I want a cleaner house. I'd like to be able to go to a bookshelf, as I did all my life before I was married, find a book, read it, and put it back when I'm done.

Instead, the process is: 1) try to move boxes away from bookshelf and locate book. Give up. 2) find similar book under bed. Read. 3) Try to move boxes (or chair full of boxes or computers,) out from in front of bookshelf to put book away. Give up. Consign book to ever-growing avalanche on end table in living room.

He's got an aversion to putting things away. He won't use the wastebasket, either--things are just thrown onto counters or into the sink for ME to sort out. He won't take out the trash. And I think he's almost as afraid of the vacuum cleaner as the cats are.

And currently he's also storing all our camping equipment in the living room because there's a four-foot-tall pile of junk barricading the way to the special area I made in the basement for storing it. The barricade also keeps me from doing the laundry. He can step over a four foot barricade no problem, but I'm five foot even. You see the difficulty.

Dismantle it, you say. Yes, I will, gradually--but I have to be sneaky about it because in that pile are bound to be Essential Important Computer things, and also many Important Papers and Vital Junk Only He Knows Where It Goes. Which means he'll explode if I touch it. So I don't.

I'd like to go to my closet, (which is usually barricaded shut,) select an outfit, and put it on. But since half the time I can't get to closet or dresser, I hide my clothes on the bathroom floor where he'd never think to look for them. Because otherwise I may never see them again.

You see, he'll do laundry. Great, you say? Oh, no. Not great at all. Because only he can step over the big giant pile separating the laundry room from the rest of the house.

So he carries laundry to its doom in our usually flooded, (currently flooded, in fact,) basement.

He washes his clothes, dries 'em, and brings them back up and dresses from the basket, so that dirty and clean clothes look exactly alike--they're both unfolded and overflowing from baskets and strewn across the floor.

My clothes? Well, for those, he reads the tags carefully, bless him, and follows the directions. Sort of. If a shirt says machine wash warm, he'll do it.

the problem is that special care items get VERY special care. A silk blouse that says dry clean only, is usually tossed onto the flooded floor of the basement, buried under dirty towels or pinned under a chair, and left there until I find it.

These same very special care instructions apply to a sweater that says "machine wash, dry flat," a suit that says "dry clean only," or a polyester skirt that says "machine wash knit delicate, dry on delicate setting."

It doesn't matter if I've machine washed the thing on cold and hung it dry for a decade, or if I've been treating it like all the other laundry for years--special care instructions of ANY kind mean you discard, smash, dampen, and mildew the garment, aging it until it's reached its unique and special maturity. At this point it has to be thrown away, usually by me after I find it infested with roly-polies after a year of asking, "honey, have you seen my best job interview suit? I've only worn it once...."

Every three months or so I make a dent in the basement barricades, put things on shelves, run a shop vac, etc....and every time I do, I find another casualty of "special care." The sheer artistry and dedication involved, is enough to bring tears to your eyes.

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Edited by titannia at 06/09/2008 7:10 PM PDT