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Clutter: Israelis vs. others
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Seraph




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Aug 29 2008, 7:33 am
Storage space in our apt:
Under 2 big fish tanks. 2 bookshelves in the living room. 3 rows of kitchen cabinets. On top of cabinets. Corner bookshelf in kitchen.
2 5 door closets. Under the beds. 2 nightstands. 3 plastic sets of drawers. 1 set of plastic keter shelving. 1 desk. ZEHU.
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Aug 29 2008, 8:12 am
Aidelmom wrote:
Motek, you are saying if someone has too many toys they don't know how to raise children? Rolling Eyes


Why don't you go back and see what I actually wrote?
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amother
Beige


 

Post Sun, Jul 24 2016, 4:26 pm
Tamiri wrote:
No basements
No garages
No attics
No sheds in the back
No money to buy stuff
Nowhere to put what you do buy
Less dependence (though it's changed) on buying stuff as a recreational activity
Less incentive to buy because the sales are NOT like the U.S. where people believe that the more they buy - the more they save.

Most older apartments have a "boidem", a crawl space into which you can fit Pesach dishes or suitcases, but these days I think people are using that crawl space for air conditioning ducts - so even that option is pared down.

NEAT FREAKS: The traditional Sfardim (Moroccan, Tunisian, Libyan) you could eat off their floors practically any time of day. Yemenites: even cleaner. Traditional Yekkies and Polish: totally clean. I don't know anything about Israeli Chassidim but I am guessing they were traditionally very clean as well. My best cleaning I learned from the Moroccan and Tunesian and Yemenite ladies I taught while I was in the army. Traditional ladies get up at 5 am or so to clean the house before everyone else gets up, and clean it a few times during the day and again before everyone goes to sleep. LOL. I kid you not! I once stayed next to an old Yemenite lady who looked over 100 years old (all that cleaning). She would have the water from her washer drain into buckets and she would then rinse down her outside, tiled courtyard - a few times a week! When I offered to do it for her, she was insulted.
Their pots gleam, their linens are stacked like soldiers in the closet, their laundry done before the user can toss it on the floor. They know how to wield an iron. Sadly, among those who I taught, not many could read.
With education, I believe, comes less attention to these details. Who wants to clean when you can read a book?


I'm sorry, I know this is an old thread, but this was just very offensive and I felt I had to answer.

My Moroccan mother has a post doctoral education and her home is this clean. My grandmother also has a college degree and her home is this clean.

And my home, and the homes of my friends in their 20s and 30s, are as clean as our mothers' homes were when they had young children. The younger generation hasn't stopped cleaning because we are educated! We just have young children who don't clean up after themselves well, yet.

It's not magic. It's a lifestyle that everyone in the family participates in the old fashioned way; hard work and good habits. When you are reading a book and interrupt in the middle, you fold the page and put it on the shelf. When you finish your meal, you clean up the kitchen. When you move something out of it's place, you put it back. My 2 year old cleans. Not well, but she's learning. She sees everyone else do it.

Don't assume that Sephardic women are taking care of our families because we are too stupid and backwards to do anything else with our lives. We are doing it because it is important.
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amother
Wine


 

Post Sun, Jul 24 2016, 5:24 pm
Amothher beige, please teach me how
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amother
Azure


 

Post Sun, Jul 24 2016, 7:00 pm
How to clean a bathroom?

How to pick up after children?

How to wash dishes?

How to do laundry?

There are tutorials on You Tube for everything.

Maybe find a good balabusta and follow her around a bit.
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Zus




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 1:42 am
Stupid has nothing to do with it.
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amother
Coffee


 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 3:12 am
My yementie MIL (nearing 70) has a spotless home. It used to be even more spotless when she was younger. She used to iron the underwear, that type of thing. But even today it gleams, and she cooks real meals daily, and she definitely knows how to read. She has a degree and worked most of her life.

