Being Good

I don’t know which is worse, my husband doing nothing OR my husband being so efficient that he has thrown out almost all of the contents of my home. For the last three weeks husband has been in superman mode and cleaned out every cupboard, drawer and wardrobe. It is making Ashley and me insane.

“Do you want this? Or can it go in the bin?” he shouts holding up Ashley’s old school memorabilia. “Can this go to charity shop?” he yells holding up my favourite handbag.

Ashley has loads of old VHS tapes of her doing stand up on TV at various clubs at age 11 years old and he declares them all worthless as no-one uses VHS, though they are very valuable to me and Ashley. I convince him we can get them converted soon. “How soon?” he asked impatiently.

They may end up in the bin.

“Lets get up at 9am and wash all the windows, clean out the hall cupboard and start doing next years tax return by clipping and bagging all your recent receipts, then we can wash down all the skirting boards in the house and hoover out the corners” he smiles, all anticipatory.

I balk and decide to hide in bed. I am faking a serious illness at the moment, it has no name and the symptoms change daily.

He was more fun when he was lazy. The house was messy but I knew where everything was, I could lay my hands on everything I wanted. Now even my make up boxes have been cleaned and I can’t find a fucking thing.
He has arranged the hair brushes in a drawer according to size and thickness and my hair clips are all wrapped tightly in elastic bands, then put in a small see through box with a label. It says ‘Hair clips’ in case I get confused.

He cleaned the oven and it now looks like it belongs in a show room, there are no traces of that thing every having cooked a meal.

The metal trays shine like a silver bumper on a new car. It has a new light and fan and in my food cupboards everything is in boxes with printed labels. It’s like living in a flat share house. There is a box that says ‘Mustard sachets’ on it. That scares me.

My clothes are all coordinated by colour in my closet…think bloke from 9 ½ weeks but without the food sex. My scarves are all hung in a row and my shoes are all laid out perfectly in boxes at the bottom of my wardrobe. I liked it when I had to scuffle through them; I loved finding a shoe I forgot I had. Not now.

Tomorrow we are going to organise all the stuff beside the computer and take yet more boxes to the charity shop. I am going insane. When will it stop? Is this grounds for divorce?