If you’re a single man, living alone, but thinking about having your girl friend move into your home, you first need to learn some important lessons.
Lucky for you, my fiancé moved in last year, so I’m able to teach you all I’ve learned.
Lesson One: You are wrong if you think you know everything there is to know about women just because you’re old enough to be called a “senior” and you’ve met all sorts of women during your lifetime.
Lesson Two: The first thing to go in your house will be that regulation-sized pool table located where women are absolutely convinced the dining room table belongs. Explaining the pool table’s surface also is a great place to separate your black socks from your white socks after they’re removed from the dryer will be ignored. Happily, after she moves in, your clothes will mysteriously be cleaned and, for the first time ever, also folded.
Lesson Three: All standard wall-to-wall rugs installed when The Villages first built your home will be removed and replaced with hard wood floors. Turns out, dust and spilled red wine is harder to remove on rugs than on wood. You’ll stop sneezing, wheezing and coughing so much. Believe it or not, you’ll learn cleanliness and health are actually related.
Lesson Four: All closets will become “organized”. Shoes you casually threw on the floor will find happy homes in specially built closet cubbyholes. If you have one level of horizontal rods in closets to hold clothes hangers, you will soon have two. If two, expect a third rail to be installed way up high. Linen closets also are not spared from “organizing”. Being able to find things will be an entirely new experience.
Lesson Five: Even though your home was built less than eight years ago, your entire kitchen will be re-done. We’re talking replacing every single cabinet and adding several large new ones in spaces that formerly contained only air and light. Although to your mind’s eye those Corian counter tops work perfectly well, you, again, are wrong. They will be replaced with granite counter tops – after you go to granite installers’ sites and agree with the pattern she likes.
Lesson Six: Her dowry will include nicer looking dishes, pots and pans, utensils, and all manner of kitchen gadgets. Your stuff will be given away to the hard-working laborers who install those granite counter tops and cabinets, to a thrift shop, Habitat for Humanity, or thrown away.
Lesson Seven: Another thing women know, and men never even consider: All bedroom furniture must match every other piece of furniture in the same bedroom. If colors and type of wood don’t match, you’ll buy new furniture locally or travel to North Carolina furniture makers.
Lesson Eight: Those Venetian blinds you installed when you first moved into your home will quickly be replaced with plantation shutters.
Lesson Nine: Your entire house will be re-painted, inside and out.
Lesson Ten: Fear not. Your opinion actually does count when discussing how to improve your garage and, if you are really lucky, as I was, the same with your office man cave and outdoor landscaping.
Lesson Eleven: Magically, your home, dishes, and laundry will regularly be cleaned, meals made, and new friends abound. You will have a permanent playmate and lover; you’ll never be lonely; and life will be great. Soon, you’ll stop thinking about your old stuff that was thrown away.
Lesson Twelve: Lastly, you’ll never stop learning new lessons. Just days ago, I learned those pretty cloth towels in the guest bathroom are “show towels”. They are never to be used for drying hands. The fact I’ve often used them to dry my hands at home, and in other people’s guest bathrooms, once again demonstrates my continuing stupidity. I now know to search hard for the hidden towel I’m supposed to use instead – or, I dry my hands with toilet paper.
Jim Strothman is a journalist and at-large contributor to Villages-News.com. He is a resident of the Village of Caroline.