Passive aggressive chore skipping

It's the million small things.

In general, Hillary was tidier than me. That's not to say that I tolerated a huge mess. Anyone who's been in my kitchen knows it's a bit cluttered, but the clutter is clean.

Ignoring the chaos of kid stuff and their general effect on house tidiness, we made a pretty good team at keeping things in order.

With a couple of exceptions.

We had three areas in the house where random crap would just pile up. We both hated tidying those areas and stuff that went there could stay for weeks or months.

The dining room table, the cedar chest in our room and the railing above the stairs.

The dining room table was a catch all for art, paperwork and miscellaneous things picked up off the ground.

The cedar chest and railing on top of the stairs were often holding places for clothes and linens that were not clean, but also not dirty enough to warrant washing them right now. Think of sweaters that were worn for an hour but are still used every day or two. A warm blanket that would only get used once or twice a week could stay for months.

We both hated tidying those areas and also hated how cluttered they got. While we were both responsible for cluttering them, it was the one chore that we never settled on who's core responsibility it was.

So things would pile up.

Eventually, one of us would just lose it and put everything away, clearing the area to make it ready for more random crap.

It was a small, unspoken competition to not do it, but we were always both grateful and a tiny bit smug when the other person did it.

I put some crap on the railing last night. I looked at it for a few minutes as the realization sunk in that no matter what, it was going to be me tidying that area. The competition was over.

So I tidied it and it hurt. Day 23.