Dear Bachelor:
Your place looks like shit.
But who cares, right? You rock. And besides, you’re never home. You’re out shinning up the corporate ladder, slugging scotch with your boss and rocking Dior Homme. Who cares that you can’t find the lightbulbs?
And when you’re knocking about in the yard, revving your chainsaw and swigging beers with your just-scuffed-enough Timberlands, clean sheets are just an afterthought.
There’s a pretty cool installation of empty bottles and pizza boxes in your sitting room, a burn mark where your rug used to be, and an array of fungal flora in the bathroom.
YUK.
Frankly, amigo, your place sucks.
You say:
“I’m just not good with that stuff, and I don’t know where to start. I spend all my money on video games and Coors Light and anyway, IT’S JUST NOT IMPORTANT.”
But really:
If you ever want to get laid, it IS important.
So, singletons, here’s how to get yo’ shit together and get your place looking ready to entertain.
If you’ve got eight minutes, you’ve got the makings of a presentable space:
- Pick up your fucking socks.
- If the towel is wet, it does not belong on the floor.
- If it’s empty, it does not belong in the refrigerator.
- If it no longer holds edible food, it belongs in the trash.
- It it’s burned out, it needs changing.
- If it’s wrinkled, it needs ironing.
- If it’s broken and you can eat from it, wear it, sit on it, cook with it, or otherwise do something useful with it, fix it. For crying out loud. Don’t make me call your mother.
But if you’ve already got that hygiene thing down, you need to broaden your view:
- Paint your walls. You don’t have to choose aqua-magento or lime-canary. You don’t even need something your landlord would approve, but ceiling doofs and green tape? That’s a no.
- Re-arrange your furniture. You don’t need to hide your movie collection or move your triple-ply eighty inch plasma to the spare room. But give your friends somewhere to sit. The floor is not an option.
- Buy some draperies. Cheap ones are fine, but hide those god-awful slate blinds you keep forgetting to dust. Your house isn’t a jail. Don’t make it look like one.
- Most importantly, if you have stuff you haven’t looked at in a month, used in three, or even touched in twelve, get rid of it. This isn’t rocket science. Get rid of your crap.
BOSH! SUPER BINGO! New looking place, new life, new opportunity.
You’re smart and creative and capable. And you deserve a kick-ass space. So give it to yourself.
This was written by Erica Swanson. She says:
“I’m an interior Designer. Which is a fancy-pants way of saying I create kick-ass spaces for wickedly cool people. I listen. I translate. I initiate. And then I deliver you You.
I do that with my Design on the Dirty virtual services. I help you get what’s in your head, into your space, all at a fraction of the cost of working with a designer in the traditional way. It’s kind of like having your cake and eating it too. Naughty, yes? Because it isn’t about trends or this year’s hottest paint colour or what the Jones’ are doing. It’s about you. And it’s about time.
Oh, and I don’t just hear music, I See Music. Which means I’m not your mother’s designer. Not by a long shot.
Also, if you don’t understand anything I’ve said here, please don’t call me. There is no hope for you.
You know that thing you do where you get home, exhausted after a day of shuffling Very Important Documents for Very Important Clients? The kind of day when your boss has been bellowing halitotic insults in your direction every three minutes and you entertain sadistic fantasies of refashioning his face with a stapler?
The thing you do when you’ve been on your feet since six in the morning, your Humvee’s blown a tire and you’ve spent three of the last four hours cleaning up cat sick?
You know, that thing.
The thing where you sack off a proper dinner, and you and your wife stick a plastic carton of chicken jalfrezi in the microwave, open a bottle of Chablis and collapse in front of the TV?
GREAT, isn’t it?
The. Best. Thing. Ever.
Your day’s burdens drift effortlessly away as you fill your stomach with Delhi’s finest foodstuffs, and your mind switches from ‘on’ to ‘off’ in the time it takes Eva Longoria to stroll minxily down the stairs in her claret negligée.
Bliss.
But you know that other thing? The elephant-in-the-room-thing? The one that you don’t talk about for fear of making it worse. The one where you …
… HAVEN’T HAD SEX WITH YOUR WIFE FOR MONTHS?
Yep. Thought so.
THE TWO ARE CONNECTED. If you spend the evenings mindlessly shovelling food into your gormless gob, you will have less sex.
***
You say:
“Sure, but but but, it’s nothing to do with our eating habits. The bedroom and the kitchen aren’t connected. The most sex we’ve ever had was on our honeymoon and THAT’S NORMAL. We don’t even want to have more sex. We’re TIRED at the end of the day. No energy. We work hard. Sure, we might collapse in front of the idiot-box, but even if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be actually, you know, sleeping with each other. That’s for teenagers.”
