No longer a bad yolk, says grossed out in Bethesda MD

MomstoWork gets loads of questions from readers … about how to reduce national debt and prevent hyperinflation, even The Wall Street Journal asking for our view on who should succeed Donald Kohn on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  (Give it to Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.)

And then there are questions like this from Grossed Out in Bethesda, which we put to the Slob Queen, Debbie Wiener.

“I am the only woman in a house full of men. My boys love to eat but hate to sit down. They are allowed to eat at the coffee table, but only if they’re sitting on the floor but stuff still happens, messing up a fairly new couch. I don’t want to be a harridan and scream all the time. They also love to leave their school bags in the middle of the front door. As for my husband, he still loves his old-fashioned handkerchiefs. I could live with that (call me a Saint!) but he leaves them on the hall table as he walks in the door every night. How can I slob proof them?”

Slob expert and author Debbie Wiener replied:

Dear Grossed Out:

Do we live in the same house?  This is exactly what drove me to the brink of running away from home. My kids leave all their dirty dishes in the family room. Their muddy shoes are kicked off at the door and go flying into the dining room. There are crumbs, dried spaghetti sauce and God knows what all over the seating and … count your blessings!  I can’t even repeat what my husband leaves behind for me to clean up.  So I wrote a book about it.

Forget the white furniture, design for life

The truth is, this exactly why I started my own furniture line, Slobproof! with Crypton.

When I threw out my third couch, I knew something had to give. It took a while to figure out that I love my family more than I love my furniture. So out went the coral and cream striped sofa, the pastel rug and the silk throw pillows.

My present rug is full of color and pattern, so I can’t even see what my kids are doing to it!  My furniture is all Slobproof! so now anything – and I mean anything – cleans up in a snap.  I let them eat wherever they like because, in the end, I just want them home – where I can see them, talk to them, sit with them – more than I want a clean house.

And I’ve trained my husband just as I trained my dog Daisy – with food.  You see, he’ll do anything for a treat, so to motivate him, I bribe him with cookies, pie or my world famous brisket.  It works. No matter what I’ve been doing, when I hear his car  … out come the pots and pans … he thinks there’s food and he’s putty in my hands.

Even adding a decorative basket by the door for the dirty hankies would be an improvement.  At the end of the week, you dump the hankies directly from the basket into the washing machine and you never have to touch them. Make dessert and maybe your husband will dump the basket into the laundry for you.