Back when Beautiful Wife and I first co-habitated, it became apparent that we were on the opposite spectrum of the cleanliness scale. I was a tried and true bachelor who had his own apartment and could leave anything wherever I damn well pleased. I could leave my socks on the living room floor for weeks at a time (you never knew when your feet might get cold while watching Sportscenter) and no one could tell me where those socks should go.

In Beautiful Wife’s mind, everything had a place. Silverware, for example, should actually go into a drawer rather than sit in the dish drainer until ready for use. Clothes actually had to be folded and put into a receptacle called a Dresser rather than a wrinkled heap in the corner of my bedroom. There were rules. Lots of ‘em.

But gradually, Beautiful Wife trained me, much like one would train a puppy to poop on a newspaper, to clean the house. Rubbing my nose in filth really did make a difference in my behavior. In fact, I got so good at cleaning that Beautiful Wife actually began giving me unsupervised cleaning assignments that I was expected to fulfill. For some reason, cleaning toilets kept appearing on the list but I trudged on in my attempt to make the Husband Hall of Fame.

Then, one day soon after the twins were born I was given even more responsibility. I was assigned the entire downstairs to clean while my wife took the upstairs. I think she proposed this to me right in the middle of Sportscenter because I don’t remember putting up a fight. In fact, upstairs had two toilets and downstairs had only one, so perhaps I figured I was coming out ahead.

I figured wrong.

The downstairs has a kitchen. That gets used, like, ALL THE TIME! And then, to make it worse, every toy ever given to Swee’Pea and TheMonk have been placed downstairs. I know, because I spend a great deal of time putting Lightning McQueen and his buddies back to their proper receptacle.

So why tell you all of this? Well, today was the fourth day in a row one or both of the kids have been sick. Since I took the day off on day #1 and Beautiful Wife took the day off on day #2, we have split days 3 and 4 in half so we can each go into work. When I left the house this morning, the downstairs was, admittedly, kind of a mess. What can I say? Some days I’ve got the Mr. Clean touch and others I don’t. I figured I’d have to spend a good part of the evening (Friday evening, no less) cleaning the kitchen and putting things back in order.

But I figured wrong.

Today, when I arrived at 1:00 p.m. and Beautiful Wife and I tag teamed each other at the door, I walked into a very clean, very beautiful kitchen. I swear, if I showed up and Beautiful Wife was wearing nothing but an apron and a smile, I could not have been happier than I was when I saw clean counter tops this afternoon.

Even the silverware was in the correct drawer.