I’ve learned to kill some household disputes, like how and when to load and run and unload the dishwasher. I just took over the task completely. Easier than splitting it and finding someone put dirty dishes in with the just-cleaned ones.
Other problems run for years and years. One of us raises the fridge temperature every time the ice cream is rock hard. Then the other will turn it colder because the milk seems cool instead of cold. Years of back and forth.
The answering machine greeting was a back and forth game until the land line went the way of the dodo, Now we have separate voicemail recordings.
When I was married we had running arguments over where the scissors should be kept and what could be cut with the “good scissors”. This one was solved by a friend who said “Put a price on the problem - what would you pay to solve it?” Instantly the answer appeared. Buy three pairs of scissors in his and hers colors.
One of each in the three natural locations for scissors. Sounds wasteful but then we no longer had to keep buying new “good scissors”. A cheap extravagance.
My wife and I have an ongoing battle. I like to have our pepper mill on the ledge on back of the stove, but my wife likes the non-cluttered look and likes the pepper mill (and the salt, etc.) in the pantry. I cook a lot and like to have it handy, so I’ve informed her that as long as she keeps putting it away, I’ll keep taking it out.
I think the only “long-running” argument left at our place is my argument with my daughters about forgetting to lock the front door when they leave. They don’t seem to be inclined to remember it, so it looks like I’m stuck with the situation until they move out. I still fuss at them about it from time to time though.
Some other things which have come up either have been worked out (I’ll put liners back in the cans after Hubby takes the trash out, the kids quit parking on the grass) or I’ve decided to live with them (some people can’t remember to keep the toilet lid closed, I got bins for my son’s laundry since he can’t be arsed to use a chest of drawers).
The freezer problem may be easy to fix. Of course you could buy a model with separate freezer control. But first try blocking off part of the hole where cold air enters the freezer. A small cloth should do it. That will change the balance between refrigerator and freezer.
I solved the “which way to hang the toilet paper” by putting separate holders on either side of the toilet. Looks odd but the problem is solved.
We used to have a lot of disagreements over cooking supper. If she was cooking, she’d ask me for advice or an opinion, then ignore it. If I was cooking, she’d barge in and remodel what I was making.
Finally, I said it’s gotta stop. I was wasting too much time in anger. What we worked out is trading weeks. There’s a calendar on the front of the refrigerator, where meals are planned, usually, a few days to a week ahead. Neither of us has the right to meddle in the other’s meal planning. Sometimes help is requested, but otherwise, it’s “stay outa the kitchen.”
My husband and I divide the household bills. For awhile, he paid the electric and I paid the TV (dish). He’d whine when I turned on the A/C and I’d bitch when he ordered porn – it’s $12.95! – for that you can buy the DVD! So we switched.
The other issue we haven’t resolved. He won’t put anything away, and I’m always putting stuff where (he says) he can’t find it. Not sure what we can do about that.
My mother came up with a great solution for this. She needlepointed a clean/dirty sign to hang on the handle. My sister liked it so much that she had mom make one for her.
Try this on her for opinions: a shelf to keep them off the counter but still near the stove. Of course you’d mount it on the least viewed side. http://i44.tinypic.com/3023sd0.jpg
When to eat was one of our big ones. My husband doesn’t really care if he eats at 6 or at 9. He doesn’t snack much, either, so when he eats isn’t important. I, on the other hand, will snack all evening if I eat late, then I’ll eat a full meal when dinner is ready. Finally, I let him know that eating so late was contributing to some pretty significant weight gain for me and we agreed that, whenever possible, we would eat together as a family (son included) before our son went to bed. If my husband has to work late, I eat with our son. That way I can consider the kitchen closed after I’ve had my evening meal. Making that decision helped me lose 25 pounds.
Other ongoing irritants around the household - me doing most of the cleaning and my husband’s very complicated manner of doing our son’s wash that I have never been able to master.
Both of us work full time and I’m generally the one who notices what needs to be cleaned and who has enough experience to be able to plan and coordinate cooking and cleaning. My husband, on the other hand, had people around to cook and clean for him all his life and therefore doesn’t generally notice when something needs to be cleaned or, if he does, he doesn’t know where to start. We’re still working on resolving this, and probably will be for years, but he’s been wonderful about making baby steps toward helping me.
As for the laundry, my husband has this very complicated system where you really need a rosetta stone to get all straight. It goes something like this: he’ll wash all our son’s socks with some other type of article of clothing, such as his pants. The same load might also include sheets, unless there are towels to wash, in which case, the kid’s sheets and towels go in their own load. The sock/pant load is washed in hot with a hot soak. The sheet/towel load is washed in warm/hot unless the kid wet the bed or had an accident, in which case, I think they’re washed in hot with a warm soak. The rest of his clothes - I think the shirts and blankets - is washed on cold/hot. Anyway, my typical method is to separate by color and dump all the lights into one load and the darks into another, which drives my husband absolutely out of his mind.
