posted
I think that you've mentioned that saying before. Baking I'm actually not too bad at. I have precise measurements that I do and know exactly when to put them in and how long the cake or cookies will cook for.
Your pantry actually sounds a lot like ours. And therein lies the problem. I don't see "meals" I see "items" like I said before. I can't just visualize a meal together as is clearly easy for you, since you just gave two examples. You think it is easy. It is for Steve too, for me it is extremely difficult!
The one exception is the veggies. I loathe canned veggies. They have to be frozen or I won't eat them. Steve also has the extensive selection of spices. The problem is that I don't know when to put in what. You can't do it precisely like chemistry.
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Hehe, well I understand about the canned veggies, hence a really limited selection of them. Frozen is better, but fresh from the Farmer's Market is best.
Herbs and Spices: Here's an easy way to learn them. Take an herb/spice out of the pantry and sprinkle a little bit on a saltine cracker. Now you know what it will taste like (since most of us know what a saltine tastes like).
Here are some basic rules for using them: Basil goes great with any tomatoes, beef and eggs. Parsley goes with everything but ice cream. Oregano is good for tomatoes, beef and sausage. Dill is best with fish or eggs. Ground Cumin gives a nice smoky taste to stews and chili. Chile Powder is about darned useless. Paprika is best as a garnish or in vegetable soups. Marjoram is like Oregano grew up and got personality. Nutmeg is great in baking, but also fabulous in cream sauces. (And grate it yourself). Cinnamon is best in traditional uses and a small amount can take the acidity out of tomatoes. Savory is good in any slow-cooked foods and great in scrambled eggs. Curry, heck I dunno, but it wreaks havoc on my digestive system. Celery seed is great in soups and tuna salads. Tarragon is good with fish and any dish using Mayo. Mix and match, be creative.
Also, if you do find yourself cooking up a veggie out of a can, you can perk up the taste by adding in a tiny dash of vinegar or lemon juice. Canning and pressure cooking both reduce the acidity in foods, sometimes muting the flavors. This helps put it back.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Banna, you sound like a great candidate for a great recipe collection! There are tons of sites on the web where you can enter what you've got in the cupboard and have it spit out a meal that uses those ingredients. Or you can just browse through categories that contain things that you might want to eat that night, and stop when you see something that sounds good.
I certainly don't understand how some people can just "improvise" an amazing meal, especially with lots of crazy spices. Recipes are my friends!
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Wow, I thought I knew my spices, but I learned several interesting things. Thanks, Sopwith!
quote: Marjoram is like Oregano grew up and got personality.
Marjoram is actually one of my favorite spices, but I never thought of it that way!
I also believe in a well-stocked cupboard, although my staples vary somewhat from yours. I won't eat canned veggies (except baby corn, olives, heart of palm, and artichoke bottoms), just frozen or fresh. I do tend to have several pounds of frozen veggies at any time. And you need way more tuna!!!
Heck, it takes 3-4 cans (the 6 oz ones) to make our favorite ready-in-10-minutes-or-less supper. We call it Tuna 'n Salad. Drain 3-4 cans tuna. Mix with salad dressing of choice (I recommend ranch, creamy Italian, or sweet-and-sour) OR light mayo and some spices. Add two or three bags of prepacked salad. Mix. Serve with bread. (In pitas or wrapped in tortillas is nice; so is a crusty bread on the side.)
The other quick-fixer we love can be tossed in a crockpot in less than five minutes, but needs to cook for a while. It's great for "Uh-oh, need to leave in a few minutes, will be gone all day, what are we eating tonight???" times. Pour 1-2 cups raw rice (I prefer brown or red or wild; do NOT use instant or parboiled -- it'll turn to mush) into crock pot. Add frozen (or fresh) chicken (or turkey) pieces of choice (I like skinless chicken thighs, but any pieces will work), about 1-2 pounds worth. Pour over one jar (12 oz.) salsa OR spicy tomato sauce. Add 2-3 jars worth of water (depending on type of rice and amount). Top with 1-2 c. of frozen corn. Cook 7-8 hrs on low (4-5 hrs on high). We call it Fiesta Chicken, and it's fast (rice, freezer, jar, water, freezer, DONE) to get ready in the morning.
