What do I do with my messy DH??

I love my DH, but his messy ways drive me INSANE.

Right now I'm in the first trimester of pregnancy, feeling too sick to sick to do much, and spending a lot of time sitting on the couch. My DD gets out her toys, but it's a limited mess.

Yet somehow our house is covered in trash, dirty clothes, old mail, random clutter, etc. My DH leaves things everywhere, and since I've been too sick to pick up after him it's piling up.

For example, after enough nagging he now picks up his work clothes from the bathroom floor, but he almost never picks up his socks and boxers. He will leave a wet towel on the floor or on the bed or in the dirty clothes instead of hanging it up.

When he eats or drinks, he leaves cans and wrappers on the counter. I point them out to him and sometimes he throws it away, but never everything. Like the other day I made muffins. I came in to find the muffin papers from the ones he ate wadded up in little balls and laying all the way on the back of the stove. It must have taken more effort to toss them back there than it would to just throw them in the trash can less than 2 ft. away!

My DH gets the mail on his way in the door. He leaves all the ripped open envelopes on the piano, on the counter, in the stack of important papers waiting to be filed away, etc. Junk mail he sticks in random places like in the box of piano music, in the important papers, on top the book shelf, etc. If I don't search and destroy immediately, it just piles up until there is clutter all over the place, because he also never puts things up...so there are comic books and DVD's and whatever else randomly laying all over the house. His tools are the worst, he will do a project and then leave the tools on the kitchen table and stuck in random places, then he can never find anything again.

I've tried explaining to him how much easier life is when you just immediately put something back where it goes when you're done with it. How there is nothing to clean up if you throw a food wrapper away instead of just laying it down. That he doesn't ever have any clean socks and underwear because they always get pushed under the bed or the couch or dresser or piano when they are left in the floor. (Our cats no doubt aid in that...) But he still doesn't seem to get it and I am losing my mind! I feel like all I do after he leaves for work is clean up after him, then when he gets home it just starts over. After his day off our house is trashed with crumbs and food and clothes and clutter.

Yesterday I folded a pile of clothes and laid them on the bed and had to go sit down because I felt too sick to put them away at the moment. An hour later I came back in the room and the clothes were gone. I was happy, until I noticed them wadded up and shoved on top of the tv, of all places. Instead of putting them in the dresser (which the tv sits on top of!) he had just dumped the whole pile on top of the tv, then laid down on the bed and took a nice afternoon nap.

:

Growing up my dad was always very neat and clean, and we were required to have everything organized and clean constantly. I'm ok with small messes here and there, like DD's toys spread out or whatever. My DH also lived in a clean house but his parents cleaned up behind him without a word and they have a maid....