Saving Time

by Jenny Odell

a lecture in Montreal in the 1990s, she gives the example of Cathy, one of her constituents: Cathy, a young, middle-class housewife, spends her days preparing food, setting the table, serving meals, clearing food and dishes from the table, washing dishes, ironing, keeping an eye on and playing with the children, dressing her children, disciplining children, taking the children to daycare or to school, disposing of garbage, dusting, gathering clothes for the washing, doing the laundry, going to the gas station and the supermarket, repairing household items, making beds, paying bills, sewing or mending or knitting, talking with the door-to-door salespeople, cutting the grass, weeding, answering the telephone, vacuuming, sweeping and washing the floors, shoveling snow, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, and putting her children to bed. Then the punch line: “Cathy has to face the fact that she fills her time in a totally unproductive manner. She too is economically inactive, and economists record her as unoccupied.” The joke is about a mistranslation, a clash of languages, and the values assigned (or not) by those languages.