What Have You Done for Her LATELY?

My bachelor pad was a pigsty. Do people still use that word? It’s more descriptive, I think, than pigpen. No, I didn’t use empty pizza boxes as room dividers, but there were archaeological layers of clutter, and the kitchen floor and ceiling and walls and appliances were all coated with fried hamburger grease.

Flash forward a couple decades, and you’ll find me sweeping floors, vacuuming, spraying 409 on every visible surface, making beds, ironing, picking up junk, folding my wife’s nightgown and lovely unmentionables, as well as after the kids, endlessly, scraping sugary goo off the coffee table. I don’t do much dusting, but maybe I’ll get there.

What worked the one-eighty change in me, from domestic slob to would-be Mr. Clean?

Wife worship worked the miracle, of course. It didn’t happen overnight, but after a few years of effort, it’s pretty much crystallized from intention into daily habit, even when I’m not actively thinking about helping my wife, or making her life easier. I could do much more, and intend to, but I’ll give myself an attaboy for how far I’ve come. And my wife “brags on me,” too, as Au876 used to say.

“The more you do for your wife, the more you want to do,” says one devoted husband, “and the more you want to do, the more you discover things you can do. It just grows.” (Quoted in Chapter 5, “Pampering & Pitching In,” of my book.)

That’s not all that grows on these domestically devoted husbands. As A876, wrote: “I may be ironing her clothes, cleaning the bathrooms, preparing dinner, washing dishes -- you name it. And I realize I have an erection. She may not even be at home and yet I have become excited just knowing I am serving her in some fashion.”

Is that kinky or what? And yet, this benignly delusional behavior results in a clean house and a happier wife. My advice to husbands just taking up the renewed courtship of their wives?

Go thou and do likewise.

Ask your wife for how-to hints and helps. Or check out FlyLady.Net or Jeff Campbell’s Speed Cleaning. And start slaying her domestic dragons on a daily basis.