When my self-isolation began two weeks ago, I realized I needed to get honest with myself. I was not going to be a person who emerged from quarantine having discovered a new scientific theory or learned a new language. I could try to maintain some semblance of normalcy. I could write. I could cook. And I could accomplish something extra with the additional time at home. I could clean.

As a woman, as a mother, as a feminist, I have a lot of complicated feelings about housework. Part of me thinks that it’s sheer drudgery, mindless and thankless work that I am lucky and privileged enough to be able to outsource. So I do. Except then I feel guilty about outsourcing it, even though I pay my cleaning person fairly, because disrupting the binary of “real” work as men’s work and housework as women’s work should not involve merely relocating the burden of the so-called second shift onto some other woman’s back.

There is also is the small, secret part of me that kind of enjoys housework, the part that subscribes to Better Homes & Gardens and keeps a copy of “Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House” by her bed. I love my house. I love living in it and working in it. I’m happy to take care of it, to keep it tidy and put its rooms in order, even if the work is repetitive and exhausting. But I feel guilt for enjoying the work, because I worry that I’ve succumbed to the old gender constructs about housework being women’s work, or worse, that I’ve taken the bait of lifestyle gurus who’ve gotten rich by rebranding mopping and scrubbing and organizing as fulfilling and even aspirational — and still women’s work.

As I said, it’s complicated.

So this month, after Philadelphia’s mayor sent us all inside, I found myself the tiniest bit grateful that our current circumstances had taken the choice, and thus the conflict and the guilt, out of housework.