Knowledge of my own living habits made the prospect of responding to Wobbles’ invite to move in together rather terrifying. As a child I had lived under the rule of my domineering Second Sister’s compulsively clean ways. She would check my hands for ink marks, and my toothbrush for evidence of use. On leaving the family home, I was to enjoy the freedom of living on my own. There had been only one other abortive attempt at cohabitating with a man some twenty years earlier. That had been an esteem crushing time which coincided with the onset of a major depression. That as they say, is a whole other story.
Fortunately, my interest in Wobbles far outweighed my fear. I took the plunge without too much trepidation.
From the start Wobbles had displayed a few bachelor house habits. There were mouldy things in the fridge. The kitty litter tray lived in the kitchen. The house had a lived in look about it, but certainly there was no filth. Hardly tidy myself this was okay. My previous male co-resident was tidy to the point of obsessiveness. There was no chance Wobbles would be the kind of man to complain as to the state of the house. All signs suggested we had the ingredients of a harmonious home life.
Very soon I had to acknowledge that I had developed two very strict rules of running a household; the kitchen sink and tea towel are sacred. Under no circumstances should cross contamination occur! Wobbles liked to wash cat food bowls in the kitchen sink. Worse he liked to wear the tea towel over his shoulder while in the midst of washing up, before dropping it onto the seat of a kitchen chair.
You see a world of allergies and an early life spent with lungs being filled with the chemical sprays favoured by aforementioned cleaning whiz sister has led me to an adulthood here my preferred cleaning tools are bicarbonate soda and vinegar. I can not trust the use of bleach on the very surface used to clean food and cooking utensils in. My lungs certainly cannot withstand the fumes. So, I almost had heart failure the first time I saw Wobbles pour the contents of the floor mopping bucket down the kitchen sink. We all know that water should be manually disposed of over the garden weeds, and not down any drains, don’t we?
Does this make me a domestic shrew?
I realised my habits might be a little hard for Wobbles to fathom when I started to explain my teas towel washing strategy: these should be gathered together for washing on a low water economic cycle and not mixed in with underwear and the like. Worse still, I don’t like the clean tea towels to be intermingled with other items – no matter how clean. Sorry, the usually very tolerant Lifeslurper just cannot cope with the sight of tea towels wrapped with socks and jocks in the laundry basket.
Same rules applies for the likes of rubber gloves. Wobbles does not understand my need to keep separate dishwashing gloves from say, those used to clean out the shower. One day he made the mistake of taking a lovely new kitchen sink plug to use in the laundry trough. This plug was sacrificed for use in grundgey floor water usage before being returned (without my knowledge) to the pristine site that is the kitchen sink.
If this is the worst Wobbles is capable of, then I consider myself a very fortunate woman. Indeed, everyday I am thankful he is so consistently easy going to live with. Just don’t mention household mould in my presence……..
