My Husband is so Smart
Jan 5th, 2009 by Mrs. Who
I spent most of my Christmas vacation getting the kids’ rooms cleaned. The boys’ room especially. There were clothes all over the place. Clean, dirty, mixed all up.
Goob is the biggest offender. He had stuffed piled everywhere, including the closet where the dirty clothes was piled high into the hanging clean clothes. And he’d never do a whole load of laundry. Oh, no, just what clothes he needed to go to work. And maybe a towel. But that left a huge pile in his closet…which the cat found. And peed on.
So, I got everything cleaned and washed and forbade anyone to leave clothes on the floor EVER again. Well, apparently Goob felt the closet floor wasn’t really floor since you don’t really walk on it.
I picked up clothes again and warned him. And again. The third time I grabbed the clothes, threw them in a bag, and hauled them to my room. I later was bemoaning the events with BR over the phone. I didn’t want dirty clothes in my and BR’s already cluttered room, but I didn’t want to wash them just to have them thrown willy-nilly again on the floor.
BR told me to wash the clothes and do what what we used to do when the kids left toys and game controllers out on the floor: We charged rent for the child to get it back. And if they decided they didn’t want the item back, then they were charged a storage fee.
So, I can pick up the clothes to keep the cat from peeing on them (or me tripping on them in the middle of the night). I’ll clean them, fold them, and then charge a laundry service fee.
I love having a smart husband! I’d completely forgotten about the ‘rental’ and ’storage’ fees. And this way, *I* don’t get bent out of shape about the wall-to-wall clothes. And maybe all the kids will learn to be a little bit more responsible.




