Gary? Annoying? Difficult? Exasperating? No. Because I know he could be worse.
Long ago, I worked with a woman named Phyllis. Phyllis’s boyfriend was, well, exacting. One day during lunch, she asked the crowd of assembled women:
“You all are married. Let me ask you. Do you rotate your husband’s underwear?”
Come to find out, Phyllis had done her boyfriend’s laundry, folded everything INCLUDING THE UNDERWEAR, and tucked it lovingly into his undies drawer. And (deep breath) he complained (close eyes, wave hands vaguely in air) because (shake head, hard) she had placed the “fresh” undies on top of the older unused laundered undies.
I believe we all said, in unison:
“First, you do his laundry?”
I think lunch extended to four hours that day as we tried to raise Phyllis’s consciousness. It was well into the third hour before we even touched on the “rotating” issue. She held firm. “But I need to do his laundry, he doesn’t have time! And if you don’t fold the underwear they don’t fit in the drawer as nicely! And I see his point about rotating the underwear, because then the stuff on top would wear out faster, and he’d eventually have worn out underwear on top on virtually-new underwear -“
“Phyllis! Back UP! Why are you doing his laundry?“
I think about Phyllis whenever Gary starts to annoy me. I mean, sure, he likes the dog food just so, but at least I don’t have to rotate his freaking underwear.
22 responses to “Dealbreaker”
Yeah, I had a come-to-Jesus moment when I was married to Xman. I was in the basement, sorting out his laundry when I thought – WTF? I work as hard as he does, and yet I’m doing his laundry?I went upstairs, handed him his laundry and said, “From now own, we each do our own laundry.” He looked at me like I’d broken his heart.Asshole.
In my house, we take turns with the laundry (although I do all ironing, it’s because I work part time and he works full time, and half of it is mine anyway). He’s happy if I toss wadded undies in his drawer. Laundry has a long history here, which includes one pair pink underwear (my fault), a shrunken dress (his fault) and a shrunken pair of slacks (his fault). Laundry tends to get done by whoever runs out of underwear first. I’ve got enough to go for four weeks.On the other hand, he does 90% of all litterbox duty and usually handles the dishwasher. He does almost all the lawn work because everything out there bites, burns, sticks, pokes, cuts, slices or makes fun of me. I do floors and dusting (in large part because it bothers me and he’ll never notice) and wiping of kitchen (ditto). In the end, it all comes out sort of even, although there are occasional blow ups about “Put your damn garbage IN the garbage can. Not on, not in front of, not near. IN.”
I started doing all the laundry after I asked my “brilliant” husband to please sort everything before I came home from work…and found he had ALL the underwear in one pile, ALL the shirts in another, ALL the pants in another…and so on. To be sure — red and navy mixed in with pastels. The HELL? So much for a joint effort. Please. I can do it faster and better all by myself. Thankfully, he doesn’t ask me to rotate his underwear…because I’d have to smack him if he did. and to his credit, he happily sweeps and mops our hardwood floors…which I find a loathesome, neverending task. So it all comes out (ha!) in the wash.
I did N’s laundry, every single bit of it for the entire time we were married. and I rotated his underwear. Not because he demanded it- I’m sure he could care less and he probably never even noticed. I rotated his underwear because I have issues. I also organize the dark mugs on one side of the cabinet, the light mugs on the other. I made a special space designated (and labeled it as such) for ketchup in the refrigerator. Bare hangers must be evenly aligned by type and size in the laundry room. The list goes on and on…Incidently, one of the things N remarked to me a few months after our divorce: “I never realized, I sure make a LOT of laundry…”
Who knew laundry was such a huge benefit to being single? Thanks for the eye-opener.
Becs – I think I started our marriage doing Gary’s laundry, and he criticized it in some way. But he wasn’t heartbroken. You heartbreaker.Sherri – that sounds like a great division of labor. Gary’s only chore is writing the check for the lawn care guys.But, sometimes he does the dishwasher.ErinG – Ha! And the funniest thing is that you KNOW he did that on purpose so he’d never have to wash.Robin- and yet still you sometimes lose your watch, despite its assigned watch position. And where’s the ketchup spot? I didn’t notice that.Autumn – Oh, Autumn, never do a man’s laundry. Of course, that means being with a man who never washes his pants.
