Heather Christena Schmidt

Just the other day, I went to my husband’s work. I don’t often go, but when I do I always like to move things around. He works in film, so they have a lot of equipment – I especially like to fuck with that stuff. I make sure to spill things all over the machines and not clean it up. I move the chairs around, and the fixtures. Then I fill the refrigerator in the break room with crap that’s just for me, even though I go in there – maybe – once a year.

I’m just kidding. I don’t do any of that. I also didn’t go into my husband’s work the other day. That would have required me to drive all the way there, and have a reason or will to see him during the workday (which I don’t, on either count), and to wear pants and a bra – just way more than I can handle most days.

I think my point was made nicely, though.

Each of us has a space. My husband’s is his place of employment; mine is our home.

And yet while I would never – not in a million years – dream of going into my husband’s space to move shit around to suit my fancy, make a huge mess and not clean it up, leave things in a way that sets others at an inconvenience, and break things without repairing or replacing them, time and again he does this to me.

Well this lady just can’t take it anymore. I’ve had it with working my ass off for it to all be undone, and for all of my own downtime being taken up with cleaning up his shit. I’m issuing him one more, final and public warning.

Dear husband. Dear, dear, silly husband.

I think it’s “fun” how you fill the refrigerator with so many beverages it looks like a frat house on the eve of a kegger when you open the door to get – oh, I don’t know – some food. That’s a lie, no I actually don’t think it’s fun. I don’t think it’s fun at all. One time my grandma looked in the refrigerator and joked that we clearly live on liquids. That day, no less than 75% of the space had been taken up with cans of beer, bottles of beer, Soda Stream bottles with small droplets remaining, and approximately 36 bottles of Arrowhead water. With literally no room for food, this requires me to cook more often and grocery shop almost daily.

Fuck eating, we’re drinkers right? Wrong.

Yesterday, as with most days, I cleaned. For four hours. Three of those four hours were spent simply putting things back where they go. I put the throw blankets back where they go on our bed. I draped them over the unfortunate wear of the bed frame, versus where they were – folded up at the foot of the bed, implying they had been used (those are not for use) and exposing those scratches on the frame. I also rearranged all six of the throw pillows on the couch that cost $40 a piece, and yet are routinely treated as seat cushions and stress balls, squished and mashed out of shape while we watch movies in our living room.

Fuck having nice things, this shit’s for mashing and folding up right? Wrong.

Then there are things I think are just typical man, careless macho crap; though ironic since you are one of those LA hipsters that doesn’t like to be pegged a “typical” anything. Like when I go to take a shower and get sprayed in the face upon turning it on, because you can’t be bothered to remember to switch the water from sprayer to tub. Or when I clean the house only for you to spill food all over the bar table twenty minutes later while eating your dinner. And not clean it up, just leave it there in a pile of olive oil and pasta, bread crumbs and my forgotten dignity. And then there’s that whole tracking leaves in the front door thing, every fucking time that door gets opened.

Fuck respect for others, this place is your stomping grounds right? Wrong.

What I’m saying is that when I spend about 4 hours of each day in the kitchen cooking, over three different and complete meals, the last thing I want to do is look at a disgusting pile of olive oil, bread crumbs, and bits of pasta that fell from your mouth, sitting there on the bar table.

What I’m saying is that I would like to vacuum once a week. Not daily because leaves got tracked in and then stomped all over the living room.

I am so tired of our nice things being completely destroyed and left as is, as if once you have used and consumed everything you then will just leave behind a wasteland of broken furniture and damaged decor, and we should all just be totally OK with living in a trash dump.

Because let us not remind you of that temper tantrum you threw when I decided to turn our two, broken dining room chairs into a makeshift dining room bench that doesn’t look broken and dilapidated.

Being a Stay At Home Mom, especially in your early 30s, can be a very stressful and isolating thing. We don’t get time with other moms quite like we’d like to. Or even just other adults. We don’t get to leave the slop and the slovenliness behind for 8 – 10 hours every day either. We have to sit in it, breath it in, see it all around us. If everyone, at the very least, would just wipe up the mess they leave behind – the toothpaste out of the sink, the crumbs off of the counter, hit the button in the shower, flip the shoes off before walking in the door – maybe four hours of cleaning almost daily would be cut down to two; freeing up more time for me to escape for a little bit in a book.

Let me be a little clearer: