A word of wisdom for those younger women...

Or may be this post should be titled - "Dear men - tip one on how not to drive us crazy when it comes to housework."

We all know the term "boy look" don't we? You know when a male of any age or stage asks you "where is..." and you say "look there..." and they say "I can't find it" and you go and there it is - if not exactly where you said it was within a 10 cm radius. The kind of thing that makes most of us want to scream with frustration particularly if there is any suggestion that their inability to find it is because (a) you put it away, (b) you didn't put it away or (c) they don't think that is the best place to put it.

And of course that lack of competence seems to inevitably play out into other aspects of household management. Yesterday it struck me that maybe part of the core of "the boy look" and "the boy clean" is a fundamental lack of appreciation of household management as a planned sequence of tasks. So for instance my "helpful" male cleans up around me (and my daughter) when we are in the middle of cooking - this invariably leads to him putting things away before we have finished using them and almost as invariably creates a burning desire to attack him with the sharp knife which he has just helpfully put in the dishwasher 30 seconds before we reached for it.

So anyway - we have painters coming to our house prior to our new carpet being laid. In order for both these tasks to be completed some bookcases need to be moved. The carpet layer will move them as they go on the condition they are empty of books. So yesterday I suggested to my dearly beloved that we pack the books into some old packing boxes for the duration based on the information already mentioned. Oh yes he thought that was a good idea...

So what happened? In the afternoon I was clearing out youngest child's bedroom which involved implementing the logical process of checking that DVDs and games were in the right covers before they were packed away, that library books were sorted out so they could be returned rather than put in the boxes for a month collecting overdue fines, that clean clothes and dirty clothes, summer and winter clothes all had their appropriate home. DB came in to help and what does he start to do? Repeat the task already 90% complete with the DVD's which included asking me where the cover was for the one that I hadn't already found, put books in the bookcase and then put the library books in the bookcase. Hello - which part of "we're packing the books up so we can move empty bookcases did we miss here?"

Anyway to my tip - Boys please learn to walk in to a significant cleaning task and ask "what's the plan?" and then "which bit do you want me to do?" OK I acknowledge that in a perfect world you should have an itemised household management list in your head as well and I shouldn't have to ask or direct but sometimes you have to go with the flow. I also think it's a two way thing and in this respect we can be just as guilty walking into a task they have started and applying our approach without checking first. The main point is - the whole thing will go a whole lot better and a whole lot smoother if one person has a plan and the other person cooperates>