No More Housework For Me

Doing My Sweetie A Favor

All the while I was employed full-time, I tried to help out around the house as much as I thought I could. I did the yard work, took care of the cars, ironed most of the time and watched the kids when available...but who am I kidding? I didn't do nearly as much as my sweetie did when it came to working around the home. Even though she also worked, sometimes part time and full time when the kids were in school all day, I will readily admit that she did far more than her fair share. In return, I did everything during the summer months, and now that I am the part-timer, I try to do it all as well...except the gardening. I know nothing about flowers, shrubs, bushes, etc. As it turns out, what I thought was a favor to my hard-working mate was actually doing her a disservice. As a result, I hereby vow to do nothing around the house...for her own good.
The BBC reports today on a study done by an organization called Cancer Research that found women who averaged between 16 and 17 hours a week doing housework stood a much better chance of avoiding breast cancer than those who worked, exercised or engaged in other leisure activities!
The study was done on 200,000 women from nine European countries and averaged 6.4 years per woman studying the incidents of breast cancer for those engaged in a variety of activities. While it has been long known that physical activity lessens any woman's risk of breast cancer due to hormonal and metabolic changes, the specific types of activity were never really considered...until now. And this study covers both pre- and post-menopausal women, so everyone gets a benefit.
Pre-menopausal women who did housework (cleaning, washing, dusting, cooking, picking up hubby's dirty underwear) averaged 30% fewer cases of breast cancer over the average 6+ years than women who worked outside the home, exercised, engaged in other activities or a combination of activities!
Post-menopausal women who emphasized household activities had 20% fewer cases of breast cancer than the other groups.
This is definitely ground-breaking information.
My sweetie is going to take off work early tomorrow to get all that cleaning done.
Too bad I did the laundry and mowed the lawn today.