Cleverly dropped pointed comments

 via weheartit

On the weekend I was talking to MR on the phone and telling him about an annoying thing that happened at school last week with my principal.  He told me that I needed to tell her I was annoyed by what she did because otherwise she would never realise/improve.  

His example was "What if I told you that your housekeeping skills weren't very good?" Of course, I immediately went into defensive sooky mood because my housekeeping skills are not just not very good but are really rather dreadful.  After listening to me sook about being sorry I am a crappy cleaner and organiser and tell him that he knew I was well before we moved in together and I had just been so tired lately, he eventually got out of me "that 'if' he told me that I would want to improve" (and hence I should tell my principal that I didn't like how she did something).  

So of course,  now that he was very sneaky and clever to use that as his 'example', I feel like I have been told that and I feel like the most slovenly person ever and want to improve and for him to come home to a home that does not resemble a war zone.  No doubt this will not last, but I'm determined that when he comes home this Friday that he will be able to look around and see evidence of unpacking and organising and cleaning.  

And then I shall demand that he takes me out to dinner as a reward.  Really, I would work well with a sticker chart on the fridge, I'm such a child.

So to assist in this urge to impress on MR that I can actually keep a house tidy and relatively clean (occasionally, when I put my mind to it) I have decided that, starting yesterday, each day I am home before 5.30, I will set the oven timer (because I just worked out how to use it finally) for one hour and for that one hour I must either clean, unpack or organise unpacked homeless stuff.  Yesterday I spent it doing washing, unpacking boxes of picture books and sorting through them to make a stack of ones I don't want to keep and moving things off a bookshelf in the lounge room that were put there when we moved in but really belong in the craft room.  Today I got in washing and put it all away, put the books to keep onto the bookshelf, did the dishes, sorted through some paperwork and tidied the bedroom.

I'm hoping my motivation stays strong for tomorrow because Wednesday is pilates so I won't be home before 5.30.

Have you ever had something like that happen to you?  A comment phrased in a way that you couldn't get offended/too upset about, or have you ever successfully done it to someone else?

 

And do you have any reallllly good tips on how to keep me organised?