Oh, and since I rarely measure anything when I cook, all measurements are my best guess -- but a bit more or less should be fine anyway.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Buy a 2-3 pound chuck roast (look for good marbling)
Sprinkle pot roast with Kosher salt and cracked black pepper. Brown in uncovered pressure cooker with 2 tsp. of olive oil. Make sure to brown all sides and scrape at bottom of pan to free up dark matter stuck to pan (Mayard principal remainders... tons of flavor.)
Dump in on top of roast: 3 small potatoes, halved; a handful of peeled baby carrots; one medium onion, peeled and halved; 2 cloves of garlic; five or six dashes of Worchestershire sauce; 2 bay leaves; a sprinkle of parsley; a dash of savory; 1 cup of tap water; 1/2 cup of Port wine (Coca-Cola may be substituted... trust me, it's great). Cover and set up pressure cooking rig. Bring heat up to Medium High until pressure relief begins to jiggle. Cut back heat to the warm side of medium (pressure relief should jiggle on its own 2-3 times a minute) and set timer for 23 minutes.
While that works its magic. Preheat oven and prepare a pan of biscuits. Whop a can of them if ya must, but if not, get a bag of self-rising flour (King Arthur is great) and follow the directions. Put biscuits in oven with time enough to allow pot roast to finish five minutes ahead of the bread.
Quickly cool down pressure cooker when timer goes off (put cooker under running cold water until it whoooshes) and then remove pressure rig and lid.
Place pot roast on carving board and cover with small sheet of tin foil. Let the beef rest for a few minutes as you prepare gravy. Place vegetables in separate bowl and leave liquid in the cooker.
Return cooker to the stove and crank the heat back to medium high. Stir liquid around a bit and deglaze bottom of cooker by scraping at anything that sticks. Take 2 tsps of cornstarch and mix into a small glass of cold water. When liquid in pot begins to boil, dump in the cornstarch slurry. Stir like mad for a moment and let it come back to a boil. Immediately remove from heat.
Pull the biscuits out, cut the pot roast (which will be tender enough to fall apart) and prepare each plate with slices of beef highlighted with gravy, a few of the veggies and a nice hot biscuit.
One hour is tops on this.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
During our first year of marriage, Andrew and I had to deal with fertility treatments, my mother's brain tumor, 3 job changes, moving from Queens to Richmond, and losing the baby we had gone through so much to conceive. Household chores were the last thing on our minds.
Plus, we had already worked it out. We lived together for 5 months before we got married. I graduated from college in May and the wedding was November 5th. It made no sense to try to find housing for 5 months in New York City and then have to move again. However, I would not have lived with him if we hadn't been engaged and if we hadn't been living in NYC.
Andrew is a slob and I am a neat freak. This actually works out well for us, because I like things done a certain way and I never believe that anyone else can do them properly. I do all the cooking, washing, and cleaning, except for floors, windows, and garbage. I have kittens if Andrew hangs up one of his shirts himself because he invariably hangs it so that it's falling off the hanger, facing the wrong way, and in the wrong section. I don't understand why my brilliant husband cannot figure out his closet system. Shirts face left and are grouped together by type and color (within the type grouping, of course). I can forgive the color thing - he's color-blind (literally), but why would someone hang a dress shirt facing right among the polo shirts? Why?
It's not that I'm compulsive, it's just that I can't sleep unless the house is perfectly clean. Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Mrs. M., please don’t take this personally, but you are never invited to my house. I mean never. Well, maybe if I have two years notice and can get in a team of professional cleaners, but other than that, no way.
::sneaks off to hang up the jacket she tossed on the hall floor when she walked through the door::
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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You're right-handed, aren't you Mrs. M? My mother was like that. And, personally, I have no problem with it, and am a bit like that also. However, I'm left-handed. It always annoyed me to no end that she expected me to hang clothes up her way in my closet. By the same token, I don't spaz out if my husband or son, by some miracle, hang up one of their own shirts, but do it backward. (I just fix it and move on. )
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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*thinks* This is off-topic, but we're just chatting now anyway.
