Dear Blake,
I’ve been married for six years. When I met my wife, we decided she’d move into my home with her three teenaged boys. I told them upfront how important it is to me to keep a clean home. When they come home from college, they leave a mess in the kitchen, and it drives me crazy. This has been going on since we married, and I’m ready to tell my wife they are not allowed back into my home.
I have reminded them many times about cleaning up after themselves, but their mess continues. I’m close to losing my temper over it. It angers me to see grown men in my home do this. It feels like they are blatantly disrespecting me. When I was away for a year, my wife constantly complained to me about their lack of cleanliness as well. Am I in the wrong?
Signed, Brandon
From Chicago, Illinois
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Dear Brandon,
Because your wife agrees with you, you are not wrong. What you need to do now is aggressively deal with the three little pigs. Here are some suggestions. Lock the refrigerator and microwave oven in your bedroom, which reduces their options of meals they can consume and limit the amount of trash heaps that they can create. Or, if you want them to be extremely critical of each other, tell them that the next time one of them makes a mess, you’ll throw out the other two. Or maybe this idea. Tell them that next time one of them destroys your kitchen, they have to taste your newest creative cuisine, but make sure that at least half of the cuisine is not for human consumption. And lastly, create a mess in the kitchen and then allege that one of them did it, but you don’t know which one. Tell them if no one confesses then you’ll throw all three of them out, permanently. When they start “finger pointing”, say whatever is necessary for it to escalate into something physical, and when it does, call the cops and have all three of them arrested. Assuming that someone bails them out (and not you), inform the trio that they can’t return to your place, because you have an issue with ex-cons that has some very serious anger management issues. I hope this helps.
Blake