My husband Alex is not exactly a neat freak, but he is a clean freak. He can ignore clutter until every piece of furniture in the house is covered with stuff that isn't where it's supposed to be (usually the trash can), but he is absolutely, manically vigilant about vacuuming up dog hair. Since the largest dog in our home is a 100-pound long-haired German Shepherd who sheds a lot - but only once or twice a year - I'm talking about a lot of dog hair here. We also have three other dogs who, fortunately for my husband's nerves and the vacuum cleaner's longevity, don't have quite as long hair as Karl, nor do they shed nearly as much.

He's also equally vigilant about making sure the bathroom is as pristine as possible at all times - so much so that I'm not allowed to clean the fixtures (awww, too bad) because I don't "do it right."!

On the other hand, I absolutely despise clutter in all forms and spend a large part of my free time trying to eradicate it, but I swear I don't even notice when I'm wading ankle-deep in dog hair (that's an exaggeration, but not much of one).

So, in our own way, Alex and I are slobs and neat freaks, both.

How do you do it? How do you make it work when one person in a relationship likes everything clean enough to do emergency surgery on and the other person thinks that towels are theoretically used by clean people, so why ever wash them? Many television sit-coms have been based on this question, most notably The Odd Couple back in the 1970's.

Well, situation comedies are fine for an evening's entertainment, but they don't do much to solve real life problems.

The big answer is, of course, compromise. Specifically, the neat freak may have to learn how to tone it down a little, and the slob just might need to make him or herself a weekly chore list - and stick to it. After all, the neat freak can always delegate tidying up tasks, and the slob can always confine his or her mess to a specific area - a den, a game room, a home office, or a garden shed. The neat freak will just have to learn to stay away from those areas whenever he or she is holding a dust cloth.

Your car is also a good personal space to allow your neatness or slobbiness to express itself. The neat freak can keep his or her car in pristine neat freak condition. My mother, for instance, drives a 1986 Chevy. To my knowledge, no one has ever so much has picked up a Coke at a drive-through in that car, much less eaten anything (okay, one time Alex and I borrowed it and yes, we did eat McDonald's carryout while driving down the highway. I won't tell if you won't). It still has that new car smell, even after 11 years.

My car, on the other hand, looks like a toy store, a wastepaper basket, and a vacuum cleaner bag simultaneously vomited all over the interior. Granted, I am rarely in the car without one child and/or at least one dog as passengers, but my car is still a mess. And the mess doesn't bother anyone else. Alex is almost never in my car and, except for a few toys and a lot of dog hair, his car is much neater than mine.

My father-in-law taught Alex, "Never sweat the small stuff." And on the grand scale of relationship issues, how you vacuum or how she never wipes the countertops down after doing the dishes is definitely in the "small stuff" category. Talk about your disparate cleanliness issues as much as you can, but really, is an open, loving relationship with your sweetie really worth sacrificing over a pair of dirty underwear in the bathroom?