My personal policy is Keep Public Places clean. The living room always needs to be clean and ordered, and the kitchen needs to be clean and ordered at least once every 48 hours. This way, the mess doesn't annoy other people, and there is always a clean place to go.
I'm the same way with cooking - my first step in any real cooking is to clean the kitchen. Same with studying - if I studied at home, I cleaned the apartment first.
The room that gets ordered frantically before guests arrive is my bathroom - its just too easy to leave hair clips and lotions and matches and knives and curling irons on the counter to pick that up every day. Any future bathroom over which I have planning ability MUST have a wall of cabinets in which to stow the Stuff.
My bedroom, however, is different. I need one place to not worry about things, to drop my clothes, to pile to-be-filed papers, and to take reminders and copies of my favorite poetry on the wall. That's my bedroom. I don't think that will change. Usually, you can't see the floor in there. No, no one ever sees it, and when guests come over, all doors remain firmly closed.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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You do realize that if you get married, you'll be sharing the bedroom, right? And can you really be romantic in all that mess?
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Kat, I absolutely agree! (Now you know why I was a bit uncomfortable when you wanted to use my puter . . . )
[Edit: ok, the floor is usually visible, and I do make the bed. *looks around* Actually at the moment, my room is unusally neat. Huh, how did that happen? ]
quote:You do realize that if you get married, you'll be sharing the bedroom, right? And can you really be romantic in all that mess?
I've thought about that, and I think I have it figured out.
The bedroom would then turn into a public place, and so I'd feel a need to keep it clean. What I need, then, is a big walk in closet with a chair in it that is just mine. I'll keep the mess to this place. For some, it would be an indulgence. For me, a place that I can set things down without worrying about it is an absolute necessity. I don't have a ton of clothes, so it does get cleaned periodically, just so I can do laundry and have something to wear.
This came from an amusing conversation recently - we were talking about roommates and various conflicts, and I mentioned my Public Places policy. He's been remodeling his house (himself), and he's the one who came up with the Private Walk-In Closet solution. I thought it sounded great.
Added: I just made some really wierd errors, and I think it is because I wasn't writing a sentence, I was transcribing the conversation in my head.
Rivka: That totally makes sense. I apologize for asking - I should have thought of that.
I got to beach easily, by the way. Watched the sun go down, ran through the surf, and wrote Temporary Poetry, racing the waves to finish writing before they washed it away. That was great.
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Mrs. M, I have a spotless apartment aside from something called the "Closet of Death." I've thrown all my extra crap into this extra walk in closet (I have two) and shut the door. If I open it, stuff falls out to kill me, hence "of Death."
Oddly, I used to be an incredibly messy kid...and adolescent...and young adult. *wonders what happened*
Kat, I have to keep my bedroom as spotless for two reasons. 1) the door to my bedroom has glass panels *shrug* and 2) I can't study or write if my room is a mess. I need order for that. No idea why.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Kat, actually, it had occurred to me that someone might ask to use the puter, so I had planned to make that possible. Ran out of time, tho . . . It wasn't awful, but neither was it Suitable for Display. See, if I'd known you had a similar policy to mine, I would have been fine. I let people in there who do the same thing; it's the one whose houses are eternally immaculate that I won't allow in.
As for you thinking of it . . . I have learned the hard way not to expect people to read my mind. So how could you know?
I'm glad you made it to the beach and had a great time -- I meant to ask, but forgot by the time you came back to HR.
