A thought that occurs to me a lot while living alone in a small apartment: I'm the only person responsible for myself. It comes up when I hear about men in straight cohabitating couples do less than half of the housework. I'm not here to deny that. I'm here to say that people who live alone do all of the housework. I do all of the cooking, all of the dishes, all of the tidying up, all of the cleaning of surfaces, all of the laundry, and most of the maintenance.
(I did hire a handyman for 4 hours to do some random things like help remove my stuck ceiling light covers [which I had to finally accept was a two-person operation], install a light switch and switch the direction of the door on my fridge. Money well spent! I do also hire a cleaner to do the surfaces once in a blue moon [before every long trip so that I come back to a clean abode].)
Again, this doesn't deny or erase a truth about how much men do around the house when they live with others. I'll tap that sign again if you bring it up.
I resent some of it, yeah. It's not about having to do it in the first place (OK, yes it is), but doing exactly half of the housework would be a measurable improvement in my life. At least I don't mind it more often than I resent it. After all, it's nice to do something that doesn't require a lot of brain energy. And it's the time I can listen to a podcast or an audiobook (not possible for me while having to think). And whenever I think "I have nobody to bring home, so why am I doing this?" I try to remember that the answer is "I bring myself home almost every day."
I don't do any of the shopping, other than clicking a bunch to get the meal kit orders scheduled weeks in advance. I can't stand shopping, for anything, really. All parts of the process are not good, and I don't even like online shopping that much. Meal kits got me into cooking about 10 years ago, and I continue to marvel at how good the meals I make are (some being bland, but none ever being bad). Every now and then I'll make something from scratch, but months and months will go by. I thought about what it would take to level up, and it would have to be an in-person course.
About a year ago, maybe longer, I gave up using my oven for anything other than storage. It's either air frying for roasting or picking an alternative method to cook something. I don't make any desserts or anything like that. I haven't used my slow cooker in years, and I only use my Instant Pot for making rice (it's kind of awesome, though overpriced if I'm just using it for one function).
It feels like my instincts are good after the amount of experience I have now. The recipes I have seem to want me to overcook things, so I only do the bare minimum in terms of time, then let other processes do the cooking. Meat cooks when the sauce it's in is simmering, right? Stuff like that.
The recipes also call for "While [x] is cooking, do [y]" but I can't multitask, so I do all of my cooking sequentially. Meals take about an hour to make, which feels like too long. I've experienced joy when cooking with people, and it really does halve the time. I miss that about cohabitating with somebody.