Is this the cost of convenience?
A story of hardware store self care and the upside of effort.
Some folks find it odd that we bathe our children in a plastic tub.
Not a baby bath.
Not some new-age-eco-capsule.
Just a 1.5’ x 2.5’ heavy duty crate.
Recently, I was chatting with a girlfriend who couldn’t quite get her head around the idea.
“Isn’t it easier for them to just shower?”
“Yes. But sometimes they like a bath.”
“Have you ever considered adding an actual bath?”
“MmmHmm. Too expensive.”
“It just sounds inconvenient.”
This got me thinking, as I too have been known to low-key grumble about the effort of bathing our kids in this way.
Ideally we wouldn’t squeeze growing boys into a vessel designed to hold Christmas decorations.
And there is the nightly dance of climate activism that I find myself performing: to drain or not to drain, that is the question. (Unlike casually removing the plug from a regular bath, the torrent of dumping 40 litres of water down the sink feels viscerally wasteful.)
Yet in the grand scheme of things is it really problematic?
Or has our society become so focused on productivity that even the smallest inconvenience requires rectification.
The buzz words of our time include: declutter, streamline, efficiency, optimisation, routines, automation, in-flow, up-level, bandwidth, actionable insights, strategic processes, systematisation…
I live with a consultant. I know the jargon.
You only need peek in the comments of Instagram’s #SundayReset posts to see how much we laud being efficient. Women who film themselves spending 3 SUNDAY HOURS preparing every meal for the week are met with high-five emojis and comments like: #goals #simplesolutions #thisiseverything
I don’t know about you, but my Kindergarten photo wasn’t underscored by the sentence: “I want to be super productive in the kitchen one day each week.”
We try to organise, outsource, curate and mastermind our way out of the daily inconveniences of being alive.
But at what cost?
Taste and money, for one.
Have you heard about the tearless onions? They came out in Australia late last year but also exist in America, Japan, and the UK.
Apparently, these alliums have been in development for 30 years through a long process of crossbreeding. That means that for almost my ENTIRE LIFE a farmer has worked to reduce the 2 minutes of spicy eyes that we experience when preparing our weekly meals.
What a thought.
What an age we live in.
I dug around a little more to find out the price of progress — 50% more at the checkout and a lot less flavour.
As Yvonne C Lam wrote for an article in The Guardian,
“The diluted cordial of the onion world…They are sweet, inoffensive and free of personality.
Over three decades, humankind has meticulously crossbred out its tearful capabilities. But in doing so we have stripped it of its essential onion-ness. How can we celebrate what we have gained when we have lost so much?
I mourn. But strangely, I cannot cry.”
Is it also possible that we’ve become so effort averse that we’ve systematically removed those parts of our life that keep us tethered to our inherent humanness?
The sun on our backs whilst pegging up a load of laundry…
The conversation shared at the supermarket checkout…
The curiosity of people watching on the local bus.
Sometimes convenience is great.
Sometimes automation makes life more enjoyable.
Sometimes, though, I wonder what we’re really gaining by making everything so easy? Because when I ask around, life still feels pretty hard for most people.
Despite dishwashers, pre-made food, online shopping, and the miraculous advent of the pluggable tub, we don’t seem to have any more free time.
Which makes me wonder if progress is less about having the right system and more about shifting perspectives and reprioritisation.
At book club last Saturday, my friend recounted bathing with a bucket of cold water on a recent work trip to Timor. The icy cold slosh was but a breath of her commentary, which largely skewed to the beautiful nature of the Timorese people.
“The view at this hut was out this world. And the people were the most hospitable you’ll ever meet.”
It must make us ask WHY we create these hyper-efficient processes? To buy ourselves more time to …
Work?
Live vicariously through others’ social media?
Feel bored and untethered?
I’m curious as to why we spend so much time striving for ease. Why we herald “being on top of things” when we really ought exalt “being amongst things”?
There is likely a bell-curve of convenience, where life becomes easy enough that it removes that feeling of drowning, but not so void of effort that we mindlessly fill our time with activities that numb us to the human experience, limit opportunities to build resilience, or render our Bhajia tasteless.
The stoics amongst us may point to Seneca who wrote that “difficulties strengthen the mind as labour does the body,” long before Netflix and UberEats made Friday nights seamless.
So perhaps it is with relief that we can look around at our disarray and remember that we can do Hard Things, that we can muddle through quite happily without post-it notes of motivation, and that the imperfect can turn ideal if we just call it so.
Back to the bath.
After a summer of showers, I decided to treat my kids to a bit of luxury last night. We dusted out the spiders from our plastic storage tub, whisked around a squirt of shampoo in place of bubble bath, my youngest donned a shower cap and played “Fancy Ladies” from Bluey.
And then it was time for my eldest to take the plunge.
He sunk in, long six-year-old grasshopper legs almost tucked under his chin, and sighed with audible contentment.
“This is the life. I’m so happy it’s bath season again.”
Until next time,
Jenn xx
What an amazing reminder to live life 💜