Do domestic skills still matter?

[Ursa]

I believe that having a variety of domestic skills is important for anyone, though I am certainly no domestic goddess. I am an adequate but somewhat indifferent cook and housekeeper, I don't particularly enjoy either but I do the majority of those chores in our household simply because I am home much more. I can sew on buttons and hem pants if I have to, I can also do drywall, paint a room, tile a bathroom floor, or stain and refinish furniture. I could build a lopsided but more or less functional bookshelf if somebody put a gun to my head, fortunately that situation is unlikely to arise. I can balance a checkbook and do the basic finances, although economics is not my shining star either. Where I do excel is in the childcare, animal care and gardening/landscaping spheres, which I find enjoyable and much more rewarding than the other chores. I devote a lot more time to them, too, those are kind of my main gigs. My husband finds cooking and carpentry to be fun and meditative for him, sort of what gardening is for me. He cooks dinner on the nights that he is able to be home on time for that, and does the cooking on the weekends. His meals are more elaborate than mine. My stepdaughter also enjoys cooking, and she helps me in the kitchen sometimes but sometimes admittedly I shoo her out because cooking is kind of stressful for me and having the kids in the kitchen can throw off my sense of timing. She fares better under my husband's wing in that arena, and I'm sure our son will also when he's a bit older . I have been teaching them both basics of cleaning, laundry, being responsible for their allowances, taking care of pets, and gardening, they have their own patches in the yard. We should probably start teaching them both a little DIY.

 

I know people who do this, but even if we could easily afford it I would never want to hire out for EVERYTHING--I feel having basic skills is important and also doing some domestic work for yourself is good for character. I will cop to having a cleaning service come and do a deep-cleaning scrub of everything once a month, having tailors do most of any seamstressy work necessary, getting my oil changed as part of a mechanics service and paying a neighbor kid to mow the "lawn" once in a while (I have meadowized the "lawn" area so don't need to mow very often).