International Conference on Excellence in the Home
Sustainable Living Professional Approaches to Housework
March 17-18, 2011
The Grocers Hall, London EC2R 8AD

As an international and interdisciplinary event the 2011 Excellence in the Home conference, Sustainable Living: Professional Approaches to Housework, aims to deepen our knowledge about how developing and improving professional approaches to housework can enhance the wellbeing of present and future generations.

A sustainable society needs well-rounded people whose fundamental development depends to a great extent on how work of their home is done competently and with awareness of sustainable practices. This work might be thought of as routine, but it is a core occupation central to a sustainable human development.

Furthermore, people’s behavior at home, and particularly the way they do housework, has a continuous but underestimated, impact on society physically (e.g., energy consumption and waste production) as well as culturally and educationally (e.g., new generations learning and adopting sustainable practices).

In light of this, HRF proposes that the individual and familial sphere of work at home is the necessary first step toward enacting larger social change. The conference, then, will discuss how promoting expertise and excellence in training in all the occupations related to work in the home can improve the human environment and quality of life for present and future generations.

Background
Previous Excellence in the Home conferences organized by HRF have brought together anthropologists, sociologists, doctors, economists, architects, urban planners, and educators whose work shows the link between the home and quality of life for human beings. What we eat, basic hygiene and health care, the quality of our home surroundings, our space and the way we use our time at home are all fundamental to our overall development and the fulfillment of our individual potential. Hence housework is much more than a set of tasks (laundry, cooking, cleaning, organizing). It is a system of values in which science, art, psychology, culture, skills, a capacity for management all play a part and a service that takes each individual into account. It looks after an individual’s very personal and intimate environment and supports the workings of their family.  Interaction with others in the house helps us learn the basic ethical rules of social exchange so that the home is also the basis of socialization in a society.