Tag Archives: House Husband

How to Fold your Skinny Jeans

Posted on by

I have a particular way I fold my skinny jeans.

Okay…to be honest, I don’t wear skinny jeans. I also don’t wear V-Necks. Even so, I think my Credentials as a Hipster remain intact. I would even dare to say that this obligatory uniform of the contemporary nonconformist is not as obligatory as you would think.

There are exceptions to every rule. In the case of the skinny jeans, a hipster’s leg wear only need be skinny enough to be able to see the silhouette of an iPhone in the pocket of his/her choice. In the case of v-necks, they are only necessary if you have enough curious chest hair to peak out the V. I meet both exceptions: having the iPhone clearly visible and a lack of any chest hair (curious or otherwise).

But back to folding laundry. I’ve toyed with different ways to fold my jeans over the years, but have recently struck gold in terms of folding methods. What makes a folding method good? I have three basic criteria:

  1. Keeps clothes from wrinkling/unfriendly creasing in storage.
  2. Highlights the innate features of the material.
  3. Makes the garment easy to store.

So here’s my method:

IMG_2489I start by folding them lengthwise with the seams together, similar to the way I would hang a pair of slacks. Then I tuck in the zipper and the butt so that I get a mostly straight line up and down.

IMG_2490 Fold that in half.

IMG_2491 Fold that in half again. All done.

This nice square shape fits nicely into my closet, prevents any wrinkles from storage, and even gives a faux crease look along the front of my pants. My little piece of original denim origami isn’t really a big deal, but it helps me keep my hipster/house husband sides together and happy.

Advertisement

Credentials of a House Husband

Posted on by

I don’t stay at home; it’s true.

I’m not raising children; right.

How do I have the audacity to claim the title of House Husband? Do I dare poke fun at those that call themselves house spouses? Well, yes, kind of. Only because I firmly believe that if I can’t poke fun at myself then I shouldn’t publish anything, and I believe I have taken on the role of house spouse as much as any baby-touting better-half.

Over the past five and a half years of marriage, our job situations have, well, fluctuated. Across the timeline of our marriage, the weight of “nights away” and “hours worked” and “multiple jobs” has shifted back and forth. The realization came that this weight had shifted away from me when I was only working one job at 40 hours a week. This was the least I had worked in the lifetime of our marriage. At the same moment, Marie was working five part-time jobs. It was time to ramp up the expectations I had for myself and our homestead by taking on another job: house husband.

I’m no stranger to bivocationality. Not only do I have personal experience in the field, but this seems to be an epidemic of my generation. This hipster phenomena has seen a lot of young people going to college for something about which they are passionate, then graduate to work full-time in retail or food service or hospitality in order to support their passion as part-time or free-lance or volunteer work.

As I stepped into my new role, I realized something that I didn’t expect: this new job was my passion. I like running a tight ship, I like keeping the dust off our mantle, I like organizing and decorating and innovating and improvising. It’s not that Marie doesn’t help clean; she just doesn’t like it enough to write about it on the internet. This job for me is fun, it’s gratifying, and I’ll work full-time to support it.

That’s why I am the audaciously self-appointed House Husband of our little homestead, and those are the credentials I use to write as one.