Cooking is not my thing, I purely do it to sustain my body and stay alive. Changing a duvet cover is therefor lower on my list when it comes to household chores, no matter how domesticated I think I am.
Now that we have determined that I am the stereotype of a pre-metro man, add a 5 year old to the mix…
Who does cooking? Who changes the duvet?
My partner and I had 2 tasks to complete on a perfect December night, cook and change the duvet covers on the bed. One would think it is a simple choice, but one would be wrong when a 5 year old is involved.
One would also think that the word choice suggests that I actually had a choice, but pre-metro men do not have choices. We receive instructions from our better halves and we execute those to the best of our abilities. When the 5 year old is also of the female race, you now also have a little supervisor who has no problem telling you what you are doing wrong. Because, “Mommy doesn’t do it like that…”
Thus, I got assigned to the kitchen with my little assistant while my partner started with the bedroom.
Nothing fancy
If memory serves me right, I made a basic stir fry that night. Chopped up a few vegetables, beef strips and rice. It is delicious, fills everyone up and it is one dish I actually cannot screw up.
Note that with the 5 year old supervisor you can not use the term “screw up” in the kitchen. It is a BAD word apparently. Something they now teach at schools. Or as I refer to them; Snow Flake Factories.
While this debate about slang talk and the cutting of carrots was going on, in the next room a completely different story was developing. The easy removal of the duvet inner from the cover followed by the dreaded inserting of said inner into the clean cover. When you have a super king size bed it is a heavy and tedious task.
One that takes longer than prepping and making the stir fry to perfection.
Can’t I help?
I served up a bowl of our hard work in the kitchen to my little apprentice – read supervisor – and was impressed that it only took us 15 minutes from start to finish.
Looking into the bedroom my partner was all hot and sweaty, but not in the sexy way you would think. She was still busy with an exercise that would challenge any CrossFit session.
Being a gentleman, I offered assistance. Only to be met by a stare that I translated to, “I am perfectly capable of doing this myself and do not need your judgement nor your help. Go do something useful like water the plants.”
Placing more value on my life than to pursue the offer further, I retired to the patio outside the bedroom and enjoyed the night sounds with a tumbler of Jack Daniels. It was calming. The crickets, a few frogs in the distance, the huffing and puffing from the bedroom with a few selected BAD words.
Making a bed is not making love
Let’s be adults and admit that nobody in their right minds loves making their beds. There is even less love involved when you need to change the duvet cover.
This is the very reason why most single people prefer to keep the lights off when their relationship starts venturing from a night out dancing to the bedroom. We do not have shame about our bodies, we just don’t want the other person to see our bedding.
As the relationship grows we develop more self respect and take the 20 minutes to actually ensure we have clean bedding. Or, you can take 5 minutes to do it and 15 to make a delicious stir fry.
Over January we were invited to a braai at the house of the founders of DuviBuddy. I asked my partner if she wanted to see the product. So I took her to the guest bedroom, unzipped the duvet cover and showed her how you remove the inner and change out the cover with a clean one in less than 2 minutes.
Her response was, “Holy BAD WORD!”
That is a good response because it should be that simple, and it is that simple. It is so simple that a pre-metro man can do it. I know because I have.
Now I only need to do it with a 5 year old supervising…
