Warning (For Men Only) - A Man's Guide to Household Chores

     Times have changed and men have taken a more active role in some household duties although women still do the bulk of the work.  My wife (Mimi) works a few days a week and on those days I take it upon myself to tidy up around the house.  It's not because I have a deep desire for cleaning to perfection but I give it my best shot.

     So I decided to give other guys a few of my cleaning tips.  If you are a women reading this post, "Stop, turn away from the page" these tips are for men only................................................Ok, I think they’re gone so now I can continue.  My tips are listed below, you may want to cut them out and keep a copy in your wallet for future reference.

Man's Guide to Household Chores

Doing the dishes give you the most bang for the buck.  Walking into a kitchen where there are no dirty dishes gives an important illusion of total house cleanliness.  You have two options here doing the evening dishes while you wife is relaxing with a good book; this shows you are being helpful.  I prefer to wait until the next morning after my wife leaves for work, that way she comes back to see a clean kitchen.

Doing dishes is the most important chore and must be done everyday.  Why? because as I said above it gives you the illusion of a clean house.  So if this is the only task you get to do you'll show that you made he effort.  Cleaning the counters and table goes hand in hand with the dishes.  You are not looking for perfection, if you’re short on time because your tee time is drawing near, just clean the spaghetti spill, bacon grease or any obvious spots that would take someone’s attention away from your clean kitchen.

The next most important chore is cleaning the ceramic floors and vacuuming.  I lumped these together because I sweep the dirt from the ceramic tile on to the carpet, which I later vacuum up.  You caught what I said right!  I usually vacuum late in the day so there are still vacuum marks on the carpet, which shows you have vacuumed.  You may find a few dirt spots on the ceramic tile that can't be swept up so you could wash the floor, which is what most women would do but as a man I have an alternate suggestion.  Just get a wet rag scrub the few coffee stains or jelly spills from the tile and Voilà you have clean floor.

Actually, all the household chores can be performed late in the day. That gives you less time to screw up the house before your wife returns, which I find happens to me.

Vacuuming the carpeted steps.  I don't like this, it requires getting out the hose and other attachments, too time consuming.  What I prefer to do pick up the little threads, leaves, fuzz or anything on the carpeted stairs that doesn't match the color of the carpet.  You are likely up and down the stairs frequently throughout the day so every time you use the stairs pick up a few bits of fuzz and Voilà (I like the sound of that word) with very little effort the stairs will have the illusion of being clean.  If you come across a particularly tough ground in stain I suggest you use your fingernail and saliva which is your God given cleaning fluid.  You can't deny that everyone uses saliva to clean things.

I rarely dust unless the TV or cabinet looks like it changed color because of the dust accumulation, if that is the case I can use my shirtsleeve, which is readily available. This never happens unless Mimi’s out of town because she dusts regularly.

I will do laundry but my belief is that there is no reason to segregate whites from colors, haven’t we gotten past that.  Segregation has always been a big issue in the country so I decided to take a stand starting with laundry.  Maybe because of this Mimi has told me not to do the laundry.  Alright, if those are you wishes, I will comply.

I do know the fundamentals of ironing but it’s not my forte. There are a lot of settings on an iron, for cotton, linen, polyester and a few others that I have no idea what they’re for.  So for this reason I was instructed not to iron Mimi’s clothes, ok whatever you say. 

Sometimes I iron my own clothes but only when it’s absolutely necessary, like a polo shirt or dress shirt to where with a suit.  However I have a trick to ironing a dress shirt that you wear with a suit, just iron the collar and front because no ones going to see the rest of the shirt so they will assume it is ironed.  If for some reason you take you suit jacket off, complain loudly about how the jacket wrinkled your shirt.  It’s a believable story.

     So these are my tips for handling household chores, I hope they have been helpful.