[redbandit]

Need to vent My husband is the MESSIEST person I know It's driving me insane. It's actually giving me panic attacks, and I don't know what to do. We work opposite hours a lot lately, and I can't hope to keep up with cleaning up after him.
He keeps eating while on the sofa and loveseat (that we just got last year in nearly perfect condition) and getting stains on the cushions. He has broken a part of it too.
Is there any way I can influence him, help him change all of his bad habits? He's horrible with finances too, I'm just so sick of it right now.
I love him, but we are just so different.

[hvert]

If you haven't already, I would cover the sofa I don't have good advice. Sometimes it seems easier to work around someone's bad habits than to try to change them. I hope ranting made you feel better, at least!

[Perna]

I have troubles like that with my husband who will never "dry" his hands or surfaces (kitchen, bathroom, stair railing -- nice to have one's hands slip going downstairs and almost fall?). He uses the bathroom sink like a birdbath and if I come in not quite awake and lean against it, my pj's wick up the water; never mind putting meds and medicine caps, etc. down in it which could ruin my meds! With the kitchen counters I have to worry about food in boxes and paper bags, etc. Sometimes I get my arms full, ready to do something only to find the surfaces wet and nowhere to put anything.

I would do the couch cover thing as hvert suggests. I have a dish towel in my bathroom now, too, to wipe the bird bath mess up before I use the counter and I try to learn to check surfaces in the kitchen before I get started on something, get them ready for what I want to use them for.

Have you tried working with him with the finances? It can be hard, if no one ever taught us how to do finances and we just get older and on our own/married with increased responsibilities, etc. and just get in a worse mess. Creating a system together might help? I know my husband's system is more complicated than I'd like (but then our finances are complicated) and I made him write me a "book" on how they work :-)

I feel for you about the couch stains, mine is that way too because of my husband. But I deliberately bought a couch he'd like (since he likes to lie on it to watch TV) and I bought an inexpensive living room set since I have 2 cats and knew the furniture would get clawed to death over the years.

Maybe a special TV tray/table he could eat at at the couch would help? We don't have a kitchen/dining room table of any sort (no room) so we do eat in the living room, watching TV, but he uses our lift top coffee table (this one is from Walmart, less than $100):