So this is the beginning. Let me explain.
It’s hard to say how long ago I began to idolize women like June Cleaver. I think it was possibly back when I was in high school or middle school. You know that time in your life when you’re awkward, unstylish, and just don’t really know what to do with/within your body? No? That was just me? Figures. Anyway, I’d watch old shows on TV land with my mom, one of them being Leave It To Beaver, and I always noticed that June Cleaver was a woman who, for lack of a better term, really had her shit together. She always looked fabulous, fashionable, calm and cool. Not to mention, she knew how to rock a pair of high heels.
Fast forward to college. I met CJ, my boyfriend for those of you who don’t know, and things progressed in to other things. Last year we decided to live together and it was, to say the least, an experience. Basically, he thought I would be more wifely, and I thought he would put the toilet seat down and make out with me all the time and have wild sex. Oh how naive young couples are.
What ended up happening was about five fights over the toilet seat being left up, several serious talks about keeping the house clean and doing the dishes regularly, dozens of failed resolutions to keep the house clean and the sink empty, and not as much wild sex as one would expect.
But the experience did get me thinking about what kind of wife (and ultimately mother) I would become if I didn’t change anything about my current living habits, and what kind of wife I would like to be if I could change.
What I currently am is a 21 year old college student with some organization and laziness issues. My room is usually in a constant state of disarray and I generally have no problem letting dishes pile up in the sink. It’s tough to admit, but I have a problem.
Logically, I concluded that I should try to be more like June Cleaver: a doting wife who quite obviously loves her family, is always prepared for company, and always has things under control with a smile.
Flash forward to spring semester of this past year. I was in a philosophy class and we were talking about virtues and how to obtain them. The professor explained that in order to achieve a virtue one doesn’t have, all the have to do is imitate a person who does have the virtue. If they pretend long enough, they will adopt the virtue as their own and no longer have to pretend. This was the epiphany I needed. I realized how I could become a better potential wife: I could just pretend to be June Cleaver.
I even took a test run one night. I put on the closest thing i had to a shirtwaist dress, some adorable high heels, and my pearl necklace and went to work cleaning the house, and it worked for that evening.
Of course, one night of heels and pearls doesn’t just suddenly make one a wife. And of course I regularly fell back into my old habits.
But I am not to be defeated, and so begins this blog of my trials and tribulations in the attempt to pass the test of all tests: the wife test. So, armed with my dresses, pearls, heels, and not really much else, so begins the June Cleaver Project.
My goals:
- Keep my room and the basement living area clean and always ready for guests
- Minimize the amount of laundry in my hamper
- Be always dressed fashionably
- Learn cooking skills, but also how to plan/time meals, how to go grocery shopping for more than devil dogs, and how to budget
- Find ways to show CJ more affection and appreciation
My incentives/rewards:
- Well, I mean, the ultimate reward would be that shiny, sparkly engagement ring I’ve been
not very subtly hinting about, right?
- But in case that’s too far of a stretch, we’ll go with a sweet pair of shoes
- And, hopefully the skills I obtain will be their own rewards
My time line:
well, CJ deploys for Afghanistan in about a year, and I secretly hope (and my mother not so secretly hopes) that CJ will recognize my excellent wife potential and will propose before he deploys.
So here it goes.
