By Rick Kaempfer
This month I’m celebrating my third anniversary as a househusband. I’ll admit I was a little scared about what might happen to me or the children when I was placed in charge of the household three years ago, but it’s actually going pretty well so far…knock on wood.
If you asked me three years ago to give an estimate of the percentage of work I did around the house when I still worked, I honestly thought I was doing about 40% of the household chores. After being at home full time for awhile, I have revised that estimate downward slightly…to about zero percent. As it turns out, when I worked, my only actual contribution to the house was my paycheck.
Now that Bridget and I have switched roles, I’ve been incrementally moving that percentage up from zero, but I’m still nowhere near my wife’s previous 100%. There are two good reasons for that: Rick and Bridget. There are some things that she simply won’t allow me to do, and some things that I simply refuse to do.
Let me give you a few examples.
Kid-Care
I can handle the discipline…although I’m not exactly using textbook techniques. I can handle the homework…although I’ve got maybe one more year before the math is beyond me. I can handle illnesses…although I still pray that nobody vomits unless Bridget is home. I even potty-trained Sean all by myself—and that’s a minor miracle. However, I will never, and I have never taken the boys to the mall by myself. I hear mothers talking about taking their kids to the mall all the time, and I think…On purpose? You’ve got to be kidding me. Never, ever, ever. Not gonna happen.
Cleaning
The boys and I clean up the house from top to bottom every Friday. We tidy, sweep, dust, vacuum, and scrub. Everything in the house looks wonderful on Friday night when the wife comes home from work. Everything, that is, except for the bathrooms. We are forbidden from cleaning the bathrooms. Apparently, our idea of clean isn’t the same as hers.
Cooking
I cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single weekday. This is my favorite job—and I’ve really gotten into it. I have about two dozen recipes I rotate, depending on my mood. The one thing I won’t do, however, is pick the fat off the chicken. That’s one of my lingering psychological problems caused by working at Brown’s Chicken when I was in high school. I know it’s weird, but if Bridget wants me to cook chicken, she has to pre-pick the fat.
Laundry
I can do it, but apparently not very well. If something is white—I’m not allowed to touch it. Luckily, after the first few times I did laundry, we don’t have much of anything that is still white, so it’s not really an issue.
Shopping
I’ve gotten quite good at grocery shopping. I usually plan out my menu for the week before I go to the store, and then I zip in and out of the aisles getting exactly what I need. I draw the shopping line, however, at Wal-Mart. The aisles are too small, the store is too crowded, and the departments make no sense to me. (The pets are right next to the pharmaceuticals?) The place actually gives me the creeps.
Report Card
I asked Bridget to grade me in the five main househusband categories to see how I was doing after three years on the job. She pretended she didn’t hear me at first, but finally relented and gave me her assessment.
She gave me a B+ in child care and cooking, a B- in cleaning and laundry, and a C in shopping. (That’s better than most of my college report cards.) Then I asked her the big question: What percentage of the overall housework do I do now? She thought about that one for a long time, and after giving it a great deal of thought, finally replied: “I’d say about 70%.”
70%?
That’s better than I thought. Considering that the only things standing between me and the 100% ideal are vomit, chicken fat, dirty toilets, shopping malls, bleach, and Wal-Mart, I’ll take it.
70% is still a passing grade, right?
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