on websites had experienced a minor sidetrack as we discussed beautiful children's books.
Then I went out to visit my sister - who runs a great local store and cafe almost but not quite in the middle of nowhere. There is handmade soap, local art, groceries and ...lattes!

And I wondered - where have all the wise woman gone? Where does this generation go to learn the skills that were once the domain of frugal, crafty older women? Where do mothers who may only have one or two babies get supported and comforted with the pragmatics of experience? Where do they hear the wider story which once were de-cried as old wives tales.

When I write and edit, when I structure information I draw on the experiences of my own family and the hundreds of families I have worked with in voluntary and employed capacities. And I am constantly testing it against "is this real?" "will it be meaningful?". Without meaning to I have become one of the "wise women"

And because my skills lie in web and information I decided today to create a space - a wise woman space - for women to share and learn from each other.

Sonja