House Rules
Rules are not always arbitrary or unfair. Sometimes they're just life lessons codified, or even mutual decisions written down. We have some very simple house rules. Here are some examples:
- No perishable food item is ever stored in the drawers of the refrigerator. Why: out of sight is out of mind. It's been our experience that anything perishable in the "crisper" drawer is going to go bad before we remember it's there. We call that bin the "rotter." So what goes in the drawers? Beverages, usually. Cans and bottles of soda, beer, water.
- When we're down to one, it's time to restock. What? When you put on the second-to-last roll of toilet paper, you should go that day to the store and restock. I prefer to go earlier, myself. Because you know you're going to put it off, anyway, and at least this way you have not only the full roll on the dispenser, but the spare in the cabinet to cover you.
- When you do a load of laundry, throw in the kitchen towels and the bath handtowel as well. Why: somehow, the kitchen and bath handtowels get forgotten in the usual round of laundry; there's not enough of either or both of them to merit a load on their own, but they get really dirty. So instead of trying to work in a real schedule for cleaning them, we have a simple rule that you grab them when you go to do a load of laundry (right next to the kitchen, anyway). If we've really messed one up, we might just throw it in the washer to wait for the next load to be done. So there's a regular supply of clean towels without much extra effort.