<p>I do the laundry and fold them to minimize the length and then in half. Seams are always on the outside. Spatial abilities come into play when putting stuff on the conveyer belt or packing the refrigerator. If you’re a computer science major, you think about knapsack problems.</p>
<p>I fold in thirds for hanging on the towel rack. I fold into a square for putting into the linen closet.</p>
<p>10-15 years ago my DH critiqued my ability to get stains out of the front of his shirts, stains he had put there by spilling. After a while we determined that he who spills knows where the spot is and he has done his own laundry ever since. With DDs and all the drip dry, hand wash, etc, by the time they hit 13, they did their own laundry, too.</p>
<p>I really feel better not being ‘ragged on’ for not doing someone’s laundry their perfect way ;)</p>
<p>I fold my towels in thirds, but my mother does not, she will often fold my towels when standing around talking and they look fine on the shelf, but have to be refolded to go on the towel bar…whatever, they’re folded, I can be content with that.</p>
<p>What I don’t understand is folding the towels in half horizontally, rather than the long way, which is how they hang on the towel rack. Done the other way, you have to unfold them, then refold them to hang on the rack. </p>
<p>If anyone does a household chore, espcially without being asked, I don’t care how it’s done, even though I’m a little OCD about it myself. It’s part of training children to be helpful members of a family (something that some H’s didn’t get as children, apparently).</p>
<p>*Perhaps I’m missing something. Chilipepper’s husband is contemplating moving away from families to further his career. If so, Chilipepper will probably stay behind to sell the family home. Then she has to look for a job that pays a well as her current one. Meanwhile, hubby has to have an apt. in his new city,</p>
<p>oooh…does this mean that the OP gets to come to his apt with her white gloves on? I hope she brings a camera. At a minimum, every time she sees an inadequate cleaning job she needs to repeat whatever nasty thing he said to her about the toilet. *</p>
<p>*I think resorting to meanness is probably not the solution, either… The husband’s critique of how she cleaned the toilet was inexcusable and I’d have blown a gasket, too. If my husband had cleaned the toilet and I’d criticized how he did it, he’d have had every right to blow a gasket with me, also. (In fact, I think the one time that I <em>did</em> have a problem with how my husband cleaned the toilet, I profusely thanked him for helping me out, and then a half-hour later, he caught me re-scrubbing it, and we both had a good laugh about my anal-retentive attention to cleaning detail.)</p>
<p>Throwing things back in someone else’s face only really serves to escalate things. For humor purposes, it’s a pretty funny thought… It’d be a hysterical scene in a movie about a*</p>
<p>I think you missed my point. If the H has never accepted or agreed that his nasty comment was inappropriate, then it can serve as a learning experience for him to be shown the exact example in reverse…as long as it’s done with a bit of humor and not similar nastiness.</p>
<p>For instance…if his nasty comment was something like…</p>
<p>“Looks like you missed a lot of spots cleaning the toilet. You really need to pay more attention to what you’re doing. You’re such an airhead sometimes. You had ALL DAY TO clean this toilet and you still did a crappy job.”</p>
<p>Then…when she sees any inadequate chore that he’s done - for instance…he’s done an inadequate job cleaning the kitchen floor, she can say with a bit of a devilish smile, “Looks like you missed a lot of spots cleaning the toilet. You really need to pay more attention to what you’re doing. You’re such an airhead sometimes. You had ALL DAY TO clean this toilet and you still did a crappy job.” </p>
<p>The message isn’t really about the inadequate chore, it’s that he won’t like hearing the criticism in reverse, and by saying “toilet,” he’ll get the message that HIS prior comment - that he never acknowledged was wrong - was indeed wrong.</p>
<p>I have had to use a similar tactic with my H in response to various inappropriate/wrong stuff that he has said at one time or another, but he refused to see the error in real time. </p>
<p>By later saying the EXACT same words with the devilish smile, in a similar but different situation, he will finally “get it.” H knows that I’m not really criticizing his chore efforts, but instead using a bit of humor to make him see the situation from another perspective.</p>
<p>I mentioned earlier that my H always tried to get out of chores by saying that my standards were too high. So, when he once complained that I left too many things in my car, “I said, your standards are too high.” He stopped saying that after that.</p>
<p>H started cooking when kids were little. He thought it was easier to cook than to feed and change diapers. He would make dinner, and I would put kids to bed, then we would sit down to eat. No matter what he made I always told him it was wonderful, better than anything I have ever had(his earlier meals were pretty awful). He really got into cooking. Now kids are grown and we still have to eat. He cooks and I surf CC now.</p>
<p>* matter what he made I always told him it was wonderful, better than anything I have ever had(his earlier meals were pretty awful)*</p>
<p>Thats great- my H barely cooks- but he also isn’t picky- I can thank his mother for that- she is an awful cook ( although not as bad as my sister’s MIL, who ran out of corn flakes for a casserole topping so she used raisin bran instead and left in the raisins 
)
But he had to work swing shift for years so we didn’t have dinner together and I worked during the day, even if he was up by lunchtime.</p>
<p>Raisins go with anything, but why are you putting cereal on a casserole :)?</p>
<p>Towels for the closet are folded with the ends together, and then a second time and then in thirds. Once on Ghostwhisperer, she had a stack of towels on a shelf folded and then rolled like logs. It looks cool, so the ones on my jacuzzi-tub deck are now rolled like logs, although it’s a little challenging with big bath sheets.</p>
<p>Some people have DH’s who do laundry. H won’t even put away his clean laundry if it is ironed and folded and stacked on his chair. One of my pet peeves. One funny thing, he has learned to iron, since I will only iron a given item if it just came through the wash, and not if it was worn yesterday and needs touched up so it can be worn again today. Seeing DH with iron in hand is always good for a chuckle ;)</p>
<p>Oh lord I haven’t done H’s laundry for years- the closet I come to that is I buy him boxer shorts cause I think they are sexier than jockey.( which he prefers & buys)</p>
<p>I always know when he takes my stuff out of the dryer though cause he just dumps it on top & my D folds it.
