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Show j porcelain preacher seeks cure to home hassles - I ' ! j By SHARON MOKREY He's been called, the "Porcelain Preacher" and he's the successful esident of a multimillion dollar : Peaning business but author and husband Don Aslett says most of all "he's teen educated in the amount i , usework that's dumped on en" and he's out to help. "I have just been amazed at my ail since we started this whole !Lg" says the popular speaker and author of three books. ("Is Lre Life After Housework," "Do I t puSt or Vacuum First?" and i gutter's Last Stand"). I get all these frustrations by mail and it's all the same; men and kids think it's mama's job to clean. ! das long as mother will do it, it is. j We'll always respond depending on I What we can get away with." i "I'm a repentant slob I hope," I shares Aslett. "I own my own cleaning business and I teach seminars about how to clean but I still find little things I start to do around the house and I wonder, 'Who did these things before? And look at the time they take up!'" Aslett says he doesn't have all the answers but he has some of them and everyday he's finding more. "When I find the answer to how to get the husbands and kids to do their part, rn make an instant $2 milljon dollars," laughs Aslett. Meanwhile, with wit and humor, Aslett is storming the country with his ideas that essentially put cleaning and housekeeping in its place. He advocates "making less mess" first of all, being responsible for ones own messes. "Men ought to be punished for their own sins," he quips. "Don't be the family janitor. Set ' an exciting example by de-junking and establishing order without reinforcing slobbiness in others. Just don't pick it up for them." "I had one lady write to tell me she just kicked her husband's work-pants, work-pants, baseball uniform, dress pants, etc. under the bed until he appeared in a towel one day looking for his clothes. She told him they were right where he left them. She never had any more trouble with him picking up his clothes." "That's what you may have to do. Let the kid go to school in stinky shorts if he can't remember to put them into the wash." "Everyone's lime is worth exactly the same," he stresses. Aslett admits thai the woman of the house may have to be ready to forget about her "image" to do this. "Let them suffer the consequences con-sequences or they won't change. Why should they if mom will do it? People have to want to do this." Aslett says he gets lots of letters with job-chart ideas and tips to get the family to help but he dismisses it all as "trickery to get them to do what they should, and why should you use four hours to devise a plan to get them to do their work?" He urges mothers and wives to bring their husbands to his seminars like the one scheduled this Saturday, Nov. 17, at 9 a.m. at the American Fork Junior High. "Don't let them go duck-hunting and send you to the seminar alone, (leaving a trail of peanut-butter and feathers for you to clean up later.) Bring them, I'll tell them what I've discovered. I continue every day to be amazed at what women are expected ex-pected to do." And Aslett promises to excite both men and women with new concepts in his "de-junking philosophy." Aslett maintains that clutter and junk is crowding out happiness in the American lifestyle. "Clutter is one of the greatest enemies of efficiency and stealers of time." "Clutter can be traced back to Adam who, when his fig leaf wore out and should have been discarded, pressed it and saved it as a memory of by-gone days." "That's stuff that crowds out feelings of love. The very thing you save strangles you. People keep such junk. If all the National Geographies stored in attics were gathered into one place it would tilt the earth. Throw away those mouse-manured mouse-manured mildewed magazines." "I went through a stack of piano books and music my children used, reduced a two foot pile to four inches. in-ches. The time for its usefulness was gone. It was past." "We hold onto things long past their usefulness. One man I know saved a box of chicken feathers for 30 years - 30 years! And it was a big box. That's junk!" "The junk concept is just phenomenal," says Aslett, who has a wealth of ideas on how to recognize junk, how to say good-bye to the junk habit and how to avoid junking up in the future. "It's like an alcoholic," he concludes, con-cludes, "You must admit the problem before you can get help." Don Aslett |
