Leaving stuff on the stairs to take up later is not OK

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Being raised in the less progressive 1990s, I was indoctrinated to believe that there were fundamental differences that divided the sexes. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus captured the zeitgeist. It was a strange time.

Since discovering that my childhood was a lie and meeting my husband, I have realised that there is no gender-defined unbreachable chasm that separates us. No, what divides our own little union is simply our approach to tidiness, and nothing has brought this to light more than our ongoing battle of the surfaces. Let me explain.

I am a clean person. I never leave dirty dishes in the sink, and I sweep and mop as much as I can. I am, however, a messy person. My presence is made loudly evident by the array of belongings strewn about from the front door, like a trail of breadcrumbs to wherever I have set myself. My husband is the opposite. He doesn’t bat an eyelid at grease or dust, but god forbid there is disorder. He needs surfaces free of miscellany at all times, otherwise he is unable to function. How our marriage has lasted this long will forever remain a mystery.

I grew up in a small flat in an Edwardian house in London. I used to love pretending that the stairs leading up to the other apartments in the building were part of my imaginary mansion; to me, stairs represented an unattainable luxury that only the lucky few possessed. I was also an only child, so my idea of games may have been slightly limited. When my husband and I found ourselves in the privileged position to be able to move out of the one-bedroom apartment we’d outgrown following the birth of our second child, my heart leapt when the third home we toured happened to be a duplex with a little staircase. It had to be mine.

One fateful day, after having moved in, I picked up the mail and left it on the kitchen counter. A few hours later, I noticed it had been moved to the landing, and a silent battle cry echoed through my bones. Not my precious stairs. I moved the offending items back to the counter to assert dominance, marking my first tactical offensive. They soon found their way back to the landing, together with a package addressed to me that I had been meaning to open. His counteroffensive proved effective. Touché, sir.

This was just the beginning. Once school was out for the summer, we received countless art projects that we were guilt-tripped into keeping but had nowhere to put. They too found their way to the landing. I couldn’t stop it. What had started as a simple passive-aggressive back-and-forth quickly escalated into all-out war once my husband started leaving items he assured me he would bring upstairs — but never did. A pair of shoes, a painting we framed but never hung, board games missing crucial pieces, clothes we were unsure if we liked enough to keep. It became a hazard to even use the stairs. A veritable no man’s land.

My ancestors did not till the fields of France for 500 years in the hopes that one of their descendants would one day fulfil their dream of having pristine stairs only for them to be usurped by an American. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I sifted through every item, even discovered things I had believed lost. It was therapeutic to find a place for the things I could, and even more so to donate what I couldn’t.

It dawned on me that this battle of the surfaces wasn’t a reflection of our innate differences, but a reflection of our different levels of comfort within the limbo of indecisiveness we found ourselves in. They represented the “I’ll deal with it later” part of life — and we had unknowingly and rather aggressively stumbled upon our “later”.

I find the kitchen counter a more reasonable surface for unsorted items because I have no shame in being faced with my proclivity for procrastination, and if it’s in view then maybe, just maybe, I might be inspired to tackle it. Whereas for him the daily reminder of unaccomplished tasks can feel overwhelming on top of the never-ending responsibilities of life that require more immediate attention — the stairs offer a more reserved, less accusatory setting. It’s a lot easier to sidestep around a stair than a kitchen counter.

I try my best now to keep the counter clear and he does the same with the landing, because we have agreed on a new tactic that suits us both — we stuff it all in the coat closet and hope that no one ever opens it.

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