Domestic habits: Things your parents taught you.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I grew up in a household where domestic roles where well defined. My father felt that it was not seemly for my mother to clean toilets. That was man’s work. As was vaccuming and any moving of furniture that entailed. Dusting, cooking, laundry and general tidying was my mother’s job. Washing dishes was my father’s responsibility in gratitude for the cooking my mom did. My dad was willfully incapable of anything more than putting on the tea kettle and making toast. Left to his own devices, my father would probably only eat food that did not require cooking or preparation of most any kind past removal of the packaging.

I acquired similar values. Toilettes, vaccuming, dishes are duties I perform without much thought or question. In addition, I’m no stranger to laundry and actually quite enjoy it. Tidying and dusting are things I readily pass off to my partner. Cooking, however, is something I’ve learned to do well from my mom and continue to enjoy the most. I’m willing to toss a coin with regards to cleaning the kitchen. It’s got to be done as part of a clean and healthy environment but I’m quite happy to let my partner take the lead on that one.

I even enjoy ironing most of the time. But baking? Now that’s women’s work! :slight_smile:

2

I work, she stays at home with Sophie.

However, that was her life.

Both my father and stepmother worked - we even had a nanny for a year or two (after my mother died and before my father remarried - being a single dad with four kids wasn’t easy in 1969).

As to me, I got my dad’s complete lack of interest in “working around the house.” Cleaning the gutters is a major accomplishment - just don’t expect me to build anything that doesn’t come with instructions. :wink:

3

I was raised on a farm, and there were 7 kids. ‘Gender roles’ didn’t apply. You did whatever needed done, when it needed to be done. If you were male or female, it didn’t really matter one bit. On a farm, you can’t blow off doing something, just because you are a girl (or a boy). If dinner need to be made and it was obvious that no one was available to do it, then you cooked it. If something was dirty, you cleaned it. If it was time to bale hay, you get involved and get it done. If it was time to feed the cows and pigs, you did it. If the grass needed mowed, you did it. If the garden was in need of weeding, you did that, too. We all did chores that we didn’t like, but everything got done, everyday, without any bitching or moaning. It had to be done. Simple as that.

Now, I’m married and we have one daughter. Right now, my daughter isn’t working (she just turned 18) and she helps me quite a bit around the house, so it’s not like I’m doing it all myself.

I don’t expect my husband to come home from being on the road for a week, and do housework! That’s MY job, since I’m here all the time and don’t work outside of my home. I don’t mind it at all, really. I’m the type of person that enjoys my home, and I want things to be nice for my family and our friends, whenever they visit!
My husband would like to do things around here, and he often asks me if there is anything he can do, but I usually have everything taken care of.

When my husband comes home, the house is in order and there is a hot meal on the table. That way, there is plenty of time to relax and catch up with each other. He only makes it home once a week, on weekends, for maybe a day and a half/two days, so, it is the LEAST I can do!

4

Mum did her ironing and mine when I was a child. My dad does his own because if my mum does it he ends up re-doing it anyway. I did my own too.

Everyone did the dishes. Everyone did the housework. Basically, who ever didn’t have a job/school to go to did the most.

I think Ill do the same with my kids.

5

I am generally with you. If one person cooks, the other washes. He does the bathrooms, and I clean the kitchen, since he does most of the cooking (and well, too). I do laundry, but he puts it away. I like vacuuming. I love the look of the floor right after, so I do that.
He does his own ironing, because I hate ironing and it’s enough that I have to do my own…plus most of my blouses/tops don’t really need it, whereas his button-downs need a good hand.

And I am the only one who ever bakes sweet things, but if meals require baking, of course he’ll bake.

6

I was pretty independent in learning how to cook and bake (I almost typed “kook”…I need more sleep). Cleaning habits are pretty much my own style. I dust just like my mom does, though. She always removed knicknacks from a table, wiped them all off with a electrostatic cloth, wiped the table with the cloth, then sprayed the table with furniture polish and rubbed it with a rag for a glossy finish.

While I was growing up there was always a “utility drawer” in the kitchen where the following were always present: Roll of twine, rubber bands, scissors, sandwich bags, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, and twist ties. I have the exact same kind of drawer in my kitchen.

7

I learned more organizational skills than actual chores from my parents.

I constantly surprise myself when I run across neatly wrapped Christmas lights, labelled and dated frozen cookie dough and the like.

