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Considerable effort has been spent, in recent weeks, to combat the clothes monster in our house. Frankly, I got tired of searching for that certain pair of pants at 7am, wondering whether they sat in the crumpled-up dirty garment heap on my bedroom floor, or remained folded in the tower of clean clothes still atop the dryer from last week/month’s washing spree. Admittedly, the laundry was an “us” problem — both of us were equally guilty of instigating the clothes monster into devouring our bed, floor, hallway, bathroom etc. Finally, I just got fed up.

Unfortunately, these new efforts are being consistently thwarted by my loving husband, Mike, who hasn’t yet caught up to speed with the new laundry endeavors. He is still in the regime of “come home, drop tie wherever it falls, peel off clothing one garment at a time and leave each piece in whatever room I happen to be standing in at the time of removal” routine. You might be able to imagine my frustration.

Actually, I don’t mind doing the laundry. In fact, I rather like it except for the sometimes painfully dry skin I get from the lengthy folding sessions. Heavens knows I’m far too anal retentive when it comes to folding, or I’d make Mike do it himself. It also doesn’t bother me that he tears through clothes and discards them in the dirty pile faster than a pubescent girl. It’s OK, he’s a boy — and boys are just “greezier.” What does bugs me, though, is that I ofthen have to listen to his incessantly repetetive, dare I say obnoxious video game music/sound effects while I fold. And he’s the one who’s always complaining that he doesn’t get enough time to do the things he wants to do. Where’s my free time? I’m the one making sure that our cat doesn’t get swallowed up in the menacing pile of dirties that seems to multiply on its own.

He always asks me why I don’t just do the things I want to do when we come home from work… to which I reply that there are too many things to do around the house that I feel obligated to do those things first. If I just did what I felt like doing, we’d be living in filth… and then he’d complain. Maybe I’m being a little fanatical, but I know I’m not my mom, AKA June Cleaver. I’ve mentioned on the weblog once before that she irons my dad’s jeans — that’s fanatical.

I’m not angry, just exasperated. God, if Mike weren’t so adorable, I might consider holding a grudge over it. I just want a little reciprocity for the work I do around here. Is that so much to ask?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 14th, 2004 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.