When I'm muttering under my breath, scrubbing dishes, children, or email inboxes, here's my list of mostly-implicit, always-OCD, often self-applicable house rules:
- No dishes in the sink – I don't understand the logic behind putting dishes in the sink. You just have to take them out of the sink to wash the dishes in the proper order…
- Silverware gets washed first. Then cups. Then things that stack easily, then all the stupid pots and pans. I mean, hot, soapy water and things that are in your mouth for the longest go hand in hand.*

- "cleaning up" after any meal requires sweeping. It just does. Unless you want to walk on crushed cereal all day. Dishes to the kitchen, table wiped off, and floor swept. The "eat over the table" command only means that my children [husband] will have their food hovering above the eating surface 75% of the time . And that doesn't even include the large gesticulations accompanying their meal-time stories which spray bread crumbs across the room or pudgy bellies that catch spaghetti noodles which then get tracked from the dining room to the kitchen.
- put your clothes right side out when you put your clothes in the laundry. I LITERALLY turn every. item. of. clothing right side out when I'm folding laundry. These heathens pull their shirts off over their heads like the Diet Coke guy and call it quits.
- put your damn clothes away. I see CLEAN, FOLDED LAUNDRY that sits on the radiator for a week. Granted, it's toasty warm if you decide to pull something out of the pile, but our house looks like badly designed clothing store.
- make yourself comfortable. Shoes on or shoes off, it doesn't matter. If you need something, go find it. I usually forget to offer beverages or snacks to guests because subconsciously I know that if I offer you something, there will be 3 little vultures circling us, and then we'd be compelled to share.
What are your domestic pet peeves? Are you a "shoes on" or "shoes off" house? What's your dishes situation? I've heard about debates on dishwasher systems.

One year ago: LLLL, in which I snorted at my own writing.
* – That sounded so dirty, right?
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