When my kid Link was young, we would always decorate a Christmas tree together and I would always struggle with wanting to “fix” the placement of the ornaments afterwards! That got me thinking about how my household standards differ from Rom’s or Link’s or even our visitors.
I would guess I have a reputation for being, well, exacting! Our house never looks like a cyclone passed through; it’s just cluttered in a fairly normal way. I do a daily kitchen cleanup after dinner, but not a lot of weekly cleaning – it’s all done “as needed.” Since we’re a household of two right now, we just don’t make that much mess, and we have some maturity about tidying up.
I try to share household chores with Rom and I aim for us to do equal amounts. I have no idea if Rom would say we share the housework equally or not! However, there are some chores he does that I feel the need to do over. I try to assess the situation: if it’s a serious inconvenience, I talk to him about it. If it’s a compulsion of mine, I don’t!
One example is laundry, which Rom has taken on indefinitely. All of his clothes are wash and wear, but mine are not. Everything is washed and dried in the same manner unless I specify otherwise. So I have started separating out items that need special treatment, and giving instructions. Rom also folds everything and leaves my clothes for me to put away. But I refold them all in the way I like. Because, ahem, they remain less wrinkled my way!
Another is making the bed. I make the bed. Rom “pulls up the covers.” I don’t like going to bed upon wrinkled sheets. (I think this is turning into a theme!) So, he pulls up the covers, because he gets up later than I do, and I do it over.
Finally, Rom has a habit of rinsing his dishes and leaving them to dry on the dish rack. They are not clean, just rinsed. So I put them in the dishwasher. I don’t really see the point of leaving rinsed dishes there because they can’t be put away. But it is a really die-hard habit. So, they just get done over.
I’m sure my habits are just as annoying, but different. For example, I am responsible for vacuuming, and when I do it, it is done well. No one has to do it over. However, I don’t vacuum nearly as often as needed, and Rom would not dream of nagging me about it. He is very Zen.
How about you? What do you do over?
An Exacting Life 
Oh how I love you! Alas, I live alone, so there’s no ‘do over’ nor anyone to do anything… I find myself ‘doing over’ washing up (those last few items that get washed in no longer sudsy water, never seem clean ‘enough’!). I do feel like I have a nagging other (I do have visitors, so perhaps I demonise them), cause I’m always like ‘someone wouldn’t like all that lint in the sink, or the lint and hair that’s come to lie on EVERY surface. But then I refuse to let myself dust the horizontal ‘base’ of my drum hanging shade (which I did this morning) on a weekly or some other rigid schedule. Though, it means when I do notice it, I scold myself for not having done it!!
Meanwhile, I’m a ‘pull up’ sheets person (my mum ‘taught me’ even though she’s a tucker-inner). Wasn’t enough at boarding school, our cleaners would remake beds – bless their hearts. They seldom ‘redid’ mine, but they did play game with my teddy bear – hiding it and defacing it! A partner ‘pulled up’ my bed the other day, and I didn’t do over – the doing was such a BIG progress, I didn’t want to discourage him!!!
I can relate to that – I don’t have a cleaning schedule either, because it seems too rigid, but then I delay things too long and think “I should be doing that every week!” And I agree that doing over can be discouraging for other people, as in, “Why try because it won’t meet her standards anyway!”
I know just what you mean – we had a ‘do over’ spell when my daughter and her partner were here – my daughters standard of washing up are excellent (like her mom) but sadly the partners did not pass my standards and I would sneak back into the kitchen to rewash them when they had gone to bed.
Ha ha! Did they notice?