CharlieHolder.com

I’ve been a little self-conscious about some unwanted changes in my physique I’ve been noticing lately. I attributed it to the parade of different tasty treats that came through my office during the holiday season. I figured that cutting down on sweets would fix the problem.

Then yesterday, a pair of pants that I’ve had since high school felt a little too snug. After work, I broke down and pulled out the old workout DVD. I just figured that I was getting to the age where eating whatever I wanted and not exercising wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I mean they say you are supposed to gain an extra 10 lbs in your first year of marriage, right?

This morning when I was getting ready for work, I couldn’t even button a pair of pants I’d just bought. I mentioned it to Charlie and told him I thought I was getting fat. He got this “Oh crap!” look on his face.  When he ran out of the room, I didn’t know what to think. When he came back in, he told me that he’d accidentally washed them in hot water and shrunk all my pants.

So good news is I’m not fat, but now I have nothing to wear. This would normally be awesome news. Shopping Spree!! Unfortunately we are saving money right now. Looks like I’m just going to have to keep working out to fit into my clothes.

Doing chores.

Yay.

But since I don’t live with my parents anymore, it’s kind of essential that we actually do stuff around the house. I guess we could hire a maid, but why pay for one when I married one? HAYOOOOO! OMG JUST KIDDING.

I don’t really know how long it took, but Amanda and I eventually just came to an agreement on some things:

• If you prepare dinner, you don’t do the dishes.
  • If both of us prepare dinner, we both do the dishes.
• Amanda will fold the laundry if Charlie washes it.
• Flip-flop letting the dog out.
  • Charlie is a heavy sleeper. Amanda lets him out at night if he’s whining.
• Flip-flop cleaning the bathroom as needed.
• Flip-flop vacuuming as needed.
• Trash goes out with the next person to leave if it’s full.
• We don’t dust.

Well, Charlie wanted a new deal. Amanda does everything. OMG JUST KIDDING.

I requested some amendments to the agreement. After a bit of negotiating, the agreement was amended as:

• Amanda does all the laundry.
• Charlie keeps the entire kitchen clean.
• Charlie vacuums as needed.

The key to negotiating is ranking your assets/items. A 1 is something that is not important to you. A 10 is something that is very important to you.

To me, not doing laundry is a 10. I’m pretty willing to do most other things in order to get that.

Keeping the kitchen clean is a 3-4. I don’t dislike doing dishes. Taking out the trash isn’t a big deal. It’s a little more time consuming than washing clothes, but my personality just prefers this over laundry.

And vacuuming is a 1. I do it already. And I’m pretty savvy at it. (HAHA GET IT?!?) Plus we have the Dyson Ball DC24. It’s so money and you don’t even know it.

When I initially asked Amanda about the laundry-dishes trade off, it only included laundry and dishes. A 3-4 for a 10 in my book. I’m already coming out ahead. When she came back with adding vacuuming, it was over.

FDR would be proud.

MAN it’s been a while since I’ve updated. You know what they say: good things come to those you wait. So thanks for being patient.

Been sort of busy doing life. It seems as though I had something fairly important to do every weekend for the past month. And the next three weekends are no exception. We have a lot of driving and traveling to do.

I haven’t been able to do laungry for like a week. The dryer that we received for the great price of free had some unexpected complications last week. After doing a little investigating, mostly to the credit of Russell, we came to the conclusion that an $85 part might fix it. However, spending eight-five dollars on a non-returnable part that might fix it didn’t seem like the best scenario for us.

I had done some searching at a few places the week before at a few small factory outlets and HHGregg, so I knew the brand and price range we were shooting for. We walked into Lowe’s with a quote from HHGregg that was much, much lower than their listed price. I asked the employee a few questions about delivery and installation, then just hit him with the offer — no sugar coating. He said, “I guess we have to match it.” I think we got the last one in stock too.

We ended up walking out with a $378 dryer for the low price of $140.

Today was pretty good day.

As a married man now, I have inherited a few more responsibilities. One of which is doing the laundry.

I hate doing the laundry.

But I think I got a pretty sweet deal going right now. If I have to help to do the laundry, I might as well try to make it worth my while.

I hate folding clothes.

To me, putting the clothes in the washer and moving the them to dryer is a lot easier than folding them. So, Amanda has agreed that I will put them in and she will take them out.

So far so good.

I was getting ready to wash a load of towel when I noticed that the place where you put the fabric softener had some dust/dirt in it. So I took it out and went into the kitchen to rinse it out. Upon further inspection I noticed that the thing was in two parts. I took it apart and almost vomited. It was disgusting in there. (But we did get the thing for the great price of free, so I can’t really complain.) Amanda said the substance that was all over the inside felt like peanut butter. I think that it looked like yellow Vaseline. So put those two descriptions together and close your eyes.

So I ended up washing the thing out. I went back to put it in and noticed the that tube it sat in was EVEN DIRTIER. Oh man. I thought, “I’ve already got the gloves on, I might as well wash that thing too.” So I did. It looked like it had bits of paper caked to the sides. The dirt wasn’t just washing off, it was flaking off in chunks. It was tangible and stuck together. I joking told Amanda that we had had a paper factory in our laundry room this whole time and never knew it. Man, just think off all the money we could have been saving on computer paper when all we had to do was continue washing clothes.

Oh well.

Moral of the story:

Even the thing that makes things clean may not be clean.