Nesting Alert!

It all started with the innocent task of cleaning my wallet. This two-minute activity which involved tossing old receipts and reorganizing cash in order of denominations had led me to the kitchen where we keep a growing pile of change, because neither of us have a pocket for coins in our wallets.

The next thing I knew I was categorizing medication alphabetically and checking expiry dates on random food in the closets. When my husband walked in, he found me sitting on the kitchen counter intensely focused on cleaning the screw cap part of the ketchup bottles and arranging the bottles by height, like a school line up. He sort of always “finds” me in these weird moods. Staring at the stacks of coins, categorized by country, he thought to himself: “What happened to her?”

Domestic demands happened! That’s what. You have to clean after yourself and then after the man. The Man, (a very strange species) does not appreciate the alarm and hysterics caused by finding articles of clothing vertically dropped in the middle of the room, accordion-style. Like a lone roundabout, waiting for a network of roads to happen, perhaps some jeans to lead you to the T-shirt and then a scarf highway to the bed. Now that’s fine if we’re monkeys. But we just bought a beige canvas hamper yesterday! Together! And we both admired its ingenious talent at concealing piles of laundry. What has changed? Are you not speaking to the hamper today? Did you have a falling out?

According to Dr. Laura, I should just tell him kindly that I need his help keeping the house clean and that I’d appreciate he puts things in the right place and then give him a kiss and a hug, bake him brownies and make him some hot chocolate.

That’s just ridiculous. Dr. Farah says to pick up the fiendish item and yell as loud as possible. “I’m throwing it in the garbage!” and then burn it in the garden for all the neighbors to see. That should drive the point home after 65 pleasant requests accompanied with smiles and pats on the back.

(I think he knows I’m writing about him, because he just told me he was going to organize the nightmare table that I’ve been begging him to clean! And then he's going to fix that shelf for me that I wanted up for the past month. Praise the lord, it’s a miracle!)

And so after weighing the pros and cons, I decide not to shame him publicly in the compound, but to try and lovingly understand the shortcomings of men in the household and not hold this against him. So I drop it in the hamper myself and leave a yellow post-it note in its place on the floor.

It reads:

Dear tenant,

It has been noted lately that many things are being dropped here, that do not belong. Please be advised that this is NOT the hamper. To reach the hamper, kindly proceed straight and take the first left turn. Opening hours: All bloody day long.

Further articles of clothing dropped here, will be mercilessly burned at the stake as the witches were in Salem.

Yours truly,

The Carpet.

He never acknowledged the note. But I did notice that things were not thrown willy nilly around the room anymore like a bar fight had broken out. I also noticed that since we hired Emily, our domestic chief of operations, I'm not as evil, as when I was doing everything myself.

And so the moral of the story is: Get a third party to clean your house, they won’t take it personally, because they’re getting paid for it, and it’ll keep your marriage pleasant.

Everyone’s happy.