When Bill asked how he could help with their daughter’s fourth birthday party, his wife, Jessica, thought she was giving him the simplest of assignments.

“Oh my [expletive] God,” she told TODAY.com. “Never again.”

Jessica, who shares two children with Bill, asked him to mow the lawn, grab some tables from a friend and set them up in the yard. But instead of sticking to the plan, Bill decided the best way to prepare for the celebration was to rent a massive dumpster.

“Let me show you what his contribution was for this party,” Jessica says in her now-viral Instagram clip. The camera then cuts to the unmistakable sound of a truck backing into the driveway and unloading a giant metal bin.

(Courtesy of @njjessica)

“A dump-stah! A dump-stah!” she exclaims, her thick Brooklyn accent making the moment even funnier. “To clean out the basement. The unfinished basement that nobody is going to be in. Not a single person is going to be in my basement.”

She went on, shaking her head at the timing: “And you know what the best part about this is? He says to me, ‘Make sure you go through the house and collect stuff to throw in this dump-stah before they pick it up today.’”

As Jessica pointed out in the clip, if she was the one sorting piles for the trash haul, then who was supposed to be preparing for the actual party? Clearly, Bill hadn’t thought that part through.

The video struck a chord with parents everywhere, who flooded the comments with laughter and sympathy. One wrote, “It’s amazing they complain that they just want us to tell them what to do. And then they do this when we tell them exactly what to do.” Another quipped, “We gotta start putting them in the dumpster.”

Jessica admitted to TODAY.com that she was feeling the pressure that day. “I’m a lunatic about parties, and this was total stress overload,” she said. “We were having kids from her class — and their parents — at our house for the first time. And I’m one of those people who makes my house look like nobody lives here. I’m a perfectionist.”

Still, what started as a comedy of errors ended in teamwork. Bill eventually checked off the original list, picked up the catering and, in hindsight, gave the family the gift of a cleaner basement. As Jessica later wrote on Instagram: “I will say, in the end, I was thrilled to get rid of all the s--- we did.”

According to TODAY.com, Bill — who doesn’t use social media — didn’t even realize the clip had gone viral until reporters reached out. Jessica summed it up with a laugh: “I read something recently that said women are psychotic about the inside of the house because it’s a representation of them, whereas men are outside weed-whacking and blowing debris in the streets because the outdoors is a reflection of them. Hello! We’re wired differently.”

The party was a hit, the clutter disappeared and millions got a laugh out of one dad’s very unusual definition of “helping.”

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