How Working Women Don’t Stop Cooking, Cleaning and Birthing

 

“It’s a new age,” they keep telling us. “Women in the workforce!” they demand. And I say, “Amen, sisters.” As a small business owner with lots of drive I couldn’t agree more. Women bring unique, vital, fresh, and gender-distinct abilities to business that men just simply can’t. Because of this women march into the workforce as Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” roars in the background. Again. Amen, sisters. However, as us working women embark on our determined journey we forget to leave behind that housewife of old. We march in, but don’t stop cooking, cleaning, birthing, carpooling, organizing play dates, attending soccer games or washing the unknown elements off the dog. Instead we piggy-back the homemaker into society, living dual lives as she hides underneath our pantsuit like superman under Clark Kent’s slacks. Okay, so maybe I’m getting a bit dramatic, but you get the point. The point is not that women should shirk from either role, or that one is necessarily better than the other. The point is we work hard.

Disclaimer: This is not to suggest the men in our lives don’t work hard. On the contrary, Rod’s been a hard worker since the first moment I saw him at age 14. He got his work ethic from his dad who also ran his own construction business and worked as a Portland Fire Fighter. I remember thinking to myself when I first met John Loewer, “If Rod’s anything like his father, I’ll marry him in a second.” And when we got married at the prime age of 19, I knew I had made a good decision.

People always ask how I did it with five kids. How I managed to start and manage my own interior design business and then later work as Vice President and Designer at Northland. The truth is I just did it. There’s no mathematical formula (otherwise I probably would’ve failed miserably considering my aversion to math). I just organized, prioritized, and learned as I went. I learned to laugh at myself and to not beat myself up if I messed up. And there were definite times I messed up. For example, at the time I had my third child, Brian, I was helping Rod run his cabinet shop. I was also sewing my kids own clothes, keeping the house clean, and cooking dinners every night. Well, one day while shopping at a small, neighborhood fabric store I set the 2 week old Brian in a bin of buttons to look at a large piece of fabric. After setting the fabric back down, determining I didn’t need it, I simply walked out of the fabric store with my other two children, completely forgetting baby number three. Did I freak out when I got in the car and realized I had left the baby in the buttons? Absolutely. But as soon as he was safe from the possibility of being abducted by little old ladies with knitting needles I couldn’t help but laugh at myself.

Okay, so now you’re thinking I’m a terrible mother. But come on. Don’t tell me you’ve never forgotten to pick up one of your kids from football practice, accidentally put your daughter’s underwear on your son, or called your kid by the dog’s name. Don’t feel bad about it–it builds character and provides them an arsenal of stories to tell for years. The truth is it’s good for our kids to see we’re just human, that we make mistakes too. Letting your kids see you for who you are is more than important–it’s vital in setting them up for realistic expectations of both themselves and other people. But here I am getting sidetracked. Back to the point.

Fast forward a handful of years, I have five kids, my youngest in third grade, and I’m just starting my interior design business. Two of my three boys are in football, one daughter’s in basketball, another’s in honor society, and all of them have social lives. Rod is working upwards of 80 hours a week, so not only do I have the responsibilities of the house and kids, but my new business, which any small business owner can tell you demands constant attention. How do I do this? The key is integration and delegation. My youngest, Michaela, remembers these years probably better than any of my kids. I was constantly dragging her to Contract Furnishings Mart, Calico Corners or Miller Paint. Now 24, she can probably still tell you the names of employees and where the candy stashes were in each store. I wasn’t making Michaela tag along with me to work, I was integrating her into my work life. I was showing her what a working woman looked like, what hard work looked like. And I tried my best to involve her in what I did, asking her occasional opinion on paint swatches or carpet samples. Allowing kids into your work life, especially as a small business owner, gives us a unique opportunity to pass on knowledge that can set them up for a successful future with options. It enriches their understanding of the world around them.

Conversely, involving our kids in the home life is just as enriching. Unfortunately the feminist movement, whose benefits I agree with wholeheartedly, has inadvertently shamed the housewife and eradicated practical classes like Home Ec and Shop from our schools. But this isn’t some political op-ed piece on the public school system. After all, it’s not teachers’ jobs to raise our kids–it’s ours. For Rod and me that has meant teaching our kids the value of not just intellectualism and empirical knowledgeability, but the value of working with your hands, along with the fact that there’s no shame in it. I still have recipes for pot roast or a pan of meat loaf in the back of my mind my mom would call up and recite to me from work. And the pie recipe I use, which I don’t doubt each of my kids would say is their favorite of mom’s recipes, dates back 47 years. I went out to pick blackberries at age 10. Before going to work, my mom left out her favorite cookbook with a crust recipe, along with a note saying “Just follow this.” A single, working mother of three girls, she was constantly passing information and skills onto us, not only to relieve some of the pressures of her work load, but to teach us valuable skills we could then pass on to our kids.

So here Rod and I are, years later with kids grown. We aren’t quite empty-nesters, but we’re on the cusp. And as I reflect back on all those years of football team-dinners and backyard, pre-prom photo shoots, I remember the vital role a home plays in the memories. This is why I’m so passionate about what I do. I’m empathetic toward working women not only because I am one, but because throughout my business I meet plenty of women just like me– women who have successful business lives, yet are still balancing soccer schedules and dinner menus. I know first hand when the house is in disarray, everything’s in disarray. I’ve been in countless outdated kitchens with improper storage, dysfunctional traffic flows and significant space issues that would drive anyone nuts. My goal in every project is to understand my clients’ daily lives that I might create a new, unique, functional and practical space tailor-fitted to their everyday habits and necessities. I want to recreate an environment that empowers them to be the go-getter women they are. And as they go about conquering their day chocked with little league, business meetings, grocery shopping, and play-dates I’ll keep saying “Go get ‘em, girls.”