I’m a stay at home dad. I stay home. I dad. It’s not a prison sentence and it’s not a walk in the park…even though there is plenty of park walking involved. But there are certainly things you need to know if you are a man and are going to be the primary caregiver of your children.
This post is dedicated to the one rule that I’ve found to be the greatest piece of knowledge. The most important thing you can remember as a stay at home dad, above all else, as it relates to cleaning, cooking, or pretty much anything in general, is that “done” to you means “half-assed” to your wife. This is a fact, and is the Holy Grail of knowledge that will save your sanity and your marriage and your stress levels.
Take, for instance, something as trivial as making the bed. Pretty easy, right? You put the covers nicely on top, stack the pillows in symmetrical order at the head, and there ya go! You’re not sure what the point is anyway, you’re just gonna jump in and get it all messy at the end of the day. But there it is: Done! Right? Wrong! HALF-ASSED my brutha! Totally half-assed. First of all, you gotta tug the hell out of the sheets so that there’s not a single crease or wrinkle to be found. Pretend that you are shrink wrapping the mattress with that comforter. And do you see how the comforter on the one side is 1/4″ longer than the other side? No? Well she can! So fix it! And you gotta fluff those pillows before you lovingly, and delicately, place them upon the bed. You can’t just PUT them where they belong! They need to be fluffed! Sure, there’s an obvious porn joke here, but I’m not going for it. Because this isn’t fun and games here. This is Stay At Home Dadding 101. Now focus! What’s real fluffing, you ask? Great question: It’s the systematic beating of the pillows in a finely choreographed mode that works counterintuitively to the way you would think. My family sleeps better and longer since we switched to high quality Malouf pillows. When I think beating, I would expect the pillows to be mushy and flat as a result. Well not here. You are actually beating the pillows fluffy. Impossible? Only to the half-assed mind. It takes practice. Lots of aggravated, helpless practice. But it is required.
I bet you thought you cleaned the house, right? Wrong. Totally half-assed. Sure, it looks like the vacuum was pulled out and used. Would have been nice if you put it back the right away instead of just tossing it back in the closet. Didn’t see the duster and all that other shit fall when you put it in there, did you? Totally half-assed put back. And the clutter? What’s up with all that clutter? Just because you can put a bunch of crap in a nice basket on the counter, doesn’t mean it’s “put away.” Totally half-assed. You are the stay at home dad. Part of the job is to clean. It doesn’t matter that it’s a statistical fact that men are clutter blind. We need to learn that just because we have the ability to label a basket or drawer, “I’ll get to that later” and load it up with crap that takes more than 5 seconds to find a home for, doesn’t mean “done.” It means “half-assed.”
So the best advice I can give you up and coming, or currently frustrated, stay at home dads, after understanding the subtle difference between at home parents is this: once you finish with your at home duties, go back and do it again, because you totally half-assed it!
Now don’t go crying about it. You are a stay at home dad, and there’s something you CAN do that totally rules. You can make your two year old a zip line! Pretty awesome! (Just don’t make it half-assed.)
Two year old rocks the zip line!