Clean living

Is it time for some quieter, simpler self-care, asks the perpetually pleasure-seeking Harriet Minter

Can I tell you a secret? I’m not a big fan of baths. No, this isn’t me confessing that I don’t wash (although a few weeks ago a man on a dating site told me a key criteria for him was ‘a high sense of hygiene’ and unmatched me when I admitted there are days I prefer the au naturel approach). Staying on top of cleanliness is one thing, but wallowing in a bath for hours on end? No thanks.

I tell you this because I was discussing this fact with my therapist the other day and, in response, she told me something that I haven’t quite gotten over. I was talking about a friend who rewards herself for writing 1,000 words with an hour of her favourite TV programme. I am in awe of her. I have never yet met a box set that I wouldn’t happily abandon three nights of sleep just to finish. Nor have I ever been able to scroll through Instagram for an allotted five minutes without waking up from my social media trance four hours later. But those things that are nice enough but not fully engaging, I just feel a bit meh about. Baths fall firmly into the meh category. All well and good, sometimes nice even, but after ten minutes, I’ve had enough.

‘Perhaps,’ my therapist said in the careful tone she uses when she knows she’s about to say something that will destroy a belief that I’ve been living my life by for 40 years, ‘not everything has to be so wonderful you feel like you never want it to stop. Maybe sometimes it’s okay to do the things that are a bit dull and easy to stop, just because doing them will be good for you.’

I love a bit of self-care culture, but I wonder if we’ve spent so long asking, ‘Does this bring you joy’ that we’ve forgotten to ask, ‘Does not doing this mean you’re going to end up a snivelling wreck in three to five working days?’ And could it actually be quite useful to have a few acts of self-care under your belt that don’t really interest you, so mean you won’t lose your entire day to them, but will give you a brief break from the difficult thing you’re doing right now?

If you’ve read this column for a few years now you’ll know I am a big proponent of chasing pleasure. I am here for the sensuality of a piece of chocolate melting in your mouth, for the feel of your hair being blown around by the wind, and for demanding that your lover devote themselves entirely to your satisfaction for hours on end. I believe in the power of pleasure to liberate and uplift women. And, yet, perhaps in all of this there is a place for simple, quiet acts of service. Those little chores, done not because they bring pleasure but because, by doing them, we care for ourselves. Even when

we don’t want to.