The neurotic housewife

Sometimes I think that’s what my online moniker should be. But that would give the impression that  am neurotic about a clean house, tidy rooms, perfectly dusted furniture, sparkling-clean windows. That, like Monica from Friends, I freak out when I see crumbs on my table or any dirty dishes in the sink.

That is SO not the case. My house is often messy, my kitchen sink often full of dishes (and I am SO glad that despite all the moves, I have had a dishwasher in every single house or apartment I’ve lived in in the past 10 years).

But there are things I am neurotic about. They surprise (read: annoy) my husband and because they are so unfitting to my general attitude towards house chores and such, they are the things that cause little spats, because he never remembers them ’cause they are totally random to him, and I get annoyed because I have mentioned them before.

For instance, I HATE having veggie or fruit peels on my counter. When I cook I always, always place all onion, garlic etc peels on a paper towel or in a bowl I set on the counter for that specific purpose, so that cleanup is a breeze. Of course cleanup doesn’t always happen in a timely fashion, because hello, I am busy cooking and then busy eating and then after dinner I want to chill. But the peel is NOT on the counter.

My husband, on the other hand, sometimes will peel an apple for Stella and leave the peel on the counter. Yuck. Seriously, yuck. The kitchen can be strewn with dirty dishes and all I see when I pass by is that apple peel. Yuck.

Another thing that bugs me: poorly folded shopping bags. They have a shape, and folds on the sides – it’s like Bag Folding For Dummies, dammit. So when I see shopping bags poorly folded that consequently do not stay flat and tidy in the drawer or corner but instead are kind of crumbled up and all wrinkled on the sides (I’m apparently semi-allergic to ironing, so it’s even more shocking that wrinkled anything bothers me), I forget he just went grocery shopping for the coming week so I wouldn’t have to go out with a cranky/jet-lagged/desperately-needs-a-nap-but-stubbornly-refuses-to-take-one Stella, and that he ran a bunch of errands, and that he still hasn’t been able to relax despite the fact that he’s also tired and jetlagged and it’s Saturday and tomorrow he has to wake up early to go pick up my parents at the airport; I forget all that, all I see is the badly folded, wrinkled, crumbled up paper bags and I feel like tearing them to pieces and (please forgive me for saying this) shoving them down his throat. Or at the very least balling them up and throwing them at him.

I know, I’m a spoiled, bitchy, no-good wife.

And yet, these little quirks somehow make me feel more like I fit in here, in neurotic Switzerland, where everything is always on time and everything is clean and tidy and things are well-organized.

Of course for the rest of my character, I don’t fit in so much. I’m louder than everyone else, I smile more, I speak little German and the little I speak is usually High German, and OMG my house is nowhere near sparkly clean.
But I make good pasta dishes.
And Swiss people like pasta.
So if I ever get a house inspection and they threaten to take away my Swiss citizenship because ach, no way you are Swiss, you undomestic abomination goddess, you bad, bad hausfrau – if that ever happens,  I can just bribe everyone with lasagne alla bolognese.

Maybe to make a (bad) example out of me, maybe to make other neurotic souls feel better, the lovely gals at BlogNosh have deemed me worthy of being included in their fabulous e-mag! Looky here.

Tagged as: my husband is a saint