Queensland woman teaches housework with online training program
This new mum found she couldn’t do “very simple things” to keep the house in order. Now she’s teaching others what she learned.
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Velvet Garvey from Noosa had a rude shock when her first baby came.
After focusing on her career rather than the home for most of her adult life, Ms Garvey was unprepared when it came to managing the housework.
The new mother turned to the internet to upskill herself so she could learn how to do the housework while juggling having a newborn at home.
After learning the new skills, it made her wonder how others, particularly men, cope with learning the same things.
Ms Garvey set up an online training platform called Train My Mate to share her knowledge and help others learn how to do more around the house.
Described as “a training platform that teaches men how to do the everyday chores that go into running a home”, Train My Mate offers “hands-on, practical online lessons” that promise to “upskill you quickly from the comfort of your phone”.
Ms Garvey believes it can also help with relationship problems.
“No more fighting. No more nagging,” she says on the Facebook page.
In the first course, ‘Laundry Basics For Men – How To Wash and Dry Your Stuff’, viewers are given a 15-minute video showing them the basics on how to do the laundry, including “collecting dirty washing, to washing, to drying”.
“I definitely think this could be the solution to a lot of marriage problems,” Ms Garvey told 7 News.
“If anybody’s having friction, if they’re having regular fights about housework, it is so much easier to take a 15-minute course and just get on and do that housework, than to argue about it,” the Facebook page states.
The course costs $19.95 and gift certificates are available.
“Got a mate who needs to work on his laundry technique? Give him the gift of laundry lessons!” the Facebook page says.
Ms Garvey said it’s usually the women in a man’s life who are “expected to teach him how to do housework” – including his mother and partner.
But she admits she herself “hadn’t given housework much thought” and “didn’t know how to do very simple things”.
“I felt like that traditional man in my relationship,” she said.
Her research uncovered an alarming statistic – that around 75 per cent of women have “turned off” their partners over housework, which is the cause for many relationship problems.
Ms Garvey believes the problem has been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic with partners being forced to spend more time together at home.
“It’s clear from the data and conversations with women, housework is an issue in a lot of relationships,” she said.
Ms Garvey said she was “shocked” and said it “runs deeper than the occasional argument”.
She added that people are “actually falling out of love with their partners” over the housework dilemma.
Originally published as Queensland woman teaches housework with online training program