Her dd also has a sparklinng home, although she has lots of kids running around.
Both MIL, SIL and other women I know of that type (the clean crazy) invest a good part of their lives concentrating on the state of the home. If I ask them 'how are you', they won't tell me about what happened at work, or who they met for coffee, but how much time they spent folding laundry that day. Incidentally, many of these women also have an ozeret at least once a week, but they still spend hours daily in upkeep.

A clean house isn't magic, especially with kids. These women tend to be more spartan in accumulating stuff, and Israelis in general tend to favor modern minimilastic decor which means less dusty accessories. But ultimately they spend A LOT of time cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

My dds have friends whose mothers do actually get up at 5 am to do sponja.
My observation with many of these women is that they are very high strung about the house. They yell, they push everyone to participate. There's a constant tension that work needs to be done.
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Zus




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 3:22 am
amother wrote:

A clean house isn't magic, especially with kids. These women tend to be more spartan in accumulating stuff, and Israelis in general tend to favor modern minimilastic decor which means less dusty accessories. But ultimately they spend A LOT of time cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

My dds have friends whose mothers do actually get up at 5 am to do sponja.
My observation with many of these women is that they are very high strung about the house. They yell, they push everyone to participate. There's a constant tension that work needs to be done.


See, I'm not sure I'd want to be that way. I like a clean and neat house just as much as anyone, but certainly not at all cost. I'm not sure it'd be worth it to work myself into an early grave to get up at 5 am to do sponja, or direct all my energy into making everyone else clean to my standards. I'm not sure that's all worth it. IMO nothing will happen if the floor isn't sponjaed daily.
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mazal555




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 10:32 am
Zus wrote:
See, I'm not sure I'd want to be that way. I like a clean and neat house just as much as anyone, but certainly not at all cost. I'm not sure it'd be worth it to work myself into an early grave to get up at 5 am to do sponja, or direct all my energy into making everyone else clean to my standards. I'm not sure that's all worth it. IMO nothing will happen if the floor isn't sponjaed daily.


Yeah, but it's also a free gym with motivation. If 70 year old women are doing it, obviously it doesn't lead to an early grave.

How many people pay a cleaning lady and then pay a gym membership?
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amother
Beige


 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 10:33 am
amother wrote:
Amothher beige, please teach me how


How to what?
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amother
Coffee


 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 12:25 pm
mazal555 wrote:
Yeah, but it's also a free gym with motivation. If 70 year old women are doing it, obviously it doesn't lead to an early grave.

How many people pay a cleaning lady and then pay a gym membership?


It's a lot more demanding than a gym. These women are moving around cleaning 24/7. Of course it's not an intense workout but they are doing it ALL DAY LONG.
I'm sure it's healthier for your body to be moving around the house all day long rather than watching TV or reading a book. However, I am just not willing to dedicate my focus an entire day every single day to cleaning.

BTW both my MIL and SIL have very large homes by Israeli standards and they still manage to keep them in tip top shape. (upthread someone said this is only possible with small apartments).
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amother
Coffee


 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 12:27 pm
amother wrote:
How to what?


How to keep the house clean I assume.

It's pretty simple. You spend a lot of time cleaning it. Sure there are shortcuts and things you can do to be more efficient, but bottom line is if you want a very clean house you need to spend hours daily cleaning it.
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Jeanette




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 25 2016, 1:00 pm
There's no need to be defensive. As long as your house is not disgusting it's really up to you how clean you want it and how much time you want to devote to housework. I don't think the state of your house says anything about your devotion to your family. I keep my home to a basic standard of cleanliness, I'm not embarrassed to have people walk in but nobody will be exclaiming about the sparkling floors. And that's ok with me.

But when we lived in a tiny apartment it was impossible to keep clean, and I'm not a big hoarder. I tried to figure out the secret of how to have 10 ppl live comfortably in a tiny space but it never worked for me. B"H we were able to move.
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