I used to have a walk-in closet. Kudos if you can manage to keep the clutter in there! Y'know, I need to start following my FlyLady emails regularly again.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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See, my extremely intelligent husband is forever hanging up his clothes. Why can't he understand that I'd like to have it in a nice, rumpled pile in the corner? It's like we're speaking different languages. So, after he hangs his clothes up, I'll sigh indulgently, take them off the hanger and toss it back among the other clothes. Sometimes I'll sorta dance on the pile just to make a point, but he never seems to get it.
posted
My husband and I are still basically newlyweds (less than three years) and we have a couple of recurrent problems. The good thing is that we are lucky enough to realize that it's all pretty much misunderstandings, which many married couples NEVER figure out. I kills me that when we are "arguing" he'll just roll over and go to sleep without finishing a thought, while I get to stay up all night and wonder why he's so mad at me. Then, the next morning he'll be totally loving and basically agree with me, at least on the points which he was being unreasonable before. Turns out he wasn't mad, just trying to see things from my point of view, which he feels unable to do while he's tired. I thought his silence meant anger, but it meant "thinking".
Another is related to what Geoff said. When things are good, he relaxes while I clean, which seems very unfair. Then when things are very tense, he starts cleaning madly, when all I want to do is relax and "figure things out". It's so frustrating! He just likes to "do things" to relieve tension. I like to veg to relieve tension.
Isn't it awesome that men and women really are different?
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
dkw, I typically leave my white gloves at home when I visit people. All of my closest friends are messy and so are all of my in-laws (except for my father-in-law) and it doesn't make me love them any less. I am glad that you hung up your jacket, though.
Kayla, I am indeed right-handed. Andrew is left-handed. My mother is also right-handed - I come by my ways honestly.
mac, what do you think made you change? Everyone I know has been either neat or messy their entire lives.
Ralphie -
Wow, y'all, good thing I didn't mention my grout brush or my 3 vacuum cleaners.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I tend to find myself letting everything slide for months on end because I'm so busy and then attacking it with fervor and zeal when I have some time off. I call them my 'orginazational frenzies.' In those times, I behave much like Mrs. M with the color-coded sock drawers and everything.
And then I get busy again and it all slllllides into oblivion.
But then, I'm not married, so for now, it's not a problem. I've learned a TON from this thread though.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I know how people who are neatness freaks intimidate people, heck, the Mormon Ladies in my first ward all had these spotless houses (the ones I saw) in which not only was everything perfectly neat but it was all perfectly new and nice and fixed up too. It was just frightening! I felt like an awful sinner that I had dust bunnies under my beds. Remember I posted asking if the good housekeeping ordinances came when you went to the temple, or when, and why didn't I get mine yet? Then there was one lady, the nicest lady in the whole ward, in fact, and I happened to see her house one day when they needed a hand in an emergency and man, it was dreadful! It made me feel so much better! <laughs>
So my house is one of the non-intimidating variety. Very much so. I clean before people visit. And that's pretty much it except for basic cat-maintenance type cleaning. My mom is the type that likes for everything to be sterile, though it's okay to have some mess, stuff sitting around or whatever. I love for things to be sterile, too, but there is something deep inside me that protests at jobs that just have to be done all over again the very next day or week. Jobs like that seem like a terrible waste of my time and energy.
Nevermind that the jobs I spend most of my time and effort on just have to be done all over again the very next decade or century, and it amounts to the exact same thing. I feel like I have accomplished something when I do jobs like that. I just do. Housework is a colossal waste of time, though. I feel it in my very bones that it is. I never do it unless to make the house nice for company. That's why you have to give me 24 to 48 hours advance notice when coming to visit.
I figure when I get married, though, I'll have to do my share. So I'll just let my husband tell me which tasks are up to me, and make sure they get done before I sit down to the computer in the evenings. Either that or I'll hire someone to do them. That works too. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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quote: I am indeed right-handed. Andrew is left-handed. My mother is also right-handed - I come by my ways honestly.
Do I come by mine dishonestly?
Anyway, I was just trying to explain why Andrew might be hanging his clothes up backwards. And, for a guy, the fact that a shirt makes it onto a hanger and into the part of the closet that contains other shirts is a sign of stunning evolution. You should marvel at how lucky you are. Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I put my clothes in groups all hanging with the front of the shirt pointing to the left. When I wash my shirts, I even take them out when they are still slightly damp and pop them to get most of the wrinkles out.
