For years, gender stereotypes and standards have been used to justify the expectation that women, more specifically wives and mothers, are expected to be homemakers.
No matter how large the family is or how much work it takes to clean up after everyone, women are expected to literally carry the load for everyone, but for some, there’s a definite need for change.
Many people believe that cleaning the house should be everyone’s job.
When people cohabitate, the usual result is that everyone makes a mess and those messes combined make an even bigger mess. It’s a sign of responsibility and respect for everyone to pitch in to clean up.
However, for many, the burden for women to clean up for everyone not only places everyone’s responsibility on one person, it also sets a bad example for kids to become independent adults.
Expecting women to do all the cleaning could be a sign of sexism.
There are some people who just love to clean and prefer to be in charge of it, regardless of their sex.
Then there are others, most often women, who feel obligated to clean for their family because they’re supposed to be natural nurturers and take care of everyone.
It can often be indicative of an unfair gender role.
One woman decided she was done cleaning for her family.
Mother, wife, and Twitter user @MissPotkin revealed that she’s had enough of cleaning for her entire family in a long, and very popular Twitter thread .
After years of making all the meals and being expected to clean up everyone’s dirty dishes, she decided to see how her family would fare without the burden falling on her.
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“Who will blink first?” she wrote alongside a snap of a cluttered kitchen counter on March 17. “Not me.”
Apparently, her family has not handled this change very well.
In a serious of follow-up tweets, Potkin showed that the dishes only continued to pile and the kitchen mess actually worsened. But this mother and wife is firm in her resolve not to come to the rescue this time.
Instead, she’s decided to share all the new developments, or lack thereof, with Twitter commenters, and they definitely have a lot to say..
The waiting game was one long process.
Refusing to budge an inch, this woman watched as the trash bin went a shocking “965 days” before being emptied.
While this sort of seemed like progress, apparently her husband decided to make his tea with the baby’s weaning spoon in a last resort cup rather than just washing a proper cup and spoon.
It wasn’t just the kitchen that was abandoned by this fed-up mom — Potkin also stopped doing the laundry.
As she wrote online , “Let me know when you want to talk about the fact that I stopped doing the laundry too. It’s getting a bit post apocalyptic. The piles are everywhere.”
She also shared tweets explaining that she wouldn’t be changing any empty toiler paper rolls, no matter how dire the situation.
Same goes for leftovers that haven’t yet reached the fridge, even if that sausage that’s been in the pan for two days has turned, as she explained , “the color of the man that washes up in Cast Away .”
When this wife and mother said that she wasn’t taking care of everything anymore, she meant it.
Eventually her hard work, or rather lack thereof, began to pay off.
After a lot of seemingly unnecessary struggling, the man in her life finally started to clean. It would be an understatement to say that this wife was excited.
She even shared an update to the toilet paper situation and revealed someone had not only magically changed the empty roll themselves, but also stacked a few spare rolls beside the toilet, too!
In the middle of Potkin’s days-long social experiment, her Twitter thread went viral.
Although she’s received several thousand likes on her journey to not be the sole cleaner of the home, she’s also gotten quite a bit of judgement, too.
Some users pointed out that she shouldn’t blame her family for not cleaning up after themselves when she’s the one who raised her children. Others believe she should clearly communicate her frustrations rather than staying silent and doing nothing else.
Potkin later responded to these people who felt she wasn’t handling the situation properly.
In that tweet , she addressed the haters and their suggestions:
“I see that judgey f***ing Twitter has woken up so let me say this once and be clear – We do not ‘live like this’. This is a lesson in wanting to be heard and respected and not having to repeat yourself when things slip. We’re navigating the day-today in extraordinary times and for me, the past two days have been funnier than anything else.”
Thankfully, the majority of comments have been positive as people understand she was proving a point in an amusing way.
Ultimately, while this mom’s mission was a proven success, it was also one that she will not doing again. It seems that throwing in the towel, even temporarily, was more than she bargained for.
Hopefully, her family got the message and will be more helpful when it comes to cleaning up the house from now on.
Let us know what you think of this story in the comments and if you’d ever try something like this with your family.
