The Day I Stopped Fussing About the Mud on the Floor….

I was “that” wife who grew irrationally irritated at mud left on my clean floors from other’s feet (read husband). Was it really so hard to wipe off your shoes ON the mat at the door before you came in? Or, how about the mat at the door AFTER you came in? Yep, I had one outside and one inside. So, it shouldn’t be hard, right?!? Just a few rubs of your shoes on said proffered mats, and viola, problem solved.

So, why, for the love of all things holy, did my smart, thoughtful, loving husband have such a hard time completing this one, simple task? He built houses, for goodness sakes. Surely, a man that could take bricks and wood and shingles and turn them into a home could handle such an ordinary, basic chore.

But, for some reason, this elementary undertaking eluded him. So, night after night, I would come home from my workday and find small clumps of mud all over the hardwood floors. And night after night, I would drag out the vacuum and clean up the clumps of mud, because yuck! Who could stand the feeling of grit on the bottom of your bare feet if you happened to walk across the floor without thinking? Certainly not I, so out with the vacuum I came.

And then, one afternoon, as I once again came home to the presence of little clumps of red mud on my floors, I realized something. Those clumps of mud were there because my husband was busy providing for our family. 

My husband runs a construction company out of a spare bedroom in our house. A room that he is constantly in and out of during the day, checking emails, returning calls, sorting through blueprints before rushing back out to the job he’s currently overseeing. His day is full of problems and issues and headaches that are way more important than the mud on the bottom of his work boots.

But he deals with all of it because that is how he provides for our family. He spends 12-14 hours a day at construction sites, meeting with prospective clients, scheduling subcontractors only to come home and deal with the business end of running his own business. The paperwork, the bills, the endless contracts, forms, and checklists. 

And, then to a nagging wife, who is fussing about a few clumps of mud on the hardwood. Not on the carpet, where it gets ground into the fibers never to come fully clean again, but on hardwoods that are easily vacuumed and sparkly clean once more.

How fair was I being to him? Sure, I work full-time too, but it’s in a climate-controlled office space with a bathroom and breakroom nearby. While just as important as his work, it is no doubt that mine is far more comfortable than his.

Here he is leaving before the sun is up most mornings and not getting home until dark many days, braving the weather, enduring gas station lunches, and dealing with a cell phone that rings constantly … and I am worried about some mud on the floor.

I no longer complain about the globs of mud on the floor. They actually make me smile just a little now as I lug out the vacuum. Not because they are any less annoying, but because I know they are there because we are loved. He loves our family enough to deal with all of his headaches throughout the day that he forgets about wiping the mud off his boots so he can give us a house, and food, and fun weekends together. And for that, I will gladly clean up the mud.

Joni Green is a full-time wife, mother, and state employee who tries to find time for things she is passionate about such as writing blog posts and reading cheesy romance novels. She lives in tiny Prosperity with her husband and kids and two Labrador retrievers