Jami's Looking (Way, Way, Way) Ahead

I'm not a great housekeeper. Mostly it's due to the fact that I don't mind clutter and that I'm lazy. Also, I hate to do stuff that I know I'm just going to have to do again in a couple days. So, while I keep a fairly clean house, it's rarely neat. And I'm not good at those stupid things that don't occur to me all the time, like dusting the tops of the door frames. I can't see them, we don't eat or play there, who cares? But recently I've seen a definite benefit to this, and not for me. For my future daughter-in-law. See, some of my friends have husbands who expect ridiculous acts of housekeepery, because, apparently, their mothers had super-high standards of clean. One woman recently told me that her husband was aghast that she had not dusted their baseboards in "at least two weeks." Of course, they have a small child and she also works part-time and does 100% of the housework, cleaning and childcare. But surely, she has time to dust the baseboards; his mother did it every week. My daughter-in-law will never have this argument. Raised in this house, Eddie will be thrilled, possibly to tears, if she dusts the baseboards more than 3 times a year. He'll never expect to come home to an immaculately just-dusted and vacuumed home with no toys on the floor. He won't believe that laundry goes magically from the floor to being clean in his dresser - he already knows that clean laundry requires at least a 1 day waiting period in the basket in the hallway. See, I'm not lousy at housekeeping, I'm helping strengthening my son's future marriage. You're welcome, Future Daughter-in-Law.