• 15 Dec, 2025 *

My friend’s mother recently whispered a wisecrack at me—"you can be my wife," with a coy little smile—which sent her daughter shrieking.

"Hey, I already clean your counters for free," I teased back. I already keep her kitchen tidy, no exchange of vows necessary. It’s a personal preference of mine, I added, to keep the counters clean. It’s also my contribution to the household, an expression of gratitude, very minor in the scheme of things.

As I wiped down the counters, though, I felt a little overwhelmed. I idly worried, for the umpteenth time, that maybe I’ve inadvertently been teaching teenaged boys that if they make a mess, a woman—any woman, not even someone else’s mom—will be standing by, eager to clean up behind them. This is not a lesson I am trying to perpetuate.

It gets under my skin: I remembered a man once explaining to me that his time was worth more than mine, and that’s why he couldn’t pick up after himself, or even pause to feed himself. He meant worth literally, financially, just a neutral fact of the glass ceiling. He meant that his time, his span of aliveness, had greater market value. His time and his big beautiful brain were too important to be wasted on frivolous day-to-day drudgery, he explained. That last part isn’t gendered. I definitely remember feeling this exact same way—as a teenager, about chores, before having a roommate.

He was explaining to me why he needed others to tend to him, to keep him alive, the simple business math of home economics. But his time wasn’t worth more than mine specifically, if only because I have less of it: I have fewer usable hours in the day, a limited supply of energy and basic upright consciousness. To be sure, the man was a victim, too, and I think he intrinsically recognized that. But he couldn’t cut himself loose from the longstanding system of self-commodification he was describing because he was all too aware of how it benefited him materially. The cognitive dissonance must be brain-breaking, dispiriting.

How easily I slip into ‘wife duties’ just because I prefer order and straight lines. I often think back to taking a Buzzfeed personality quiz, where my result was a blend of the sitcom characters Danny Tanner and Niles Crane. That Danny Tanner is a neat freak is played for laughs: his neuroticism is a lovable quirk, not a weapon to exploit against him. But what is the alternative? If I’m the only person who cares about a clean kitchen, then it becomes my duty to clean it, right? Or maybe my lesson is to just care less? But it isn’t so easy to pick and choose what we actually care about.

Recently, though, I accidentally discovered how to enlist others in my war on mess. Unpacking a holiday delivery had resulted in a small explosion of styrofoam specks, which rained across the living room like a nuclear winter.

"Oh my God," I said melodramatically, dropping to the floor to pick up the white specks one by one. "Oh my God, styrofoam! My sworn enemy!"

"That’ll get vacuumed up," my friend assured me.

"Yeah, but someone just vacuumed, so it’ll be in a week," I sighed. My mind flitted to the psychology of the ‘invisible hand’—how the knowledge that someone will eventually clean up gives everyone else license to dump their mess and walk off—and I bit my tongue, maintaining laser focus on my own discomfort instead. Let the neuroticism be mine alone to bear. ("Oh my God!") OK. If it were really about me and my comfort, then something could be done about it. My friend grabbed a broom.

In the ensuing days, every time the small child found another kernel of styrofoam, she would announce it, and I’d gasp and extend my hand, waiting for the little foam fleck to be deposited into my palm. "Oh my God, another one! Thank you!" I will say, carrying it to the wastebasket and dusting it off my hands. Happily, the child began rummaging in the sofa cushions for more styrofoam. She is treating cleanup efforts like a scavenger hunt; her reward is the melodramatic declarations of gratitude from, essentially, a cartoon character.

How fun it is to help me in my ongoing war on styrofoam specks. The specks have this static cling issue, too, which makes them extra tricky. Or they catch on a microgust of air and try to flutter away. Ah, good work, that one was a real stinker! Thank you for chasing him down. This is what Brene Brown calls "common-enemy intimacy," and our common enemy is styrofoam packaging. ("Styro-foe," I joked, then tee-hee’d at my own joke alone.)

As I unloaded the dishwasher, I smiled. My friend’s dad had washed most of the dishes but, before he left for the night, he indicated the dishwasher and the full sink, and explained himself. He was letting me know where his work had left off, should I decide to pick up slack. I’d given him a big, appreciative hug. Teamwork!

As I shelved the plates, I returned to worrying about what to eventually say to some teen boys, since silently radiating ire is annoying, and not particularly effective besides. They aren’t my kids either, so it’s out of line to dispense any lessons directly; indirectly, though, I’m teaching them a lack of accountability. What do?

"Someday, when you live alone..." Did my adoptive mother ever say that to me? Even if she didn’t, she could have. It’s a good angle. "Someday, when you live alone, you will have to make the choice whether to clean up after yourself, or to live in squalor. And if you choose the latter, and then if a girl ever comes over, she will see your countertop and her future will flash before her eyes, and she will back out of your apartment, filled with fright." Yeah! Threaten them with forever-aloneness! (Sometimes I worry that anyone who talks to me immediately posts to a subreddit about the encounter right afterward.)

"It’s just that the berry spatter makes it look like someone was murdered here," that’s something I could try saying. But saying that a mess reminds me of blood and guts might encourage more merry mess-making.

Sometimes you just need a third hand. One time, earlier this year, I asked the nurse to "come over here, be my husband for a second." It was at the conclusion of a medical appointment; the whole event had been surreal, and now I needed help reclasping my bra. Since there were the two of us in the room, I’d unclasped it the way you’re supposed to, rather than squirming out of the bottom of it, which is a well-known single-lady behavior. But this is also considered bad bra practice, eroding the structural integrity of an overpriced foundation garment.

In this way, the shortcuts of singlehood have a certain amount of shame attached. The shame is right there, built into the bra itself, nigh-impossible to chicken-wing in and out of solo. I don’t like that. It’s invisible sabotage. You don’t have to clip my wings, prematurely incapacitate me, or otherwise render me dependent, to inspire me to be a better or more appreciative teammate to others.