Illustration: DANG HONG QUAN
Ms. LTM, 46 years old, living in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, shared that she is often annoyed with her husband and two children about what they do in daily life.
The house is cleaner than the hotel
Coming to Ms. M.'s house, every guest who enters the house is "startled" because her house is very clean, the furniture is neatly placed as if cast in a mold. Her friend came to visit and joked: "M.'s house is cleaner than a 5-star hotel."
To keep the house this clean, "whenever I have free time, I will focus on cleaning the house." In the morning, she woke up at 4 a.m. and started cleaning the ground floor, stairs, terrace... Ms. M. said that she couldn't go to bed until the house was cleaned.
She assigned her two children to clean their rooms, but every time she entered their children's rooms, she said she wanted to "rush" because the furniture was not neat. She repeatedly taught her children how to make the bed sheet flat, how to fold the blanket beautifully, and how to balance the pillows, not tilt to one side or the other. Books and books must be placed neatly on the desk, and in the bathroom, I have told my children many times that the towel they hang up must be straight, square, and the two edges of the towel must be equal...
Yet every time she goes into her children's room, she has to "scream" because this place doesn't work, and that place doesn't work either. One day her daughter expressed her attitude: "Every time you come into my room, you get so angry, don't come in next time."
Ms. M. was stunned by her child's answer but still added: "I told you so you know how to arrange things neatly. When you know how to organize, whatever you do in the future will be good."
One time, my daughter said: "I think being neat is good, but you shouldn't spend time cleaning up and spend all your time doing other things." I'm more interested in software design, so being relatively neat is fine for me."
Then, the stories in her family kept revolving around how to arrange the bowl so it was nice and straight, the same after washing the glass, how to make the flowers on the glass turn out, facing the same side...
Because she is so meticulous, Ms. M. admits that she is also tired of always reminding her husband and two children to be neat like herself.
As for her husband and children, she feels that people don't like it and feel uncomfortable, but for some reason, tidiness is "in her blood", and she feels very uncomfortable when things are not put in their proper place. . After arranging glasses and cups, you have to adjust the cups to look the most beautiful. After cleaning the house, she looked sideways to see if the floor was clean...
Three types of cleaning cloths in red, blue, and white
Ms. HTN, 26 years old, living in Tan Phu District, said that after getting married, she felt very pressured when she returned to her husband's house because her mother-in-law was meticulous and very clean.
For many years, her mother-in-law only stayed at home to be a housewife and raise the children, so she only focused on the house all the time. Every day, at 4:30 a.m., she gets up to clean all the floors, except everyone's bedrooms, clean every table, chair, glass door... She has three towels to clean the house with three different colors. Red for first cleaning, blue for second cleaning, and white for third cleaning.
There are also many types of brooms. Brooms for the upper floors, brooms for the ground floor, brooms for the yard, brooms for the terrace... Those are just some of the things Ms. N. mentioned to symbolize that she does everything meticulously.
Ms. N. is also a resident from the province who came to the city to start a business. Although she tries to get up early, she almost always wakes up after her mother-in-law. Ms. N. wanted to help her mother-in-law, but she said it would take a whole week after she returned to her husband's house before she could remember all the steps of cleaning the house, sweeping the house, and cleaning the house. Even though she tried to do housework to make her mother-in-law happy, since the day she returned home, Ms. N.'s husband had never been satisfied by her mother-in-law.
Her mother-in-law rarely spoke, she didn't complain much, she just said "you can't do that, let me do it" which meant that Ms. N. understood that she was not satisfied with the way she did things. Ms. N. began to hint at the idea of wanting to live on her own even though her husband was the only son in the family.
As for Ms. PBT, 42 years old, living in Phu Nhuan District, she said that one time she and some people in the agency were invited by a colleague to her house for lunch. When everyone arrived at the house, her colleagues had finished everything, as neat as a restaurant and everyone just sat down to eat.
However, when it was time to eat, her colleague told everyone where to throw their things after eating, how to place their napkins, and drinking glasses so that they could easily eat... The atmosphere that day was very quiet, everyone tried to eat lightly. speak softly, as accurately as possible.
As soon as she stepped out of the apartment, her colleagues said to each other, "It's too stressful to go out to eat and go out."
“Everyone knows that being clean and tidy is a good thing and something that should be done, but if being neat and tidy affects happiness or creates stress and fatigue for people around you, you also need to reconsider. . It's okay for a person to be meticulous and clean, but don't force everyone to be like you because everyone is different, not everyone follows a certain model," Ms. T. opined.
Being too messy leads to chaos, being too meticulous leads to self-pressure, so how a family balances each other's demands is not simple when the pieces and individual personalities come together in the same house.
So maybe both husband and wife should each move forward a little or retreat a little. Instead of being frustrated because the house is not as neat as expected, we should be happy because we have wholeheartedly cared for our family, feeling happiness in the whole family. difference.
Everyone is susceptible to pressure
There are days when she feels like no one in the family understands her, LTM confided to her sister. My sister advised: "It's good that you're neat and clean, but don't force everyone else, especially your relatives, to live as clean as you. When your relatives cannot follow you, and I am sure that few people can be as clean as you, you will be sad. Living in an atmosphere that always demands what you want, your husband and children will also be sad."
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