Ask Amy: Spouses air their dirty laundry

Dear Amy: For as long as I have known my wife (20 years), she has been reluctant to do the laundry. She tells me that she will do it, but two days later, dirty clothes are still piling up.

She works part-time outside the home, and I work full-time from home. She has plenty of time in her day to do the laundry. Instead, she chooses to watch videos on her phone for hours on end.

I used to think it was just a personality quirk. But after two decades, I know better. The root of this issue is not laundry, of course. It is trust, which has been shaken to the point that it threatens the integrity of our relationship.

How can we move forward?

Amy says: If your wife agrees to do something and then doesn't do it, then I agree that she is at the very least unreliable. And I can understand your frustration over that.

Some of your disconnect, however, might have to do with timing. She'll do it when she wants to — not when you want her to.

Because you value having an empty laundry basket, I suggest that you stop asking your wife to do the wash and just do it yourself. If you have a washer/dryer in the home, laundry is one of the easiest household chores to do. (Yes, your wife can even do laundry while watching videos on her phone.)

You two might sit down together to revisit both your professional and domestic responsibilities. I hope there are ways to re-balance both.

Dear Amy: My husband and I were neighbors to an eccentric and very talented painter. We truly loved and admired his work and bought several pieces from him.

He and his wife had one child, who seems to be as eccentric as his father. He is middle-aged. He is very nice, but does not have a fixed address or live in the area.

After the artist's death, his wife moved into a nursing facility. The son (along with his mother) reached out to us to see if we could take in the work that the artist had left behind. We agreed.

We went to his studio and discovered a treasure trove of hundreds of pieces — both framed and unframed, and in various styles. We offered to purchase several dozen of them, and the widow and son were delighted.

When their property was sold, we offered to take in and store the remaining work. Now, more than 10 years later, the widow has died. We are thinking about selling our own place and don't know what to do with the stored pieces. Do you have any suggestion?

Amy says: Contact a lawyer, as well as the son. I'm no legal expert, but I would think that these pieces still belong to the artist's family. You should make every effort to involve the son and work with him to convey this work safely to another location. Perhaps there is a university art program that might be interested in them.