I say:
Whatever.
***
So this is how you have more sex:
Irrespective of your shitty day, of the bollockings you’ve got about missed deadlines and not bringing in more clients, irrespective of the size of your tax bill and weight of your kids, do this:
- Turn your chicken jalfrezi out of its packaging, stick it on a plate, and set the table for two.
- EAT AT THE DINNER TABLE
- Have a conversation.
- Don’t fall asleep with your plate on your lap (much easier if you’re eating at a table).
- Retire to the bedroom after a scintillating and thoughtful conversation that reminds you why you’re married in the first place.
- Initiate some sweet loving and annoy the neighbours with your amorous yelps.
No Nookie = Vicious Circle = No Nookie.
Alternatively, keep eating semi-prostrate and enjoy a barren future, a widening posterior, chronic constipation and diverticulitis. Oh, and no sex.
EAT MEALS SITTING AT THE DINNER TABLE AND HAVE MORE SEX
Breakfast rocks. You don’t eat breakfast, you fail. Breakfast is the breakfast of champions.
YOU DON’T NEED REMINDING OF THIS.
It’s in every newspaper at least once a month, telling you that breakfast is the cornerstone of weight-loss, productivity and general all-round awesomeness.
Breakfast-junkies, from Tim Ferriss to Leo Babauta, expound on their aspirational morning routines, which involve getting up at half past two in the morning, meditating, working for eight hours, fixing global warming and stopping wars before a high-energy, low-carb, protein-rich breakfast.
So far so sucky.
YOU need breakfast because if you don’t have it:
- Your stomach rumbles all the way through your morning meetings and the sexy guy from marketing keeps his distance.
- Your breath smells.
- You’re lethargic and slovenly, your work suffers and you lose your job.
- You’re an irritable bastard, losing the love and respect of friends with each minute that passes
NO BREAKFAST = UNEMPLOYMENT and LONELINESS
With breakfast in your life, you have more energy for your work and your friends, the ability to sustain longer love-making sessions, and better breath. You rock.
YOU DON’T EAT BREAKFAST BECAUSE:
- You don’t have time
- You don’t have time
- You get up too late
- You don’t have time
You say:
Hang on a second, I don’t eat breakfast because I’m not a morning eater. I really don’t get hungry until about the middle of the morning.
I CALL BULLSHIT!
You know when you go on holiday, or you’re away on a business trip and staying in a lush hotel that serves just about everything you could want to eat? You know those times? You know how you ALWAYS manage to eat breakfast in those situations?
Yeah, thought so.
SO – HERE’S HOW to make breakfast in less than ten seconds:
- Open cereal, pour into bowl.
- Pour on milk.
- Eat
OR
- Open oatmeal (porridge where I come from), pour into bowl.
- Pour on hot water, leave to stand.
- Eat.
BANG! BREAKFAST.
Viva A New Life Complete With Morning Meal!
You are a slave to your cell-phone. Your mobile is IN CONTROL of you.
In the war of man against machine, man is LOSING.
Your phone does a lot more than just ring when somebody wants to talk to you, right? It beeps when you get a message, it hums when somebody tweets you, it buzzes when you get an email, it gives you a back rub when your tired and fixes you a bloody mary when you’ve got a sore head.
STOP! TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONE.
Before switching your phone off, this is your weekend:
- Get up, beautiful day, decide to go to the park, but first check your emails in bed. BAD IDEA. Long, dirty missive from your boss about your Monday morning deadline.
- Decide you’ll spend the whole day working to appease your employer, who is on the golf course not thinking about you even for a minute.
- Can’t get any work done because your husband calls you every two minutes to help with his supermarket buying decisions.
- Evening comes quickly. Treat yourself to a film and a bottle of wine, and just as you sit down your mother calls “for a chat” and you’re still on the phone half an hour later. Your pizza’s gone cold and your Chablis has gotten warm.
- You get another email from your boss. Can’t sleep for worry.
After switching your phone off, this is your weekend:
- Wake up Saturday, beautiful day, eat breakfast, go to the park, meet friends for lunch, play six rounds of mini-golf and finish it off with lobster and stout.
- Sunday, repeat.
- Monday, get into the office, deal with emails. Deadline wasn’t really a deadline.
“BUT”, I hear you cry. “BUT if I want to enjoy my weekend, I need my friends to be able to get in touch with me, right?”
WRONG
Remember ten years ago, before anybody had a mobile phone? Remember how you used to have fun, and meet friends for lunch, and get stuff done? Well:
IT’S STILL POSSIBLE.
If anything, we were more organized and more efficient when last minute changes of plan and calls for information weren’t possible.
DESTRESS – TURN YOUR PHONE OFF THIS WEEKEND.