Some men are not barbarians, Kayla. Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
It's funny, my husband was born really organizational. But his mom was a slob and taught him to be one too. Now, if I clean the house, he won't do a thing, but if I leave him to his own devices, i.e. leaving his church pants unironed, I'll always come back and find that he's done it all himself, and done a much better job than me. He told me that he used to beg his grandmother to make his mom clean her house. (This was when he was six.)
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
My plan used to be to work part-time all my life - enough to pay the cleaning lady. I figure if I have to spend the time anyway, I might as well spend it on something I enjoy. Plus, I have an aversion to cleaning bathrooms occupied even occasionally by men - I have three brothers.
Now, though... I have all sorts of new-liberal guilt about hiring a cleaning lady, because the vast majority of them, at least in Texas, are immigrants and trapped in their low-paying jobs. I can't figure out if I am doing better by employing them at the low wage I can afford, or if I would do better to eliminate their job altogether. Besides, what kind of snotty statement is that? "I'm too good to clean my family's by-products of living, but you are definitely not." This is not good.
My grandmother had (and so my mother grew up with) a cook and maid at all times. Part of my messiness I come by naturally because my mother was, a bit, in part because she had someone to pick up after her as a kid. My grandmother was a Houston socialite (mother's wedding: Seven bridesmaids! With parasols!), and as un-PC as having ethnic servants is now, the cook and maid were lifelong family friends. The recipes are in the family cookbook with attribution, and the maid was a bridesmaid for all three sisters. I just don't know.
Also, there is the feeling that I should not pass off the things in my life to the care of others. If it's mine, I should take care of it. If I am unwilling to take care of it, I shouldn't have it. Cleaning one's living space is a basic sign of care; do I want to be the person who isn't capable of civilization?
posted
Mrs. M--I get manic and apparently like to clean. Then I just got USED to having a clean apartment. I also have yet to stabilize. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
My dog breeder (man that sounds bad, you'd have to be a dog person to understand) who is also my friend has about 5 or 6 dogs, worked full time as a stockbroker, and went to dog shows every weekend and every time I've been there her house was clean. I was always in awe of her housecleaning skill til I found out she had a housekeeper that came in twice a week.
I figure that if I can afford it, why not? Right now while we are fixing up the house I'd rather put the money directly into the house, but once we get it fixed up it won't be draining money quite as fast. People are willing to work for that pay and I look at it as contributing to the general economy. The thing about having a housekeeper though is that you have to keep your clutter picked up so they actually have the elbow room to clean. This is a double-edged sword for the clutter prone though.
posted
It's been said already, but nobody changes magically as a result of marriage. And expecting that is a false expectation that causes a lot of harm.
But the biggest issues in the early years of marriage, I think are the same things as in the middle years and the later years. Women often think that a man should know what they are thinking and what they want. If they have to tell the man, it makes it worth less (or worthless) when he actually does what they want. This is one form of non-communication.
Men, on the other hand, generally do not want to "discuss" anything. If something needs doing, they want to hear about it and then go do it. If it needs to be discussed, it is painful and annoying. If you bring a man a problem, he assumes you want that problem fixed, not talked about, explored, poked, prodded, understood, etc.
That is another form of non-communication.
And without communication, everyone just stews in their own misunderstanding of the situation until finally it becomes intolerable and you either have a fight or go your separate ways.
Having a fight is generally a good solution, especially if you get to have makeup sex afterwards.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
kat, I have the exact same feeling! I grew up in a family where we always had a maid. My mother's mother had maids, yardmen, everything. I too have the feeling that if I can't maintain the lifestyle I like by myself, then maybe I should go for a simpler lifestyle, however, I don't see the point in spending my life in menial labor when I could earn good money doing something else with that time, and pay someone generously to do work that I loathe.
So I waffle. When I find someone good, I'm so delighted naturally, that I wouldn't want to lose them, of course, and I pay a lot higher than the going rate. People who work for me all seem very glad to do so. They all seem to find it's a beneficial thing for them in their situation. If someone who works for me wants to go to school or find a job doing something more interesting than menial labor cleaning houses or doing yardwork (and who wouldn't?) I encourage that and do everything I can to help them do that.
