Showing posts with label housework. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housework. Show all posts

Friday, December 7, 2012

What's up with soaking?


Guys: Why do you soak stuff?

Preface: I am not complaining. I am blessed to be a stay at home mom, thanks to my wonderful husband who is gone 60 hours a week, working hard and commuting, arriving home around 9pm. I do not expect him to do housework. He works out of the house, I work in the house. If you are a stay at home mom and feel like your husband doesn't pull his weight around the house, I recommend reading this and this, and you probably won't expect your husband to help out ever again. #donthatemebecauseimoldfashioned

So, having said that, I will admit to being frustrated when the kitchen I've already cleaned up once for the night has to be cleaned up again due to a second dinner being eaten at 9:30. At that hour, I would love to be hopping in the bath with a glass of wine, not cooking and cleaning all over again. So sometimes, being the sweetheart that he is, my hubby says he will clean up. I say thank you and proceed to go about the rest of my evening, grateful I didn't have to clean up the kitchen twice.

I like waking up to a clean kitchen. I've been flywashed that way. So when I stumble into the kitchen in the morning and find the dinner mess from the night before 'soaking' in the sink, I sigh.

Wha da heck is dis doin in da sink?!?!

Fiddlesticks! I would have been happy to clean up the second dinner mess the night before - like I said, I consider it my job and do not expect him to clean up at all. I do it for ME, because I'm the one who loves waking up to a clean kitchen. But he said he would do it, so I left the kitchen and went on with my night. Again - I'm not complaining. I'm not mad at him. I simply dislike waking up to a dirty kitchen. But I'm beginning to wonder: in the male mind, does soaking mean the dinner mess IS cleaned up?

As I type this, I realize I've never asked my husband about it. By the time I find the soaking items, he's usually walking out the door or already gone, and I would never send him off with a crabby word, or call him to gripe about dishes as he's sitting in traffic. Because honestly, dishes that have soaked for ten hours are better to deal with than dry crusted ones, so technically the soaking is helpful. ..... But why do guys think soaking equals cleaned up, job done? Did they watch their father "help" by putting things in the sink to soak? Do they plan to come back to the soaking items later and finish the job, and then get sidetracked? Or is their wife just so awesome and capable, the man knows he can leave things to soak and that she'll come back at some point and finish the job?

Granted, more often than not, my husband does clean up start to finish, which I appreciate sooooooo much. But he definitely also leaves things to soak on occasion (I did not stage the photo at top). So it gives me reason to wonder. Women simply don't leave things to soak, except in rare circumstances. But it seems to be a Universal Guy Thing, and I am curious about it! Can a male out there please enlighten me?