Simple Marriage Compromises: Honey Where Are The Bowls Kept?

As a consistent customer, he paid for his coffee everyday with exact change. For months and months, day after day, he always paid with exact change. Then suddenly he began paying only with bills. Today he explained that he had kept all his change in a jar on a shelf which he passed by everyday on his way out the door. One day his wife moved the jar to ‘a better location.’ Now he doesn’t pass the jar en route to the door so---out of sight, out of mind---he brings no change with him.

The same man was painting a room the other day. To paint the wall he had to remove two hooks. He took the hooks down from the wall and placed them on a shelf. When the paint was dry and it was time to put the hooks back in place he went to the spot on the shelf where he had neatly put them. They weren’t there. His wife had taped them together and put them inside a drawer in the kitchen.

These stories illustrate well what most bachelors encounter when they marry a woman. Once my wife moved into what was previously only my dwelling, the whole house was reorganized. Certainly she is talented and logical in this regard. She made more space for our stuff and logically moved plates, pots and pans to cabinets where they fit better. We’ve been married two years now and I still don’t know where some of the stuff lives. My brother-in-law told me recently that my sister moves stuff so often that he finds it easier to consistently ask, “Where does the (whatever) go?” rather than to have to hunt down it’s newest place of residence.

In our house currently there are places for everything and most everything has a place. There are even places for all the hairbrushes. Can someone explain to me why you need more than one? Certainly between the two of us I am the messier one. In part the reason also explains the way the house was previously organized before my lovely wife moved in with me. As a bachelor it was easier to just leave everything out where you could most easily find it. Just saying.