A Day in Her Apron: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

An [[Undead Horse Trope]]. Essentially for some reason the [[Housewife]] won't be available to do the housework, and the job falls to someone else (usually her hubby). [[Hilarity Ensues]].

 

[[Gilligan Cut]] to 10 minutes later. The floor is covered in garbage, there's stuff on the walls, the sinks/toilets/dishwasher/washing machine/all of the above are overflowing, and something is burning in the oven. In more outrageous shows, there might even be a wild animal in the house. The phone rings, it's the wife.

 

Husband: Oh, everything's just fine! ''(the curtains catch fire in the background)'' }}

 

Sometimes part of a Mother's Day episode.

 

 

A subtrope of [[Men Can't Keep House]] and [[Vetinari Job Security]]. Contrast [[Just Fine Without You]] and [[House Husband]]. See also [[Doom It Yourself]]. Do not confuse with [[Gender Bender]].

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** When she attempted to make tea for herself, she not only ''teleported'' a UFO into the kitchen, she also caused it to crash.

* Done in an episode of ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', in which Brock is sick, leaving Ash and Misty to take care of all his usual chores, from cooking to polishing Onix.

* Sometimes inverted when a [[Meido|maid]] character utterly fails with housework. Doubly ironic when her master is more adept than she is.

* In the ''[[Kimagure Orange Road]]'' story "Manami's Big Adventure," Kyousuke volunteers to help take care of the Kasuga apartment while Manami takes the day off, and goads sister Kurumi and dad Takashi into helping him. This results in the expected devastation of their home, including a toxic "stew" made by [[Lethal Chef|Kurumi]] which [[Fire-Breathing Diner|all but destroys Kyousuke's voice with one bite]]. (In the manga you can see a bottle of Tabasco floating in the stewpot.) The family learns just how much they rely on Manami to take care of them.

 

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

 

 

* The movie ''[[Mr Mom]]'', staring Michael Keaton.

* [[Robin Williams]] in the beginning of ''[[Mrs. Doubtfire]]'' was clearly going for this trope, though disguising himself as the eponymous housekeeper he had to improve in a hurry.

 

 

== Folk Tales ==

* There's a folktale from Scandinavia (and other areas) called something like "how the husband and wife traded jobs" or "how the husband minded the house" which is all about this.

 

 

* ''[[The King of Queens]]''

* Occurs in ''[[Father Ted]]'', though not with a married couple. The priest's housekeeper Mrs. Doyle goes on a night out for the first time ever, so Ted and Dougal try to make tea and end up setting each other on fire.

* ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' used this trope in the famous "chocolate factory" episode. Ricky kept on making iron marks on the clothes, made the nylon stockings into cardboard, and caused a huge mess in the kitchen.

* The Canadian series ''The Week The Women Went''.

 

== [[Music]] ==

Being Mr. Mom }}

* The folk song "The Old Man" is basically this story set to music.

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' subverted it in that Dad was actually competent.

* Done a bunch of times in ''[[FoxTrot]]'' whenever the kids and dad are left to fend for themselves: the kitchen will inevitably be a disaster area, dinner will be inedible, and chaos will reign supreme. (Though the rest of the time, the mother's cooking is treated as pretty inedible too.). Sometimes, it also grows to be as bad as the first level of the house ending up flooded as a result of Roger [[Walking Techbane|not knowing how to operate the Dishwasher properly]]. In the same arc where he flooded the kitchen, its hinted that Andy does not trust Roger in maintaining the house, and also supplied her children with fire emergency exit maps of the house while Roger's taking care of it.

* The newspaper comic strip ''[[Andy Capp]]'' once featured the normally shiftless and lazy Andy agree (after some nagging) to take care of the dishes on his wife's behalf, while she put her feet up. Once he begins (and she's not watching), he carefully and deliberately drops a plate, and then bemoans its fate, cursing his own ineptitude. His wife tsks, hustles him out of the kitchen and sets about cleaning up. As he settles back into the sofa, he looks to the [[Fourth Wall]] and smirks. "Life's easy, if you show yer incompetent." A truly sublime [[Subversion]].

* Numerous occurrences on ''[[The Simpsons]]''.

** In one episode, Marge is spending too much time at the casino, and Homer decides he's going to make dinner for the family. He puts cloves and Tom Collins mix into a frozen pie shell, digs in and takes a bite, and says very calmly:

* ''[[Rugrats]]'' inverted it for Angelica's parents.

* Played with in ''[[King of the Hill]]'', where Peggy likes to think that no one can top her at maintaining a home, but she grows quite jealous of her son's homemaking skills.

* The Goofy cartoon ''Father's Day Off''. By the time Mrs. Goof comes home, the house is a shambles, the bathtub is overflowing, the iron has burned through the floor, firemen are stomping through the halls, and the cops have come to investigate a murder (Goofy left the phone unhung and the operator overheard a radio show).

* This happens in ''[[Family Guy]]'' when Lois goes to jail. There's pizza boxes and beer cans all over the floor, and Stewie's diaper is so full, he's dragging it around with him everywhere.

* The Mother's Day episode of [[Dexter's Laboratory]].

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Cleanliness Tropes]]