To solve this, I finally told my husband that if he would take care of the kid’s laundry, I don’t mind taking care of the kitchen.
Hmmm…my solution to my long-running household issues were to get a divorce.
I’m only half kidding. The fact that my ex-husband refused to work with me to find workable solutions to these sort of minor issues was a big problem, or maybe a symptom of the larger problems in the marriage. “You have to do better” or “you have to change” were the only available options. For example, if I had suggested something like the his-n-hers scissors, and he would have rejected that, saying that I just needed to remember and follow his rules about what could be cut with which scissors. And while I agree that “suck it up and do it yourself” is often the most practical solution, one party shouldn’t be doing all the up-sucking, and both people should just accept that they are just going to have to live with certain minor annoyances.
So why am I saying all of this? I guess it’s mainly as a warning to people in newer relationships. All couples have these problems, some of which may never be solved. Actually finding solutions to these types of problems isn’t so important. But you should pay close attention to your partner’s attitudes when negotiating this kind of stuff.
One possibility–physically show him where things are supposed to go. That won’t get him putting things away, but if you and he stand in front of the kitchen drawer and you actually place the scissors in the drawer and say “the scissors go in the kitchen drawer,” he’s more likely to remember. Yeah, it’ll be pedantic and annoying, but it may help–basic cognitive psychology.
Of course you could really mess with him and put the scissors in the cabinet next time…
My husband can never find the tape. Partly because we had philosophical differences on where the tape should live. Multiple rolls of tape solved the problem, mush like the OP’s scissors.
As I wrote about in this thread from last January (I pit my husband for throwing household items out), I got a cleaning lady after spending three months pissed off about the carpets never getting vacuumed.
A solution I find in many households:
split the task list, not the tasks; for example, the person who’s pickiest about how to put laundry awat puts the laundry away.
One which apparently was almost exclusive to my family:
we had a box of tapes for the car, which got filled with a more-or-less equal amount of tapes per person (my brothers counted as only one when they were little, as both wanted the same tapes and there’s only so many hours a person with two figures in his age can stand the smurfs singing without going ballistic). Then each person would choose a tape in rigurous order. This way everybody got to hear “his” music at some point. If you didn’t like what was playing you had to suck and grunt, your turn would arrive soon enough.
Similar solutions applied to choosing what movie to play when there was nothing on TV.
I have a problem with my mother re. putting stuff away. When I have a piece of clothing I’ve used but which doesn’t need to be washed, I leave it on a chair. She’ll go and put it away, and not just in its regular spot, oh no: at the far left end of the closet, behind the “wrong season” clothes, where I never ever look! I’m afraid the only solution I’ve found to that is spending as little time in her house (or with her in mine) as possible.
I also leave things out of place on purpose to remind me of something: of course, she goes and puts them in “the right spot”… I’ll never remember that I have to fix the back of Gramps’ portrait so long as it’s in its normal place! Leaving notes to myself won’t work as long as she’s around: she throws them away. She doesn’t throw away her food wrappers or spent yoghurt, though.
Having multiple pairs of scissors or rolls of tape around the house is a good idea. I have gone to the extreme of locking up my good pairs of sewing scissors because my husband WILL use whatever pair is handiest when he wants to cut something that will ruin a pair of scissors. I finally broke him of this habit by buying several pairs of cheap scissors AND by insisting that he pay me, right now, the price of a new pair of sewing scissors when I caught him using my good scissors for anything. Once he had to shell out more than $20 several times a week, he finally understood that he should not touch my scissors, even if I had put them down for a few minutes while I went to the bathroom.
In fact, I have found that having forfeits will solve a lot of problems, and the forfeit doesn’t have to be monetary, either. Some of the most effective forfeits involve not being able to watch certain TV shows for a period of time. I discuss this with my husband and only impose the forfeit if he agrees to the notion, though. He knows that if he doesn’t cut the grass before it’s a certain height, he doesn’t get to watch COPS. Minor children need to know the forfeit ahead of time, but they don’t necessarily have to agree to accept the idea, it just gets imposed on them. For leaving the door unlocked, I would think that grounding would be in order. Since they can’t be depended on to secure the building when they leave, they can’t leave, even if someone else is there. Obviously, you can’t ground them from school or work, but they can be grounded from going out.
I am usually the one to load and unload the dishwasher, and I tend to do it while I do other things, like make a cup of tea. So the dishwasher might be partially loaded or unloaded. The way to tell whether the dishes are clean or dirty is to look at the detergent cup. If it’s open, the dishwasher has been run. When I completely empty the dishwasher, I put detergent in the cup and close it before I put a single dirty dish in the dishwasher. Not only is this helpful to my husband, but I find that it’s helpful to me, too, as I have started having more brain farts lately.
Please do not nuke the ice cream. Part of the texture is developed by incorporating air into the ice cream as it freezes, and nuking releases that air. Put the ice cream in the fridge freezer, instead of the deep freeze.