Household Name

There's a television commercial that I've seen quite a few times lately that depicts a handsome young couple settling in on the sofa for a little after-dinner relaxation in front of the television. They're both armed with their own remote, and right away the clicker-bickering ensues. He flips it to a ball game, "great game on babe," she flips to a chick-flick, "oh but honey, this is a great movie." Flip, "great game," flip, "great movie," --alas the matter is happily resolved when the women turns off the television, pops the cork on a bottle of whatever wine is being advertised, and the husband quickly sees the light. "Good call sugarcube . . ." Pretty much the message here is, "to hell with the boob tube--let's catch a buzz and go for it." When I first saw the ad I was watching a Jazz game with my dad and he said, "you see that's why Mormons need two TVs." Sometimes me and the old man think alike, I told him, "if I were a polygamist, my place would look like Circuit City." Obviously, the happy couple are portraying newlyweds--because after the honeymoon wears off, "wine and romance" doesn't stand a chance against "beer and sports." No contest.

Since summertime is traditionally the high-season for weddings, what better time for the Boneman to offer up a little paper cup of nuts and a slice of matrimonial wisdom. Being a veteran of 10 years of wedded bliss, (with only the one divorce to blemish my track record) the best advice I can offer to any married couple is that you'll need two things: a pair of good-quality color television sets and a weekly visit from a housekeeper. You may think this is expensive and unnecessary, but ultimately it may save you a fortune and an enormous amount of grief. A housecleaner is a lot less expensive than a Marriage Counselor. Living in the age of the "two income" household--housework is no longer the exclusive province of the woman. Far from it brother--don't get too comfy in that Lazy Boy. Take it from a guy who's done his homework on housework--unless you have one of those Ward and June Cleaver marriages, housekeeping is going to be an issue.

Whether it's between brothers and sisters, roommates, or married couples, it seems to be an almost universal human trait, to believe that you're doing the lion's share of the work. "Housework, yardwork, thiswork, thatwork--how come I gotta do all the damn work?" A vast majority of us feel this way--which means a good percentage of us are way the hell off.

Not once in the entire time I spent co-habitating with wives or friends, has any one of them come up to me and said, "hey thanks for cleaning up the place, I really need to start doing my fair share." You could build a deck and put in a jacuzzi and all you'd get is, "it's about time you started doing something around here." Wouldn't it be great if there were some way to get your hands on some evidence?

Every time I start feeling sorry for myself because of the unfair portion of the burden that I might perceive that I'm shouldering, I always wish that I could somehow produce the actual stats. Y'know--the number of hours, I've put-in doing whatever--compared to the number of hours you've put-in. I fantasize that there must be some kind of accounting organization similar to the one keeping track of our sins, that could occasionally issue a quarterly report.

What a sweet day it would be if I could only get these figures in front of me. "Look at that, look at that," I'd point out proudly: 3745 hours and 34 minutes and 13 seconds. "Funny I don't see your name here at all, perhaps if we look under Lazy Slob, yup, there you are--ouch, that looks bad on paper."

As hard as it is to admit, I think what the report would most likely prove is that alot of us are wrong about everything, that we're all working pretty hard and that the real problem is that there's just too damn much work.

It's not all drudgery, you can whistle while you work. Vacuuming, for example, is a task you're not going to get much credit for, and rightfully so--turn up the music, do a little cha-cha, it can be fun. Same goes for mowing the lawn. There's such a sense of rapid accomplishment, that if you're at all "task oriented," you can get quite a macho buzz from it. Unless you're shaving down a football field--you're not going to score too many points. If you want to make a household name for yourself, scrub the tubs and toilets, clean out the garage, mop the kitchen and bathrooms, or spend an entire day doing laundry--that's where you separate the men from the girls.

Perhaps the truest unsung household hero is the individual who unloads the dishwasher when the kitchen is already clean. There's just no glory in it. Though unloading is easier than loading, when you load the dishes, you've pretty much cleaned the kitchen--wipe the counters, sweep some crap under the stove, you cleaned the kitchen, you're kickin' ass--chalk one up for you. Dishes only get unloaded when it's time for another load.

The only message I can think of to impart is that sometimes when we're performing these mundane tasks, stop to consider the service we are performing for the people we love, and the satisfaction that this brings . . . aaaa, that's a crock. Mostly remember my advice about housecleaners--there's no shame in it. The biggest problem with having a housekeeper is that it tends to make you even more lackadaisical about cleaning. Sometimes to the point where you actually have to clean up for the cleaning lady--so she won't think you're a family of nasty, horrible pigs. Irony is kind of a hard concept to define, but the idea of cleaning up for your housecleaner is about as good a definition as catching the Stones on their current tour and watching Mick Jagger sing "Time Is On My Side."