So all in all I don't feel like I'm oppressing anyone. The lady who worked for Mama most of our lives was like family to us. We helped take care of her when she was old and sick, in coordination with her nieces whom she raised. She was really like a second mother to us, and we loved her, though there is no way we could possibly ever have matched her love for us which was truly phenomenal, and something beyond this life. It was a privilege to have her in our lives, one that I didn't fully appreciate until I was grown.
But it still doesn't seem quite right that someone should clean their own house and do all their own housework and then come over to my house and do mine too. I know what you mean, kat. I think I'll always feel funny about that.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
"But it still doesn't seem quite right that someone should clean their own house and do all their own housework and then come over to my house and do mine too."
Why not? I fix my computer at home, then go to work and fix computers.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I have been trying to find statistics on cohabitation since they directly relate to me. Unfortunately I closed all the links because I unexpectedly had real work tossed at me. So I'm going off memory and not linking sources.
I am looking for a study that removes all of the lower income poverty level single mothers that cohabitate, which drastically skew everything to see what the statistics are on middle and upper middle class cohabitation. Some of the more informative studies I found were from Sweden and the UK.
Basically there has been such an increase in cohabitation since 1970 that it doesn't appear the statistics actually reflect what is happening today since there is a time lag. Some interesting ones though were that people who cohabitate for over five years do tend to eventually get married (I couldn't find a divorce rate though) Another interesting one (in the UK study) is that people who cohabitate before marriage only have an increased divorce rate after 10 years of marriage. I wonder if they factored in the time cohabitating before marriage if the stats would come out more equal.
Kayla if you can google up some more stats I'm all ears.
quote:people who cohabitate before marriage only have an increased divorce rate after 10 years of marriage.
I'm not sure what this means - that people who co-habitate have the same stats as non-co-habitors for the first ten years, then after ten years, the rate goes up?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
That is the way I took it. But it was in England or Sweden too. I'll look for it again today as I get a chance.
Steve and I were discussing the entire topic over the weekend and came up with a couple of interesting ideas and realizations of what we do to attempt to keep a clean house. (I know our clutter level would drive Mrs. M. nuts)
posted
Banna, I can’t give you links, but I can tell you what we learned when I did my certification class for marriage-prep counseling. Couples who live together before marriage have a significantly higher divorce rate. However with couples who have lived together for four or more years the gap narrows considerably, and if the couple had lived together more than (7?) years there is no statistical difference.
I tend to trust the studies we read, since they were done with the intent of finding ways to strengthen marriages rather than the intent to prove any sort of political point. (They also included all the raw data, descriptions of methodology, etc. But that wasn’t included in the books we bought and got to keep, so I can’t access it any more.)
Edit – but I do seem to remember that they looked at socio-economic class and the general trend (cohabitation = higher divorce rate, over 4 years cohabitation the gap narrows) held true across class lines, education level, etc. My memory of that part is kind of fuzzy, though.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the statistics -- they aren’t predictive for individuals. You and Steve need to make your decision based on your own relationship. Besides, it’s too late for you to decide whether or not to live together pre-marriage. Your decision now is whether or not to marry post-living together.
posted
Yeah but I'm an engineer and so is he, and we like to know our statistics.
The problem is that most of the statistical studies I've seen done, were done by the ultra-conservative right who had an obvious agenda. I was trying to find out what the stats said at a less blatanatly biased level. I'm more inclined to believe what dkw says than the stuff I've had thrown at me before, because of the lesser bias.
I'm not particularly worried about Steve's and my relationship at the moment. Particularly since he didn't blow up when this weekend I dropped a paint can on the floor and it exploded (in the wrong room.) I was mad at myself but he really wasn't upset at all. How he puts up with my accident-proneness I really don't know.
