His First Real Consenquence

My knight faced his first real, "Awww shit. I pissed her off" moment since we started this whole female-led marriage arrangement.

He came home from work this morning and dropped his "lunch" dishes in the sink, and then went to bed. He barely said "hi" to me or the kids at all.

I wasn't upset about him going to bed, after all, he was working while the rest of us were sleeping, and he really didn't get much sleep on Sunday. My problem was the dishes. He tossed his half empty, covered plastic storage bowls in the empty sink, when it was obvious that I was washing and prepping fruits to be put in the dehydrator. Besides, we have a rule around here that everyone is responsible for washing their own dishes. *Everyone*.. even my 5 yr old washes their own food dishes. I was pots and pans for the younger kids and after family meals, but individual dishes are the responsibility of the user.


And that includes my husband.

I was fuming. It seems like a little thing, but before FLR he had a habit of leaving dishes, clothes, messes, etc where ever they happened to fall until I came along to clean it up. Needless to say that got really old after a very short time.

Today, I started to get angry. I felt taken advantage of. But, then I remembered the whole FLR thing.. I didn't have to get angry. I could simply hand down a consequence.

And that's exactly what I did. I saved every single dish the kids and I used for the rest of the day, and had my knight wash them for me when he got up. I told him we would not go out tonight and he would not help me shop tonight for our daughter's 6th birthday tomorrow if the dishes were not done when dinner was over.

The dishes are done. And the whole incident is over. Before FLR I would have been angry and hurt, and we probably would have ended up arguing over those stupid plastic storage containers.

But not this time.