My wife is too lazy and scattered, what can I do?

Dear Praise,

I have a matter that has been bothering my mind since I married this woman. What actually attracted me to her was the fact that she was very clean and neat and each time I visited her house before I proposed I met a tidy environment which was one of the qualities I wanted in a wife. But I feel I was actually deceived because the moment we had our 2^nd baby she became very lazy and the house is perpetually upside down.

I have complained about this and I almost hit her one day when her excuses was becoming unbearable for me. She keeps complaining about her workload but I visit my friends and wonder how their wives manage to keep the home clean> I just feel some of these our modern day girls are too lazy. It seems they want marriage without understanding what it takes to fulfil the traditional roles of being a woman.

Things have gotten so bad right now that she pisses me off each time I see her.

Please what can I do to make her become organized?

Ibrahim O, Lagos

Dear Ibrahim,

Thanks so much for your mail and for trusting this platform.

Let me start by applauding you for not hitting your wife because that would have amounted to domestic violence. There is no good man that beats a woman over an issue that common sense and wisdom can resolve.

From your mail you did not specify the type of apartment you live in but I’d assume it’s being a flat or a duplex for the purpose of this discussion. If you met your wife as an organized woman who paid adequate attention to her personal affairs and all these changed after a 2^nd child don’t you need to sit down and ask yourself the role you played in turning an organized woman into a scattered woman?

A man is a bridegroom and the way your wife looks at the moment is a testimony to your grooming ability so what you have at the moment is exactly the woman you have produced from your production factory.

There could have been so many reasons for what you now called a scattered woman and it may not have anything to do with laziness as posited by you. I’d like to ask you the following questions:

1. What is your role in helping her out of the burden of household chores? – Your wife is a human being not a machine and the burden of handling 2 children who are a handful on their own as well as combining that with fixing meals and taking care of you in bed and her own personal life is enough to drain any human being no matter how powerful they are?

Do you help this woman to cook, bather the kids or even clean the house? If you have not lent a helping hand then you have no right to complain. It is so easy to compare the 21^st century woman with the women of old but often times we are not being fair to them because the women of old never kept a corporate job. Most of them were full time house-wives so it was easy and many of them even had domestic helps in family members who came to live with them. Does your wife have all these?

Why don’t you tell her to relax for a week while you try your hands on the domestic chores just to prove to her that it was laziness that was responsible for your scattered house and you must do everything in these one week. Once you can show her how easy this could be achieved you might as well continue doing it afterall there is no law anywhere that legislated that a woman must be the one to clean the house.

2. Do you have a domestic management system? – I often talk about couples developing a domestic management system to promote orderliness in their homes. What that means is that the 2 of you must sit down to adequately analyze what the real problem could be and agree on how to tackle the issues. For example if you guys have developed a habit of dropping your shoes wherever you like once you return from work, you now need to agree on the penalties for not putting the right things in the right places first time.

Domestic management system must take into account everything that affects your home and that must include:

• Kitchen plan
• Play area for the kids
• Re-order level of your food stuff
• Bedroom golden rules
• Our space protocol etc

Once you can talk things through I am sure you would see the areas your wife genuinely needs help and by either hiring a hand to help (a house-keeper not a house-help) or by you taking some of the burden off her you would have the kind of home you desire.

3. Are your children old enough to understand order? – It is tough to keep a home clean when your kids are yet to attain their pre-teen years except where you have created a play space where they can do all they desire to do. Children are a handful on their own and they don’t know the difference between a sitting room or a play arena except where you have clearly defined these spaces. I call them chief disorganizing officers because they have mastered the art of re-arranging the home in their own image after you are done arranging yours.

I am not discounting your observation though but I must let you know that organized people don’t just become disorganized overnight. What has been her emotional state lately and how often does she get words of affirmation from you? A woman that is constantly criticized would eventually wither because she is like a flower that requires consistent flowering to stay alive.

Please go back to your wife and try to do some of the suggestions above and I am sure you shall experience an orderly environment once again.

I honour you.