Housework or not

Friday Radio Question of the Day: On a scale of one to ten, 21 percent of people give themselves a 9, for this. What is it?


My husband Niks teased and shamed me into skipping a day of blogging on Friday. I have to admit that I sneaked in a little blog stuff in the evening. I didn't post, but I left a few comments. Not that many. So it's okay. Right?

We all play our little tricks on our roommates I think. Niks does it himself, only he would never admit it. I always cook all of our meals. I always clean up after them too. I gave up on getting any help on that long ago. But once in a while I'll have a meeting or something that I have to do and he'll say that he'll clean up after supper while I'm out.

Then he always sits down and watches TV instead of cleaning up. When he hears the garage door opening on my return, he jumps up and starts loading the dishwasher. The automatic garage opener we have now is so quiet, and his hearing is so bad, that these days he doesn't jump up until I walk inside. That guy. He's a complete time slob. Always tries to act as if he's been busy while I'm out.

His idea of helping with the housework is to lift his feet up so that I can run the vacuum under them. But he's usually not devious.

Now, me, I'm devious. I cover up my goofing off. If I've been on the computer all morning and he's downstairs thinking I'm doing housework upstairs, I'm perfectly capable of quickly scattering some stuff around that will make it look as if I've been doing something more productive than blogging.

Before the computer took so much of my time I had other time-wasters of course. Mostly just reading. Once when I was a stay-at-home mom and had wasted the day, I realized I should do something to make it look as if I had a good reason to be "too tired to cook." I put up the ironing board, drug about 40 little dresses out of the girls' closets and hung them around the room, making it look as if I had been ironing all day. It worked.

One good hint I could give you folks is to start a big job really close to the time your partner will be returning home. That way, you'll still be doing it when he or she gets home. You'll get more credit for the chore that way. Plus, it's possible he or she will pitch in and help. This works better if you have covered the kitchen table with the mess you're making with this chore. You can generally get a restaurant meal out of that.

Any time the spouse is away, stay away from chores that s/he has been nagging you to do. Anything that a spouse has been nagging at you to get done should be done when the spouse is home to see you doing it. Sigh a lot. Bonus points.

Of course, I offer these tips in hopes of helping you have a more harmonious relationship. Would I lie?

Answer to the radio question of the day: Keeping the house clean. Try calling in sick on that one.