Cohabitating is proving more difficult that I had thought. Originally, I predicted that the biggest change would be the addition of Flash’s things, which has been a challenge. Since he’s here all the time anyway I really didn’t imagine day-to-day life being much different. It’s amazing how little things add up.
The addition of the stuff has created frustrations for me that I did see coming, but this foresight has not made it any less frustrating. As someone who does a lot of the cleaning in the apartment I am conscious to avoid making more of a mess than I have to. For example, when making dinner I try to use as few dishes as possible. I don’t mind a good cleaning, but I prefer a good Sunday afternoon house cleaning instead of a the constant daily tidying required to keep a small apartment from getting cluttered and messy. I start to resent cleaning when it becomes picking up after other people. With Melissa this isn’t a problem, but with Flash I feel like I’m constantly picking up after him. Whether it’s dishes, or clothes, or toiletries, or shoes, or coats it always seems to be something.
It also frustrates me that he doesn’t seem to appreciate how much work it was for me to fit all of his stuff in with ours. I think I did a pretty fantastic job of adding all his stuff into the apartment without it looking any more cluttered. I got rid of lots of MY clothes, re-arranged and edited out the storage room, gave him a dresser and half the closet, added storage bins to the closet for his things, found room for his golf clubs and his snowboard to name a few. This is a small standard two-bedroom apartment we’re talking about, I think I did really good!
A lot of the stuff issues weren’t a problem when he stayed here all the time but didn’t live here. The clothes weren’t a constant fixture, there were no toiletries in the bathroom, he would eat meals here, but he wasn’t fixing himself snacks because they were my groceries, not our groceries, so making a big plate of nachos or cooking a frozen pizza were things he would do at home but now he does them here.
Maybe I should just give up. Maybe the apartment can’t be as neat and tidy and clean as it used to be. Maybe I’m being a control freak. I’m being a huge nag and I know Flash finds it annoying. I do want him to feel at home and not like he’s walking on eggshells all the time but I’m not going to settle for living with bachelor habits. Perhaps a re-instatement of the no nagging resolution is in order. Would Flash do a better job of picking up after himself if I gave him more of a chance to do it on his own or would he take full advantage of the lack of nagging and not bother?
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