I recently learned that I do spring wardrobe cleaning wrong, which was a big surprise to me because I didn’t know I did any spring wardrobe cleaning at all. I’ve also been told that I say that every spring.

Apparently, there are two days each year where many items of my clothing switch closets, some are thrown away, and some are even donated. I was outraged to find this out.

Jenny insists this happens in every house in the country and I should’ve learned it growing up. But she’s wrong. The system I learned was much better.

You simply take the clothes you no longer wear and put them in a laundry basket on the floor of your closet. Once the basket fills up, you put another basket on top and start over again. This way, you can always find your cub scout uniform or T-ball outfit when you need it several years later. If you hit the Big Bird slippers, you’ve gone too far.

It’s surprising that Jenny and I are still disagreeing over simple household chores because we’ve lived together for over seven years now.

This one may have fallen through the cracks because the first three years that we lived together were in Texas, where seasonal clothes aren’t really a thing. I didn’t have to worry about losing any of my sweaters because I never unpacked them.

By the time we moved back to a northern climate, the division of household chores had more or less been determined. It wasn’t until we owned our first home that we even revisited the routines we settled into after our first month or so together back in Texas.

As a homeowner now, I’m far more distracted by the outdoor chores than the indoors. I somehow got tricked into taking full responsibility for our yard and driveway maintenance without giving up any of the indoor responsibilities from our carefree days as renters.

I’ve gotten Jenny to pose for pictures on top of our riding mower and pushing the snowblower once, but as soon as the novelty of owning a new tool wears off, she’s back inside or hanging in her hammock claiming she’s “waiting for the laundry to finish.”

Sometimes in the winter I can get Jenny to help with snow removal, but only if the snow completely stops falling while it is still daylight, is over a foot so that she feels guilty watching me clean it all myself, isn’t too windy outside, and she doesn’t feel overly sleepy or slightly sick at the time. The same can be said for raking in the fall.

Indoors is a whole different ballgame.

The initial routines established with any new living situation are extremely hard to break and tend to be informed more by prior experiences, like my philosophy that it makes no sense to clean a single dish until there’s enough of them dirty to fully load a dishwasher. It may sound horrendous, but you know what conversation I never have?

“Are these dishes clean or not?” If they’re in the dishwasher, yes, they’re clean.

Lots of people fight over how to load the dishwasher, but not because they care, they just saw it in a rom-com once and thought it was cute so now they’re trying to play along.

It’s a well-known fact that every girl who has ever publicly complained about how her boyfriend replaces toilet paper also has strong opinions on Ross and Rachel’s first kiss and probably gave your Facebook data to the Russians by taking a quiz to figure out which Sex and the City character she most resembled.

Jenny has had her share of indoor challenges this spring too. She may not be left trying to salvage a yard fall of trees broken from the heavy winter snow, but the unusually late cold weather has caused her to put considerably more thought into when to switch the bed sheets over from flannel to cotton.

I can relate because I’ve had a similar dilemma at Dunkin Donuts trying to figure out when to switch from ordering hot coffee to iced.

For the most part, our indoor routines are settled. Deep cleans are mostly saved for just before times when we’re entertaining with routine maintenance in between.

I take out the trash, but Jenny cleans out the fridge. This is for the best because I’d buy a whole new house before dumping spoiled milk down the drain; it really grosses me out.

I also take out the recycling, which seems repetitive.

I’m supposed to do the dusting, but I usually brush it off.

Jenny mostly does the floors although we sweep more often than we mop. We don’t have a single piece of carpeting in our home, which is good because we both think vacuuming sucks.

Where we really shine is on the chores we do together. We’re great at unloading groceries, no matter who gets stuck doing the actual shopping. I bring in the bags and Jenny immediately starts putting them away. We’ve got a bucket-brigade-style technique that prioritizes from freezer to fridge then pantry in one fell swoop.

The trick to successfully doing chores isn’t when you get it done or how much of it you’re on the hook for doing on your own, but rather that you find consensus on the least amount of progress your household is willing to accept and race each other to lower your minimum expectations.

It’s been a long winter, now that the weather’s getting warmer, why ruin it with work? Unless of course, company’s coming over; then it’s time to panic.

 

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