It's Monday. The Webmaster's discarded clothes from yesterday are on the bedroom floor, next to the laundry basket.  The basket is empty, the contents dumped on the utility room floor the previous night. "We have a laundry basket" I shout. He's in the next room tapping away on his keyboard and letting out large, loud sighs. "Yeah, OK," he calls back, signalling his total ignorance of what I'd said.

"So why don't you use it?" 

"I've found the problem but it's a bastard to fix."

"What?"

"Sshhh, I need to think, I haven't got time for that."

"Time for what? Putting your dirty clothes in the laundry basket before you get into bed at night."

I pick them up. "It's sunny, I'm putting a wash on, we may as well take advantage of the solar power."

A few minutes later I have almost finished sorting the laundry into piles according to colour and wash temperature and I have started to load the machine for the first wash when the Webmaster arrives to see what I'm doing.

"What are you doing?" he asks, despite it being obvious, "Are you sure you know how to do it?"

The Webmaster prides himself on being the perfect house husband and expert on all domestic matters. He believes this because for nearly twenty years he took on the house, garden, cooking and chauffeuring the kids to their various activities while I went out to earn the money.  But he is a man of a certain age and generation and while his attitude and willingness may be "new-man", he had never learned the arts of housekeeping.  He also has an impenetrable stubborn streak that makes him impervious to tips and advice - at least (primarily) in relation to domestic matters, the things which in his youth were still considered women's work.

"Have you been through all the pockets, you always leave tissues in your pockets?"

"Yes and no, I don't."

"What's that pile there?" he asks pointing at a heap of clothes from which I am sorting out socks.  "Are you putting the socks in with the T-shirts?"

"Yes, to make up the first load, the underwear can go in the next load."

He looks again at the heaps of clothes, mainly towels, socks and underwear, as I've already tossed the the shirts and shorts into the machine. 

"Socks are underwear," he announces. "All the pile is underwear," he declared, "except the bras, they are t-shirts."