Marital Conflicts Between Precision and Efficiency

Because of the pandemic, over the past many months my husband and I have been at home together most of each day. It’s given me an opportunity to see our differences in a more concentrated light.

The other day I came upon him transferring our laundry from washer to dryer. I always like to encourage his involvement in laundry. But he had scissors in his hand, which didn’t seem appropriate for the task.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting a dryer sheet.” He folded a sheet of Bounce in half and cut it along the fold.

“What are you doing?” I asked again. “You know, those can be torn.”

We have agreed that half a sheet of fabric softener is plenty for a load of laundry. It gets rid of static cling sufficiently and doesn’t add too much scent. But my time is too precious to find the scissors, fold, and cut. I simply rip the sheet somewhere near the middle and toss one part in the dryer.

Just one more example of how my husband places priority on precision and I favor efficiency.

I’ve written before about our differing philosophies on recipes. I consider them mostly a suggestion. He measures each ingredient carefully. His end products might be more consistent than mine, but I do most of the cooking these days, and we haven’t been poisoned yet. And I’m much faster at food preparation than he is.

One day last week I offered to make him a snack. He said that would be nice. “What would you like?” I asked.

“Maybe three slices of bread spread with cream cheese,” he said. Precision.

“How about a granola bar?” I responded. Efficiency.

We compromised on a container of Greek yogurt, though I did put fresh blueberries on it.

Then there are file folder labels. I handwrite a description of the contents directly on the folder. If I’m reusing a folder, which I frequently do, I’ll cross through the old contents name and write the new description on the label next to the old name. If the folder has been reused many times, I might write on a label and paste it over my old handwriting.

But my husband types the file name on a pristine label and sticks it on the folder. I don’t know if he has ever reused a folder. Or a label.

Ditto with envelopes. I address them by hand, although I will type and print business addresses if I can use the envelope feature in Word to copy them from a letter. For return addresses, I use all the little labels that non-profits send out—much faster than writing our address, particularly now that we have a 5-digit house number and 13-letter street name.

My husband always types both his return address label and a label for the addressee.

Now there’s nothing wrong with my husband’s precision. In fact, it’s admirable. But it takes time. In my opinion, there are too many things in life we have to do that do not deserve the time it takes to do them perfectly. Or even precisely.

Which takes me back to my first college class at Middlebury College. That’s when I decided to be an Economics major. The professor’s first words were “Economics is for lazy people. It’s the study of how to get the most output from the least input.” I immediately bought into his philosophy.

I suppose it would be easier to use a whole sheet of Bounce and not even bother dividing it. But tearing it in two seems like a sensible compromise between wasting fabric softener and taking time to find the scissors. I’m not unreasonable in my pursuit of efficiency.

Which do you prefer—precision or efficiency?