Crumbs in the butter

Living with other people is great, but it can cause frustration, even irrational frustration… for some people it’s all about toothpaste – caps left off, tubes squeezed in the middle, for other people its toilet seats, up or down, or even toilet rolls… facing out or facing in? None of these things bother me or my husband very much, mild exasperation over the toothpaste maybe, but otherwise we live for the most part very, very happily…

…. very happily except for a couple of things

• doors, open or shut? I like doors left open (except for the front door and the bathroom door) and even when I was teaching, I always had my door open – not for a quick escape, but just to know what was happening on the corridor.
• milk in jugs – when milk is put on the table at meal times it should be in a jug; my family just don’t understand why and I am continually whipping bottles and plastic containers off the table, finding a jug, filling it and returning it to the table
• coats on chairs – why am I the only person who hangs coats up rather than tossing them onto the furniture? Ditto with shoes, why can’t they be put away? Ditto with towels in the bathroom
• slippers – one of us always wears slippers and nags the other who loves being barefoot – especially when the barefoot person stubs their toe or treads on something painful…. which leads me on to…
• … things on the floor – when something has fallen to the floor, or is on the floor because whoever was  throwing it at the waste-paper bin missed, or has been put on the floor temporarily such as an empty mug, newspaper, bag, – why can’t they be picked up and put away
• loading the dishwasher… I don’t think I can bring myself to discuss that!!!
• and not last, and not least, because this list would go on forever, crumbs in the butter – I always put out a  butter knife, not to use to spread the butter, but to transfer it elsewhere to be spread with another knife. I don’t want to see a variety of crumbs and traces of other things such as peanut butter, marmalade, Bovril, in the butter…. (This is me on my hobby-horse!)

We don’t fall out over any of these things, just sigh rather a lot in exasperation and make gently pointed remarks!!