What may have saved our marriage

Hmm...that title is a little misleading. It insinuates that our marriage was in trouble - which it wasn't - but very well could have been if we had not made this one very important decision.

We switched chores.

And it's glorious.

Even before we had kids we fell into the routine of Jenny doing the cooking and Spencer doing the dishes. Makes sense, right? 11 years later, I would cook dinner. We would eat dinner. Spencer would wash the dishes and Jenny would wash the children in the bathtub. Then we'd send the kids off to bed. Perfect! But sometimes life happens, and the dishes would get backed up and I would either have to a) navigate around pots and pans until Spencer had time to catch up or b) wash them myself

Meanwhile...I am supposed to be in charge of the laundry. Every day I tell myself to just do ONE load a day. If I could just do ONE load a day, we would always be caught up it would be easy to manage. But nooooo. Why can't I do this? I wait until someone is out of clean socks and then I dump all the laundry out into the hallway and do a marathon 15 loads in one day. For me, it's an out of sight/out of mind issue. When the laundry is neatly tucked away in the dirty clothes baskets inside the closets - it's not bothering me. When it gets so full that it spills out of the laundry baskets or the voices begin their pleas of "I don't have any pants clean for school!" - well, then it's bothering me so it has to get done.

About two weeks ago, Spencer and I are talking after dinner. He looks at the mounds of dirty dishes and jokes, "What can I pay you to do my dishes?" Knowing that Claire just wore her last clean shirt I said, "You can do the laundry." And, miraculously, I think we had the same thought at the same moment. And we said, "Wanna trade?"

I tiptoed around this for several days. I was afraid he would want to trade back. But I've since approached the subject and he seems as happy as I am.

I don't mind the dishes at all. It's actually easier for me to do them anyways, since I'm the one in the kitchen all day. (Technically this argument holds true for the laundry too, so let's not bring that up, okay?) And Spencer has turned out to be a one-load-a-day kind of guy. Even Easton has noticed that the laundry is "faster" when Daddy does it. I have noticed that I need new hangers. All of my clothes have never been clean at the same time before. Now I've realized that I am two pant hangers short of what I need.