Don’t Ever Take Out the Trash

At my bridal shower everyone went around the room and gave me a piece of advice. My grandmother told me “Don’t ever take out the trash. Not even once. After that he will expect you to do it every time.” Growing up in a house with three brothers the girl jobs and the boy jobs were pretty well defined. Up until I moved out of my parent’s house at 18 I had never taken out the trash or mowed a lawn . . . ever.

After we got married and moved into our own house, I gladly took my grandmother’s advice to heart. I did the girl jobs. My husband did the boys jobs (and maybe a few of the girl jobs when I could talk him into it). Unfortunately, having a husband who works full time and goes to school full time, there is much time left to do any of the jobs around the house. I started taking the trash out a few years ago and true to my grandmother’s advice, it is now permanently my job.

I stood firm on mowing the lawn though. I didn’t even know how to start the lawn mower up let alone manage to finagle it over my entire yard without killing something. This year we finally bought a new lawn mower. We’ve gone through our share of hand me down lawnmowers that you have to shove a stick in weird places or kick a few times to make it start. The new lawnmower starts when you pull the handle and keeps going even when you mow over really long grass. My husband wanted to “at least show me” how to work the lawn mower when we first bought the thing and I was actually surprised that it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. It’s self propelled so you don’t even have to put much elbow grease into it.

Today my kids and I had a “pool party” in our backyard with their paddling pool. They had a blast, but the grass was so tall it had gone to seed and felt like we were wading through a marsh by the time the kids splashed half the water out of the pool. My husband wasn’t going to have time to mow the lawn for nearly another week so I set the kids up with as many toys as I could find and set out to mow the lawn.

My lawn mowing technique is similar to my vacuuming technique. I pull the lawnmower back to redo a spot if I miss it rather than going in a straight line. In the first ten minutes I managed to mow over the plastic cap to my water main. The cap was actually stuck in the blade and since I won’t even stick my hand down my kitchen sink when it is clogged there was no way I was reaching in to the lawnmower. My neighbor saw what happened and came over to get my lawnmower started again. He said that when he saw me start mowing the lawn he had gone running to find his wife so she could come out and watch. He did the same thing over the winter when I shoveled the driveway.

I managed to finish the entire lawn without any further incident. I had to pay my 4 year old a dollar to watch my 2 year old and when he lost interest with that my two year old spent the rest of the time walking behind me in the strip of newly mown grass.

I’m tired and covered with cut grass now but I’m proud of myself. My neighbor actually did make his wife come out and watch me and I couldn’t fight back a grin as I thought about what a supermom I looked like taking care of the yard work while my kids played with bubbles in the grass (It’s just a good thing they couldn’t see the inside of my house). I now have a nicely groomed lawn but the verdict remains, don’t take out the trash. Not even once.

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