She is great at folding.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’d let H do laundry, since on the rare occasions on which he needs something washed right away, he will put ONE item in the washer and run it on the large load settings, rather than gathering up a like-minded load to fill the damn thing.</p>
<p>*10-15 years ago my DH critiqued my ability to get stains out of the front of his shirts, stains he had put there by spilling. After a while we determined that he who spills knows where the spot is and he has done his own laundry ever since. </p>
<p>I really feel better not being ‘ragged on’ for not doing someone’s laundry their perfect way*</p>
<p>Thank goodness for Oxyclean and Resolve/Spray N Wash…my H thinks I’m some kind of stain removing genie! Don’t tell him how easy it is for me. LOL (However, he would also know better than to criticize my inability to get one of HIS stains out…he’d know that I’d just say…you ruined it, go buy a new one.)</p>
<p>If I didn’t do my H’s laundry…he’d be a wrinkled mess. And, I don’t care how far we’ve come with equality between the sexes. If an H shows up for work everyday with wrinkled clothes…the wife gets blamed.</p>
<p>*I don’t think I’d let H do laundry, since on the rare occasions on which he needs something washed right away, he will put ONE item in the washer and run it on the large load settings, rather than gathering up a like-minded load to fill the damn thing. *</p>
<p>Absolutely. My H would do the SAME thing if I let him.</p>
<p>My husband’s good at laundry, but he doesn’t particularly enjoy it… I really like laundry (there’s just something about putting a big mess into a machine, throwing in some sweet-smelling liquids, turning some dials, and ending up with warm fluffy love at the end of the dryer cycle), so I take care of it. Poor guy… I’ve been swamped at work lately and he’s been quietly asking if I want him to help out… His dissertation defense is in a month and a half, so he’s crazy-busy too, and I know he’s running out of clean clothing.</p>
<p>Can we borrow one of the aforementioned perfectionistic/particular people with too much time on their hands to help out with the mountain of dirty clothing over here…?</p>
<p>aibarr - might be worth it once or twice to throw the laundry all together and take it to the cleaners, or at least take it all to a laundromat and get the whole thing done in a couple of hours…when in a jam, get help ;)</p>
<p>Back on the topic of motorcycles - was in Pennsylvania over the weekend and was shocked to see people riding without helmets. Had forgotten they don’t have helmet laws. OP, are you in a state with a helmet law at least?</p>
<p>most laundry services wil actually pick the laundry up at your house and return it. Sometimes this is the “way to go.” Just outsource.</p>
<p>I needed a laugh this morning and the Raisin Bran on the casserole did it! Thanks, ek.</p>
<p>I do the laundry most of the time, and IMO laundry is pretty much the easiest chore of all - no hard physical exertion, no heavy lifting, it’s not particularly dirty or smelly, you do 5 minutes of work then get a break for 45 minutes while the machines run. </p>
<p>Though, the iron in our house has seen far more use doing arts and crafts projects than actually ironing clothes.</p>
<p>My sentiments follow with intparent’s. The inheritance I’d lock up. If husband wants to fix the house, let him get paid for each part of the job. He can do what he wants with that money. If he moves slowly or clumsily, he gets fired.</p>
<p>I admire OP for posting her problems, and I honestly have no idea who she is. She writes well, but so do most posters.</p>
<p>When I moved to get married, things began great, then started to decline with the criticism. The insults began with objective item, eg cooking, but then got personal. Spending money became biggest issue. I was too embarrassed to share with my friends. The only reason he didn’t want me to leave was because he needed my paycheck. Regardless of his occasional nice words, no one who loves another person can be so mean.</p>
<p>Notrichenough; I think it is clear OP is not sharing petty grievances. She is worried about the state of her marriage.</p>
<p>…Can we borrow one of the aforementioned perfectionistic/particular people with too much time on their hands to help out with the mountain of dirty clothing over here…?..</p>
<p>Albarr, The last thing you would want when you have piles of laundry is a perfectionist imo.</p>
<p>NRE, It’s the folding the laundry that’s slow not doing it itself. A weekly torture for me. I’d rather have a harder and more interesting job to do than endless folding.</p>
<p>
We wind up with more stuff on hangers than gets folded. Socks, underwear, and tee shirts are pretty much all that gets folded. There’s only four of us (three now, with one at school), so the piles aren’t all that big - maybe 5 or 6 loads a week.</p>
<p>The problem with the “harder and more interesting” idea, is that I find the other stuff harder, but not more interesting. Scooping a cat box shared by 4 cats, cleaning up other cat bodily fluids, raking leaves, cutting the grass, snow-blowing the driveway, taking the garbage and recyclables to the dump, doing the taxes - definitely not more interesting.</p>
<p>Ok, maybe the taxes are more interesting in a “wonder what it feels like to stab a knife in my eye” kind of way, but I don’t consider this to be a positive. :D</p>
<p>…leaning up other cat bodily fluids, raking leaves, cutting the grass, snow-blowing the driveway, taking the garbage and recyclables to the dump, doing the taxes - definitely not more interesting…</p>
<p>I had to laugh. I do all those. I don’t mind doing the tax. It’s annual not weekly.</p>