Steve and I were talking about dealing with life/relationship strategies and came up with a few that we do. I've said before we are both slobs. We put trash cans everywhere, so that when we create trash, disposal is very convienent. If it is going to be inconvienent then we tend to not throw it away and the clutter piles up. Another thing we have done is have Lysol toilet cleaner and a toilet brush in both bathrooms. The toilet cleaner sits on top in a high visibility site. That way if we notice it is getting dirty we just give it a shot of cleaner. You only really need one toilet brush, but we were too lazy to carry it back and forth from one bathroom to the other. Ergo, two toilet brushes, one for each bathroom, and the toilets get scrubbed more regularly.
quote: See, everytime he came home and began washing dishes, I felt like he was making a comment on the way I've kept the house today. Like he's judging me, washing the dishes is a way of saying "You didn't do a good enough job and now I have to step in." I get surly and irritated.
Wow. Right on, that's exactly how it is for us too.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Reading that is scary, because I think that's exactly what happens in my brother's house. I don't hear it from them, but from snippets from my dad and grandmother. "Your brother works so hard all day and goes to school, and when he comes home, he's the one that has to do the dishes because the house is a mess."
Anyway, I don't know if my brother is doing implicit criticism, but his family certainly is. The main thing I learned from that is never, ever complain to family of origin about home life.
posted
Oh, but if you don't complain, they'll say something like "You know Katie, she never complains, but you can just tell that this really makes her mad. Her husband must do something to keep her quiet about it."
In the absense of real gossip, the truly dedicated will make it up out of whole cloth.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
TO be fair to my brother, I have no idea if he is saying anything. What I heard could have been completely made up. Heck, I don't know.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Banna, when I married my husband, I moved into the house he bought with his first wife. Actually, since we didn't want to live together before we got married, and I needed a place to live and work from home, he moved out (took his clothes and stuff and stayed at a friend's house for the 6 weeks until the wedding)and my son and I moved in. That was a little weird.
Fortunately, after trying to sell the place for a year, he got an offer on it and sold just weeks after the wedding. So I didn't have to live there long term.
But to be honest, it wasn't that he bought it with her. It was because I plain didn't like the house. It was dark and had a tiny kitchen. And it came with three adventurous cows who liked to break the fence and get into the pastor's garden next door. It was fun for a little while, but I'm not a country girl. Give me a real neighborhood any day.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Banna, we had exactly that problem. Kristine moved into my condo after we got married. We were going to be moving within 6 months, so I didn't think anything of having her keep most of her stuff in storage. I just didn't see the point in doing a lot of work just to undo it all in a manner of months.
That was the stupid, inconsiderate me thinking and not the wonderful, considerate man I am today.
She was very uncomfortable living in a guy's place with none of her things surrounding her. She's always considered her home a safe place from the world. Even though we were married and it technically was our place, it wasn't really hers and she couldn't feel truly at home. Things were much better once we moved into "our" house and we decorated like we wanted to as opposed to just one of us.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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When my dad married my stepmom, he moved my brothers and my stuff into her house. They did try to have a mix of stuff in the house, but it was still mostly hers. They thought about selling it and moving closer, in part because of the ward. She had been in the ward before for fifteen years before she and her husband divorced. She was occasionally called Sister Peterson occasionally two years after she married my dad. They changed the phone number finally because they kept getting telemarketing calls for her ex-husband.
What did they do? My dad remodeled - tripled the storage space, redid the kitchen, doubled the size of the living room, added a few walk-in closets, redecorated the whole place, and created a deck and patio in the back, which included extending the roof to match and landscaping everywhere.
I think you just summed up my friends' problem in a nutshell. The other problem is that he doesn't really want to leave his comfort zone and actively start looking for a new dwelling. He's perfectly happy where he is. There are some other considerations, like whether she might be downsized in the next 6 months. However even with the downsizing I know they could afford a much nicer place on his salary alone without cramping their standard of living or even cutting into their savings.
I know they both want children, and I think she might be able to bring the concrete reality of the situation home for him, not by getting pregnant, but by saying ok, since we only have two bedrooms here, your computers are going to have to go because this will be the baby's room. I suspect threatening his computer access will get the point across, even if children are much farther in their futurem and perhaps give him the motivation to move.
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-- but a bit more or less should be fine anyway.
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That totally makes sense. I apologize for asking - I should have thought of that. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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He just likes to "do things" to relieve tension. I like to veg to relieve tension.![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
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