“Argument of the Week” is a series written by Brenna Jennings. It will feature the daily domestic battles she gets into with her husband Steve, of which most of us can probably relate. Mike will often decide the closet needs organizing which ends with the closet looking great but all this mess out in our apartment again that I HAVE TO DEAL WITH— so yeah. I get this.
The Situation:
I’d spent the better part of a week hurling myself at my couch over and around a series of obstacles left by Steve’s CD organizing project. My floor looked like a complex training course, with storage bins, jewel cases and huge, black binders stacked everywhere. Saturday’s ambition had become Thursday’s indifference, and I was left to navigate my living room like a boot camp recruit.
My husband will do the laundry and the dishes, he’ll cook, he usually doesn’t flinch when I have to leave him with our seven-year-old for work or sanity, and I know these are qualities I’m lucky to have in a partner. I’m grateful that he’s motivated to take care of things around the house, especially when they’re finished in a timely fashion. Sometimes though, they aren’t, and the disruption can be hard to live with.
Last week Steve decided to clean all of the old food out of our fridge. Something momentous must have happened in the midst of it, because when I came out of my office he was gone and there were no fewer than six containers full of fossilized leftovers sitting next to the sink. I didn’t know whether to call CSI or the EPA, so instead I rinsed out the least gruesome and tossed the rest.
Once in a while, Steve will sort old paperwork that’s collected in our file cabinet. Usually this means he pulls out what we don’t need to save and leaves it stacked precariously on top of the paper shredder. I tiptoe around my office trying not to kick up any sort of breeze for a few days before relenting and finishing the job myself. Sometimes he’ll clean out a closet and leave a heap of Goodwill donations on the dining room table. I’m tempted to make myself a tee shirt that says, “Don’t Worry, I’ll Get That.”
There’s something about clutter and piles and unfinished business that make me almost forget all the good he does around here, just for a minute or two, just in the time it takes me to trip over something, calculate how long it’s been sitting there, and realize that I’m going to be the one to put it away. Add another twenty seconds for cursing under my breath, then apologizing to the dog.
None of us wants to be a nag, so I’ll usually just clean up what Steve hasn’t gotten to and wait wearily for the next project to start, the next pile to materialize, the next task abandoned.
The Confrontation:
One morning after I’d straightened up for the day, Steve decided it was high time he sorted the Tupperware cabinet. “We don’t have lids for half of these! Where do they go?” He was trying to pack his lunch and acting like the first man to experience the agony of mismatched containers. He pulled every last piece of plastic from that cabinet, spread it across the counter, and realized he was running late. Steve left for work and I turned on a bunch of break up songs.
By the time he came home I’d decided to stay married, but I had to let him know his good intentions were putting me in a bad mood.
“Honey, I know you’re trying to take care of things around here but you have got to stop leaving me these messes.”
The Resolution:
Notice I led gently into the complaint, because I know Steve believes he’s helping when he embarks on his projects, and because he means well. He explained that he doesn’t intend to create work for me, he just can’t get to everything he wants to accomplish in a day. He didn’t realize I was so aggravated.
Here’s our new strategy: First, no more spontaneous projects like the sudden onset refrigerator purge. Second, he has to ease off on his to-do list; we don’t need to renovate the bathroom, take the car to the shop and start composting all in the same week. I’ve always respected Steve’s work ethic, but we both agree the next thing he has to organize is his time.
Do you live in a house of half finished projects? Tired of tripping over good intentions? Tell us in comments.
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Read more from Brenna Jennings on Suburban Snapshots.
OMG YES. Your Steve is my Mike. Nothing like coming home from errands to find that while the baby slept, my dear, sweet, helpful husband chose not to fold the pile(s) of laundry on the couch, or empty the dishwasher (all would be incredibly helpful in our day to day life) but instead, chose to clean off a shelf of the pantry, because he was looking for the window alarm sensors. I came home to a (previously clean) island full of stuff I had no idea what to do with when we moved in 2 years ago (and still don’t, but it’s stuff we can’t toss), and a beautifully, empty, shelf in the pantry.
He then went out to mow the lawn when I walked in the door.
“don’t worry, I’ll get that” is right. guess where it went? BACK TO THE PANTRY SHELF. oh, and he did find the window sensors on that shelf. they’re still sitting on the island…..
My husband has to take a break every time he mows the lawn, and that break often lasts for days.
Good in a drought, maybe?
My husband literally “takes out the garbage”… I can tell when I come into the kitchen to find the can, not back in it’s place, rather in the middle of the floor, with no new garbage bag in it…. He also folds the laundry, in the living room, and leaves it there in piles….. lastly, he will clean up the table after dinner, but leave the dirty pots, pans, and random food on the stove….
It is as if you can see into my home! Wow. My husband recently decided he was going to clean out the basement on his day off from work. I came home from the office, our four year old in tow, to find eight years worth of cast aside household furnishings and baby gear sitting in a pile on our living room floor. My husband? Drinking a beer. Well deserved, I recognize, but that knowledge didn’t make the smoke come out of my ears any slower.
my husband is wonderful at starting a project. lets say hanging up new shelves in our sons room. So he gets the shelves bring them in our sons room pick the location and marks on the wall where he is gonna put the shelves. then realizes he needs a screwdriver, goes to the junk drawer to get a screwdriver but find cant one in the junk drawer because it is too cluttered so he decides to clean out the junk drawer. pull everything out of the drawer and starts to sort through it. After collecting all of the loose clips in the drawer he decide that he want to put a few containers in the drawer to try and organize it better. well when he goes looking for containers to put in the drawer, he see that the containers are all mixed up so now it is time to organize the containers. of course at this point the kiddo wants daddy attention and he is tired so he sits down to plays trains with the kiddo and I am left to figure what counter space i should cook on because it is all covered in junk and tupperware.
I’ve lived:
…10 years with a partially finished bathroom (the only bathroom in our house)
…4 years with a partially dug pond in the backyard
…3 years with a partially finished ‘new’ barn
Go big or go home, I guess…