The Rules

Being a housewife was never on my list of goals. However, in 2009, I realized that such a reality wasn’t actually that far off for me. I had the face the fact that I was not cut out for the cut-throat world of corporate America. I also learned that my husband had always wanted a wife who stayed home with the children (this didn’t surface until, after 10 years together, we started to discuss starting a family and he dropped the bombshell that a mother should be home with her children).

I was a forward-thinking college graduate, raised on Oprah and Murphy Brown. Working outside the home was a right for which women before me had fought hard and I wasn’t about to let them down. I wanted to live a life of glamor – of fancy cars and designer handbags; a town home in a big city instead of a big house in the ‘burbs. I was going to do everything differently. In my eyes, my life was too special to be wasted on a boring life of domesticity. That life was fine for my friends and family but it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself.

After a long hard look at my life and the facts that were staring me in the face I realized that my way of doing things wasn’t working - my stress level at the office had made me so ill I was forced to stop working due to constant migraines and my marriage seemed to be one steady string of fights. I decided to try a whole new way…wait…old way, of doing things. I elected to try to live, at least for a time, as a typical old-fashioned housewife. I wanted to see what life would be like if I lived on the opposite side of the spectrum from what I’d always dreamed. I didn’t have much to lose, so why not?


Objective:
I will study the daily “routine” of a typical old-fashioned housewife (AKA a Stepford Wife, as portrayed in Ira Levin’s book, “The Stepford Wives”, with a little added inspiration from famous homemakers like June Cleaver and Donna Reed) and incorporate a new trait/task every week. Eventually I hope to take some of the traits and routines that I enjoyed and incorporate them into my “regular” life. I want to learn how to be more comfortable with domestic tasks and have a greater understanding of the hard work involved in staying at home. I plan to prove that there’s more to being a housewife than what you see on Real Housewives, etc.

I also want to explore the possibility that maybe there is something to the theory that a woman should stay at home and create a warm, loving environment for her husband and children – all the while caring for her appearance and the appearance of her home. Or maybe I’ll learn that working outside the home is necessary to feed a woman’s soul.


Rules:
During this experiment, I plan to completely immerse myself in this project. I will look, talk, walk, behave like a Stepford Wife. Each week I will reveal a Stepford characteristic I’ve observed from reading the book and will detail my attempt to embody the characteristic.

Typically, a Stepford Wife isn’t allowed to have any interests other than the well-being of her home and family. However, in order for me to share the results of this experiment with you, I will have to break that rule. I will adhere to all rules all day, with the exception of one hour in the evening when I will sit down to blog about my activities and thoughts of the day. For the time I write in my blog, I am not a Stepford Wife but an observer.

I look forward to having you along for the ride!