It is just a guess, but I assume I do not have a large audience of husband or dad readers on this blog. I do appreciate all the nice feedback I received in emails and on the post itself for my article on how family can use outdated information to make judgments about later interactions (see The Family Barometer post). So, I decided a good topic would be how to properly train a housewife.
Before I continue, if you came here for information on housewife training or ways to become a good housewife, then perhaps start here instead.
The techniques I use come after nearly twelve years of trial and error in my own marriage. The list does not include everything important, but enough to give you a good start on the training. I hope the ladies who read Inspired-Housewife will pass this information on to the men in their lives, so you housewives can also be properly trained.
1. Buy your housewife flowers at the grocery store: Really, this training method is cheap, fast and convenient. How many times a week are we men sent out to pick up a gallon of milk, some eggs, or that jar of pickles? How often do we walk right by those grocery store flowers without a glance? Housewives love flowers, whether or not they are from an expensive florist or from a cheaper venue like the grocery store. A nice habit to get into is to buy a bunch of flowers just to brighten the house. Generally, I do this a couple of times a month. These flowers do not even need to be roses. Those five to ten dollar arrangements of flowers will do fine. They will brighten a housewife’s day and week.
2. If you have kids, hire a babysitter and go on a date: Every housewife dreams of escaping the clutches of the household walls. She sweats as she does the dishes, while she cleans the kids’ and your pee around the toilet seat, and then folds mountains of hot laundry before it wrinkles. All this time she hangs onto the hope of a single night out alone with her husband. So, spend that fifty to a hundred dollars, and get a good babysitter for a long date somewhere. Take her out to eat, and then maybe walk with her on the boardwalk or a nearby park just to talk with her and catch up. Movies stimulate no real conversation, so avoid them.
3. Again, if you have kids, give her every Sunday morning to sleep in late: Okay, I will admit this was not a technique I was real happy to learn. My brother actually taught me this one. Yet, it works very well to train a housewife. Believe it or not, she is probably exhausted from the endless care she provides to the children. A housewife does need to sleep just as much as you do or more. So, why not split the difference on the weekend. You can sleep in on Saturday and she on Sunday, or vice versa. As an extra-credit housewife training technique, while she sleeps, try to clean at least the kitchen until it sparkles, and then if you have time, move onto the bathrooms or other areas. The kids will also appreciate the dad time, and can help to “make Mommy happy” for a few extra cookies that normally are against the rules.
4. Arrange for an all-inclusive spa event: Perhaps you guys out there could be unfamiliar with this method, and might find it a bit intimidating to arrange. It is not that difficult. If your housewife is anything like mine, she enjoys getting her nails, feet, and hair done. Additionally, she likes any sort of massage. The best thing to do is simply ask women at your work where the best place is in terms of a spa for a women to get all these things done at a single time. Their excitement to help is phenomenal. Plan for your housewife to be there three to four hours while she has this experience. This is a good time to take the kids out on a dad-only outing. I will admit, this will cost you some money, so it is not something of which to make a habit unless you have more money than I do. It will, however, contribute greatly to a well-trained housewife in the end. A surprise like this, where you send her on her merry way to someplace she has no clue about where she goes, brings back a very happy housewife as seen in the photos here.
5. Personally lingerie shop for her: Despite the lack of time a housewife has to attend to her own beauty, every housewife loves to feel beautiful. Pretty clothes are a nice way to do this. Although Wal-Mart is convenient, cheap, and anonymous through the self-checkout line, to properly train a housewife, you need to potentially humiliate yourself a wee bit. For some guys, like myself, humiliation could be normal and no big deal, but for others I do understand the challenge to maintain the manly image. The deal is, if you want to make her feel special, you should put some personal effort and emotion into it. For many of us, Victoria’s Secret is readily available at the local mall. If they are not available, there are other online options like Frederick’s. The really cool thing is the cute young girls who work at these lingerie stores are more than willing to help you out. Just be up front with them from the beginning, breathe, relax, and tell them you are clueless about lingerie, but would like to purchase your wife something special. They will trip over their own knickers to put together an outfit to make your housewife happy, and meet your expectations simultaneously. Again, put a little time, thought and money into it, and it will go a long way to properly train a housewife. Oh, if you need some shoes to match . . . .
6. Listen to her closely when she needs to talk: Key to success in your regimen to properly train your housewife is to take the time to listen to her. By this, I do not just mean to listen with your ears. Listen carefully to what she says, to what she really means, and to what she needs. I will admit, sometimes it seems like housewives just whine, but really this is all a plea to be heard, to be truly listened to, and to be taken seriously. Validate what they tell you in some manner. Take those few moments to shut off everything else in the world, to include kids and work, and hear her out. It will make the task of training your housewife shorter and easier.
7. Love her: You can accomplish the previous six things, and fail on this one item to lose the entire pedagogic effort. You absolutely cannot properly train a housewife without love. It is the essential component, like water is to life. Truly love your housewife and show her your love in her own love language. Her efforts to “keep” your house will be to your expectations if you do so. Love for your housewife is what matters most! Without it, you remain a student in ill-favor indefinitely.
So, to the guys who read this article, I know you thank me now sincerely from the bottoms of your hearts for this enlightened information, and already the wheels of your minds turn on how you can train your own housewives properly. As for the couch-potato doubters out there who think this is a rant in no way related to how to properly train a housewife, I beg the difference as evidenced by the photograph below of my own properly trained housewife.
Training complete.
