Reply to Husband can’t set a table and doesn’t care to learn how

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Setting the table isn’t a life skill.  [/quote]

I agree with this. I went to etiquette class when I was in middle school and we learned where everything went. But if I'm throwing a fancy party with multiple utensils I can't remember where the go so I Google it. Of all the skills I have, this is an easy one to let go of because you can pull up the information any time you want.

When we eat a meal as a family someone will get the napkins and utensils and water cups and put them on the table. I don't care where they are. If my fork is on the right or they're all together in the middle of the table, doesn't matter. And I'm very Type A and anal retentive (i.e. I like all the labels of everything in the fridge facing forward and my pantry looks like a grocery store), but utensil placement, given that everything moves as soon as everyone sits down to eat, isn't on my radar.

That said, OP, if this is truly important to you, then you can have a serious talk with your husband about it. I personally don't impose my rules (i.e. everything facing forward in the fridge) on other people because I save my requests for things that matter more. But if this is a thing that matters more to you, then by all means sit down and tell your husband that you care about how the table is set. [/quote]

If you have to have a family meeting with another adult about setting the table, you might be insane.[/quote]

I don't disagree with you because this doesn't mean anything to me, or clearly to you. But it apparently does mean a lot to OP. I think OP's choices are (1) decide that this is a hill she will die on and she needs to discuss it with her husband or (2) let it go. Seething with anger every time he sets the table wrong is not an option. I mean, it is, I guess, if you want to be miserable and destroy your marriage.

My husband is in charge of taking out the trash. I do it as needed sometimes, but I take the bags out and put them down and replace the bags in the bins first, then walk the trash outside. Or I leave the bin drawer open so that I notice immediately upon walking back inside that I need to put new bags in. My husband has a tendency to take the bags out and close the drawer and then I open it later to throw something away and there are no bags. It drives me nuts because I'm used to there always being bags so sometimes I drop something in without stopping to check, and now there's pasta sauce all over the bin and I have to wash it out. This happened more than once and so I brought it up to him. Not in a yelling way, but just to say hey, this is a problem, so please replace the bags every time you take the trash out, and now he mostly does (although he didn't yesterday and now the bin is dirty...). I'm not going to bring it up again and I'm not going to seethe about it and it isn't something that's going to take down our marriage, but it's annoying and it has an easy fix so I do expect him to step up and solve the problem (1) because it's a basic and easy ask that is clearly associated with the task of taking out the trash and (2) I don't like it when there aren't bags in there.

You can think I'm insane if you want, it doesn't bother me because we're not married. So while I think OP is being silly about the intensity of the table setting she seems to want for every meal, if this matters to her, then she needs to do something about it (and as I said, I don't think quietly seething is a productive way to handle it).[/quote]

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