I love my husband, which often means I love to take care of him.

I buy him little gifts, cook him meals when I'm in the mood and try to put a smile on his face. It feels good to help him even though I know he can take care of himself.

But I've gone too far. I spoiled my husband.

Some time in the past three years of marriage -- and all the dating leading up to it -- Jack lost the ability to put his clean clothes on hangers and put them in the closet. He also can't grasp the skill of folding them and putting them in a drawer. He used to cook, but now only knows how to dial the number for takeout.

He is physically capable of these tasks, and they somehow got done before I came along, but now the basics escape him.

If I tell His Royal Laziness to pick up after himself, it leaves me wearing the nag label. My house isn't getting cleaner while I try to figure out how to win this battle.

My husband and I are nasty combinations of stubborn and messy. We also both work a lot and are generally tired when we come home at night, which makes cleaning the least appealing thing.

Vacuuming or watching TV? Not a tough call.

When the weekend comes, I try to go into maid mode. Jack believes the weekend are his days off, which means no cleaning for him.

When the house is at its messiest, Jack resorts to expletives to highlight our pigsty situation. He wants it clean, but is too worn out to do it himself.

So with two messy people and dogs that shed nonstop, I am often left fitting cleaning in along the way while Jack rests comfortably on the couch and grumbles about the total number of hours he worked this week.

I hurt my case by being a control freak who wants things done a certain way. When we've painted, I have a hard time appreciating his style of strokes, and his laundry skills are questionable. Or perhaps he started messing up to avoid getting the job in the first place.

I also made the mistake early on of doing a lot of the household work by default. I bought the groceries and actually enjoyed cooking.

He can be helpful -- but not without my prompting, which can go from friendly to desperate in minutes. If I'm not in the house, he will not clean. I don't even know if he thinks to pick up around the house. Would he live in squalor if I didn't live there, too?

He is amazing at bathrooms, I'll give him that. But a bathroom needs to be cleaned more than twice a year.

I've tried to trick him into cleaning his own stuff. I no longer hang his shirts in his closet; I leave them in a pile on his nightstand. I think that when the pile becomes big enough to topple over he will realize it's time to hang them.

That pile doesn't move. Instead he picks his daily outfit from it, unless it's a day that I have laid it out for him. The laying out of clothes may sound a bit dated of me, but I consider it a public service. He has no fashion sense and if I leave him to his own devices the world has to deal with clashing colors and patterns.

I've considered leaving his dirty laundry to rot on the floor. But I know that I would find him wearing wrinkled and stained items to work eventually, and I can't have that.

So I do it all, annoying myself with complaining about it. What's the remedy for my spoiled husband?

Passive aggression doesn't work. I loudly drag laundry baskets around the house, making sure to bump into things along the way to his soft, "Let me get that" mutterings. Not a good plan.

So it's time to talk to my fellow stubborn mess and see what we can do together. Maybe we can come up with a checklist of chores and take turns.

At least at the end of the day we know we got ourselves into this mess together, and I presume will find a way out.

Once I find him hidden under the clothes, I'll make sure I let him know.

Laura Lewis Brown is an adventurous newlywed who has loved, lost and doesn't mind sharing. Her column appears every other Thursday.