Last week my husband and I got into a fight over laundry.
I am not a domestic goddess – I fully admit this, although I love the term and often refer to myself as one. The truth is I am not a goddess of domestication. I am disorganized in home maintenance. My five year old son often helps me find things I can’t find. My mother gives me “helpful tips” (which drives me crazy).
I think my husband thought when I was going to work at home (and umm raise our children) the house would be cleaner. HA! Sadly our house is not cleaner. We used to have a cleaning lady come every 2 weeks, now because of budget we are down to once a month. Yuck.
Ever since my crazy one year old has been roaming our house on foot, I find him looking for the next destruction ” fix” so it is really starting to go downhill and the reduced “professional” cleaning is not helping. Our house has hit an all time low and both my husband and I are looking for someone to blame. Often it is the children we blame but occasionally when things are hectic my husband will give me a hard time and then all hell breaks loose.
So last Tuesday (the day of the morning fight) my day started earlier than usual.
I stay up late most nights working on my business stuff. So when morning hits I have a short fuse until I get my coffee. My husband is also tired and can’t find any clean white t-shirts. It starts with him making minor remarks, I then start making mumbles under my breath, he then starts making progressively more annoying remarks until things come to a head and he is mentioning “Why don’t you do the laundry before you start blogging etc!” That’s when my hockey gloves come off – but I am trying to keep my cool in front of the kids. He leaves for work with both of us mad and not saying much to each other.
Later that day I called my husband and told him I was not impressed. I told him if he wants to give me a performance review that it needs to be done professionally. I asked him if his boss would give him a performance evaluation under these conditions?
Things are back to normal again, he laughed over my performance review comments and I feel better for having aired my dirty laundry. His laundry is still piled up, in a ball on the floor.
Leigh, this sounds just like my house. I laughed out loud when I read about the white t-shirts (a constant complaint of George’s!). Laundry is my biggest problem right now. By the time I finish a load of the kids’ stuff and put it away, their hamper is overflowing again. I can’t keep up. Nevermind the ironing. THANK GOD George has started ironing his own pants and I send his shirts to the cleaners. Are you happy with your cleaning lady? I definitely need some help. The other day George mentioned something about growing up in a spotless home (“I don’t know how my mom did it: our house was always spotless, our clothes clean and ironed and we never ordered out. My mom was awesome”). OK, I’m awesome too. Maybe my house isn’t spotless and there’s tons of laundry piled up and we order out once in awhile, but I spend lots of time with my kids and would rather have Elias say, “My mom was awesome, she read to me and played soccer and spent time with me” than “my mom spent most of her time cleaning”. That said, I better go and see what the munchkins are up to – it’s a little too quiet upstairs!
Hey Leigh…HAHAHAHAHA! I liked your directness…I felt like I was reading — no,”watching” — the whole soap opera. That was funny…and, I certainly can relate. Though, thankfully, since my hubby is more particular on how to divide clothes going into the washing machine and how to meticulously fold laundry as not to need ironing…I gave him the job! It irks me, though, that he would wait till there’s MOUNDS of laundry before he tackles them…or, when, I’m muttering that the kids have no more underwears and socks…HAHAHA. Most times, however, when it comes to laundry, I put my horse’s blinders on. =)
Leigh! I loved this!! It really was an entertaining read, and sounds pretty familiar….although I must confess I have it pretty easy so far with only 1 non-yet-walking-nor-crawling kid and very limited part time work! I dont know how you do it!!
Ha Ha Ha – Kath that’s priceless – your right, it must be a slip because I do refer to my husband as the third child. Right now he wants another child too (we go back and forth on this all the time and I told him he would have to make himself into a zen master (AKA the guy who doesn’t loose his cool in the heat of a child infested moment) and quick – before I would consider more children. The walls feel like they are closing in on me some days so the idea of more kids is slightly overwhelming and it of course would mean MORE LAUNDRY. To be fair to said husband- he does do laundry when asked and sometimes even when not asked.
Ha Ha Ha – Kath that’s priceless – your right, it must be a slip because I do refer to my husband as the third child. Right now he wants another child too (we go back and forth on this all the time and I told him he would have to make himself into a zen master (AKA the guy who doesn’t loose his cool in the heat of a child infested moment) and quick – before I would consider more children. The walls feel like they are closing in on me some days so the idea of more kids is slightly overwhelming and it of course would mean MORE LAUNDRY. To be fair to said husband- he does do laundry when asked and sometimes even when not asked.
Arrrrggh…pet peeve warning!
Okay, here goes: grown-up men DO know how to do laundry. It used to make me absolutely INSANE when my husband would tromp around in the mornings saying, “why don’t I have any clean underwear???” And I would think, “I dunno…maybe because you never WASHED ANY???”
So good for you for leaving his laundry piled up on the floor. In my experience, partners who work outside the home do not understand the tremendous amount of work that goes into working at home. Raising kids, keeping on top of the housework (which is significantly greater when your house isn’t empty 10 hours a day with both partners working outside the home) AND completing your income-generating work. NOT. EASY.
Is it a slip or conscious wording that your bio says you are “mother of two charming boys AND a wonderful world traveling husband”? LOL 😉