Our house has been kind of disgusting for awhile now. I've been putting off cleaning, since I thought we were moving this weekend and I'd need to clean like a little mofo next week, but our move date has now been pushed back to next weekend and I couldn't take it anymore. So when I got home from work tonight I donned my bleach-marked sweatpants (I'm so bad about getting cleaning stuff on my clothes), fired up my mp3 player, and got to work. I wouldn't call the house clean, exactly, but the bathrooms are at least. And the carpets upstairs are sort of vacuumed. I think our vacuum cleaner is shot. The hose part works fine, but the bottom part that actually vacuums carpets and stuff doesn't appear to work anymore. It doesn't appear to be clogged or anything, it just sucks. Or, more accurately, it does not suck. This is the second vacuum we've gone through in 6 1/2 years. Either we're abnormally rough on our vacuum cleaners, or we need to bite the bullet and splurge for at least the second-least expensive vacuum at Walmart. The point of this story is that I pretended to vacuum the carpets, then went back over them with the hose to at least suck up the noticeable stuff. Which included a cockroach graveyard we unearthed when moving crap out of the office. I'm telling you, we live in filth.
The downstairs is a total disaster area. At least the upstairs is now clean and shows very little evidence of the move, other than the nearly empty office. Downstairs, though, looks like all of our closets and cabinets threw up. And then all the stuff that came out fell in love and made babies. And invited their friends, the cardboard boxes from the garage, over to visit. It's sort of horrific. Oh, and the dishwasher needs to be unloaded, there's a load of laundry in the dryer waiting to be folded, and the kitchen sink needs to be scrubbed. Yet here I sit, listening to "Rock Lobster" and typing. Hell, it's not like that part of the mess is going anywhere.
While cleaning I was musing on one of the little things that I think makes my marriage happier: we thank each other for doing chores around the house. I generally get stuck with most of the inside cleaning, though Alfred vacuums maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the time. He refuses to touch the bathrooms. I do more of the laundry, we split the dishes fairly evenly. He does most of the outside stuff, like mowing the lawn and cleaning branches off the roof. Clearly I think I do more, partially because our lawn gets mowed about twice a year and cleaning the tile in the upstairs shower sucks more than I can say. So when he does stuff around the house, I try to make sure to thank him, and he usually thanks me too. Of course we don't always remember, but I'm definitely very good about reminding him to thank me. Now, I'm only part of one marriage, but I feel like in other relationships chores may just be seen as jobs that need to be done to keep things running smoothly, not anything deserving of thanks every single time they happen. But I could be wrong. So, I pose a question for my cohabiting readers: do you and your significant other thank each other for doing daily chores? I'm quite curious.
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4 comments:
Whew! I'm tired just reading your post. Part II of your post, I thank dad for everything he does, I get a rare thank you, I kind of hoped he would catch on from my habit of thanking him, but...well...you know dad. Sublety doesn't work well with him. Is that how you spell sublety? I spelled checked and it said ok. Anyway, I know he appreciates what I do but you are right, it's always nice to hear. After all, you thank friends so why not your spouse?
No, we don't say thank you. Not unless it's something out of the ordinary. What happened to the move date?
We definitely thank each other! I like to positively reinforce, although every time I thank him J says I don't have to. But I'm with you, it seems like a nice way to appreciate each other...and since I'm not into cleaning but have to do it anyways because I'm a stupid grown-up, I like to be thanked:)
I agree with Katherine about positive reinforcement. I think I read it in a NY Times article a couple years ago. I'm hoping that by praising him when he does things I like that he will keep doing them. I can't tell if it's working or not.
I don't usually get spontaneous thanks from Ingo, probably because he doesn't even notice if I've cleaned. But if I subtly point out that I've done something, he'll thank me without any prodding. I think men are just unobservant and think that the house cleans itself.
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