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Let’s just call a spade a spade here and admit that some of the um…menfolk among us are less than their sparkling best when it comes to tidying up around the house.
In fairness, I am not a clean freak, in that I am not actually into cleaning. However this is trumped by the fact that I am also not into having to trip over six size XL men’s jackets on the floor on my way into the house. And so I pick them up. I only nag every 11th time or so.
Maybe love means never having to say “Oh my God you are KILLING ME with the jacket on the floor thing.”
This is not a condemnation of all men. In fact, Jim recently made me swoon more than a little, what with his admirable fitted sheet folding skills and excellent taste in early 90s alternative rock.
As for the guy I call the father of my children, he is another story. He is delightful in any number of ways, but he also displays some bizarre genetic imperative to leave his boxers on the bathroom towel rack, coffee grinds in the sink, empty milk containers on top of the trash can because evidently stepping on the foot pedal to open it is sooooo haaaaard. There is also a pattern of leaving dirty socks around the living room, like a wolf marking his territory with his scent.
Some things (like the jackets) I let go because it’s just easier, and then, some things, for whatever reason, make me nuts.
One of those is the use-or better, misuse-of the clothes hamper.
Call me crazy but when there is plenty of room left in the hamper, there is no reasonable explanation for clothes deposited on the floor next to the hamper.
Exhibit A
I don’t care how tired you are at the end of the day, if you have the energy to pick up a remote control and click over to SportsCenter, you have the energy to lift the top off a hamper.
Like so.
Exhibit B
And deposit your soiled clothing inside.
Sigh.
Please tell me I’m not alone here. What’s the slob factor in your house? Is there any particular situation that drives you up a wall too?
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Whiskers in the sink. Just rinse them down!! By the time I get to them I have to scrub. Bleh
When did you take up with my husband??
Seriously, my husband can clean circles around me when he wants to. Operative phrase: when he wants to. Which is usually not ever. His garage is neat, his cars are neat, his desk is neat…the rest of the house when left to him? Not so much. What is the chromosome they are missing that doesn’t let them see the goop on the counter that could be easily swished away with a rag? Like St, by the time I get to it, I have to scrub!
Also, not rinsing off the dishes before going into the dishwasher, thus enabling our crappy dishwasher to redistribute the food from some dishes onto other dishes, then drying it onto them in a hard crusty mess. I tell my husband it is a good thing he is so handsome and produces beautiful children, because otherwise? Not a jury in the country would convict me…
My boyfriend goes one step further… he rests his clothes on the edge of the hamper. There’s not even a lid for him to take off. Why does he leave them on the edge? No one knows.
St I’m so with you on the whiskers thing. I’m convinced he has some sort of retinal abnormality that keeps him from actually seeing them.
But Missie, at this very moment, Nate is in the kitchen rewashing some dishes I (claimed to have) washed the other night. So I suppose that point goes to him.
I think it depends on the guy’s parents. if they were always picking up after him, he never learned to do it himself. if they never picked up after him (or themselves) they may have been poor example. if they kicked his butt once in awhile and taught him some responsibility, chances are he’s amenable to change (sounds like yours is?).
Sadly, mine knows how to do domestic chores - often better and faster than I can do them myself - but he chooses not to exercise these skills. Instead he’ll walk past the overflowing garbage can or the laundry basket full of socks that’s been there for a week. And when I finally break down and do it myself? He says, “I was going to get that!” Arrrgh!!!
Um. I’m a lucky woman, because my husband does his own laundry. He has two laundry baskets, and I assume one is for clean and one is for dirty. I don’t know, it’s his system. All I know is that for at least 8 years now i haven’t done his laundry. Mostly that’s so that, as he puts it, if he’s out of underwear or socks, he’s mad at himself and not at me. It makes for a happy marriage.
Know what else makes for a happy marriage? A Rug Doctor. Seriously, it saved our marriage.
Ha ha! Exhibit A looks like what I leave in our bedroom, but I have a method to my madness. I do all the laundry, and the seemingly unorganized piles are actually sorted laundry. So all I have to do is grab the appropriate pile and run down to the washer.
Or at least that’s what I tell my wife when she gets home and sees laundry all over the ground.
It would be nice if my cats would clean up after themselves.
Because I am single and live alone, unfortunately, I have no one to blame if things get messy.
Karen, if you’re ever renting out your husband say the word. The Rug Doctor I can probably find on my own.
Oh my, I’m not perfect… but I believe my husband chooses not to see…
if he spills something and remembers to clean he can do it 10 times and still will be dirt, it is like a pretend thing or like a child… I ask him how come he does not see things.. and ask him to wear his glasses, he replies saying they’re just for reading!
Our laundry room is in the basement, so we built a laundry chute. All my husband has to do is open a closet door and throw his laundry on the “floor”. VERY cool.
OldBam that is absolutely brilliant. Sadly I’m in a NYC apartment where the laundry is three floors up. We’d have to not only break through a few other apartments to install a chute, we’d have to defy gravity. Maybe a pneumatic laundry tube?