I let the ketchup label go with the divorce. I know where the ketchup goes. N didn’t. Besides, the contents of my fridge now merely consist of to-go condiments and other people’s beer. Cool real estate is not what it used to be.And about the watch- I’m not perfect, I’m just anal. (What a great t-shirt that would make…)
Robin, I wish I could’ve shown you my closet 5 years ago, when I still cared. I carefully hung different types of clothes on different colored hangers. Short sleeved shirts on green hangers. Long sleeved shirts on tan hangers. Pants on blue hangers. Then within each section of clothing type, I’d carefully sort according to the Fashion Gal color code I dutifully memorized 16 years ago. White, tan, brown, yellow, green, blue, pink, red, purple, gray, black. Solids in front of patterns. Seriously, it was beautiful.
Wow, the best I can squeeze out is one load a week. Lights one week, darks the next.Meanwhile, my boyfriend has the washer going every single day. I can’t imagine what all he’s washing in there, but I’m beginning to question our sharing of utilities.
The person who does laundry in our house is the one who gets annoyed with not having clean underwear first. Its an ongoing battle.I do, I admit, fold his underwear, but only because I am OCD and when he just shoves it in the drawer and it doesn’t all fit and then some of it hangs out the front of the drawer I get a little twitchy. Why does it not fit? Because he can’t throw anything away, including the pairs which have more holes than fabric.Its just easier on my nerves to fold it so the drawer closes correctly. and then I don’t have to kill him.
Back when I was newly married to the NowX, I had an epiphany one day over the laundry. Back then we lived with his parents and had to haul our laundry to the laundromat. Great huge garbage bags full. It blew chunks. I did it, he did not. One day I came home lugging great, huge piles of laundry back in the house. NowX was sitting watching the telly. I asked for help. He was in moth-mode, you know where they are drawn to the pretty light but can’t fly away, and did not move. Finally I threw all of it in the floor and yelled, “FUCK THIS SHIT! FROM THIS DAY FORWARD YOU WILL DO YOUR OWN FUCKING LAUNDRY! He did too, for the next 16 years.John has never expected me to do his.
Robin and Caroline – I always start out with those plans. My closet is organized into nice hangers for work clothes, standard plastic blue hangers for weeken wear, white plastic for pajamas. That will last about a week.TasterSpoon – Oh, I bet I know what he has in there. Don’t men have extra uses for socks? MMmmmhmmm.Jenny – I think it’s a good sign your guy hangs on to old underwear. Gary does that, and I think its because he’s loyal to things (and people) he’s intimate with. Zayrini – then, all i have to say is, “Fuck this shit! From this day forward you will feed your own fucking dog!” And moth-mode? That is delectable.
*gasp* You mean you DON’T rotate the underwear? (j/k)I do the laundry because it is easy and we’ve been married for 27+ years and he’s never complained once, even when in the early years his white undies were a lovely shade of Pepto Bismol pink. However, in recent years I just leave his pile of clean clothes and he puts them away – in whatever shape, form or order he desires. 🙂
Sue – I think the key there is “never complained once.”
Folding clothes? Hangers? What are these things you speak of?
I do my husband’s laundry, along with all the rest of it in the house. As I’m folding it, though, I just toss his undies into a pile in front of his dresser. He can put them away, and leave them in the pile; I don’t care. (He always chooses to put them away.)
Pyjamas on HANGERS, Queen??? How bizarre, I’ve never heard of such a thing: pjs are folded and live in the airing cupboard with the sheets and towels, surely. Tch, just when you think you’ve got the hang of someone, they bowl you a googly. In a manner of speaking.
Friend #3 – It appears I let you have the last word since almost exactly one year ago today. Melissa – Wait – your husband has clothes to launder other than his undies? Because that’s all Gary washes, he firmly believes that washing work clothes damages them. He buys more.Big Dot – after some research, I find that “bowl you a googly” is a cricket term meaning what happens when you expect a ball to go one way and it goes the other. St. Louisans, let’s see if we can’t adopt “bowl you a googly” into our speech in the next few weeks.
Queen, try out your new phrase on the S&Ders.
Melissa – Done
The guy I couldn’t ever marry before my husband..rotated his underwear. My husband doesn’t or can’t sleep much so at 4 am he does a load of laundry every day. He also has dinner ready when I get home from my part time job in the evening. I did good.
stljoie – Wow! Dinner ready? When I had a full time job and a part-time job I had to make all our dinners on the weekends. You did do good!