As to chores now–husband insists he contributes, but he really doesn’t do much. He will unload the dishwasher and do his own laundry (but never mine or the kids’), he will shop, but not get the stuff on the list, but will get the stuff he thinks we need (10 slab of American anyone? please?). So, frankly, I’d rather he didn’t do anything at all.

He was great with babies, though–fed, diapered, played, walked, burped etc.

8

I’ve always thought the way my parents have their duties split up was interesting:

Dad:
Laundry (washes, dries, folds)
Grocery shopping/errands
Cooking
Auto maintenance/washing
House maintenance
Mows lawn/does all yardwork
Manages finances/pays bills

Mom:
All house cleaning -
Vacuuming
Mopping
Dusting
Bathrooms
Changes sheets
Cleans cat box

I know it seems like my dad does more, and he does, but to be fair, they do have a really big house and the cleaning is a lot of work. They do share tasks such as tidying up, emptying the dishwasher, making the iced tea, etc.
Now I, on the other hand, I have this problem that I like to be in charge of everything, sometimes to my own detriment. I feel like I do everything better than anyone else, and I like things done my way.

However, I think I would like it if my boyfriend did his own laundry, folded it and put it away (man does he generate a lot of laundry!), and helped with the dishes more. Oh, and picked up after his children more when they are visiting. I need to work on that.

9

Pop–earned money outside the home, took care of the car, raked leaves, shovelled snow, painted the outside of the house

Mom–housework in the home (cooked, did dishes, grocery shopped, cleaned, laundry, ironing…)

Kids–schoolwork, bring own laundry to the laundryroom, make own bed, sometimes clean up own room or the toyroom.
Now that Pop is retired, he does all the housework. I believe he secretly wanted to all those years since only his way is truly correct, he just didn’t have time and the roles were as above. Now he wields coupons and toilet brushes with aplomb and Mom just sits back.

10

My parent’s raised me under the mantra, “You cook, you clean.” I think I am the only person I know who follows this rule. No one else in my family does it, and my grandmother is at a loss as to where my mother picked this up.

It makes sense to me - I dirtied the kitchen, dishes, silverware, and appliances, therefore I should clean up after myself.

11

My father believed outside stuff – mowing the lawn, gardening, etc. – was “women’s work.” He did most of the cooking (except baking), saying “men were better cooks.” I don’t know where he got that from, but oh well. My mother loved mowing the lawn and gardening, and hated cooking, so that worked out for them. Dad shopped, Mom cleaned with help from us kids. My mom worked as a teacher, so everyone pitched in and got things done on the weekends. I never saw Saturday morning cartoons, because that was chore time.

I live alone, so divving up chores isn’t hard – I do them all, when I feel like it. Which isn’t often. I wish I made more money so I could hire someone to do that stuff. Although I love the outdoor stuff.

I also have a “junk drawer” like my parents did. And oddly, my cabinets are set up just like theirs – overhead, dishes to the right of the sink, dry goods to the left.

12

Matches? Was there an old pack of matches in there too, and three stubby pencils, and one half-burnt candle that might be useful for “emergencies”, and a tiny box of used birthday candles?

13

Have you been looking through my mother’s kitchen? :smiley:

14

I wish that my mother and grandparents had been more strict about making us kids do chores. Mom’s not much of a Susie Homemaker herself, but we spent a lot of time at my grandparents and Grandma always kept a neat house. I wish she’d done less picking up after us, and made us clean for ourselves, because now I constantly struggle with housework, and I wish I’d learned better habits as a kid.

One thing I learned from my parents is not to expect the Man of the House to pitch in with housework, a tradition that Mr. Fries is happy to exploit. It’s not so much a matter of sexism, more that his mother not being much of a housekeeper either, and he has about the same bad habits that I do. The difference is that he doesn’t care, and I do. After a brief period of Sturm und Drang I found the path to peace in reverting to the model of my parents. I do the shopping, I pay the bills. If cleaning is done, it is done by me, and I do it for myself, without caring what he thinks. I stay on top of the laundry, because if I don’t, he does a load, and it completely disrupts my system. (Yeah, I’m a little too married to my system: two loads of colors and one of whites per week, sheets or towels on Saturday, laundry goes in in the morning, gets switched to the dryer when I get home, folded while watching the Simpsons, put away at bedtime. DO NOT MESS WITH MY SYSTEM.)

I am extremely grateful that he does do the dishes, and he cooks sometimes. Like my dad, he takes out the garbage. Unlike my dad, he doesn’t have to mow the lawn or fix a lot of broken things, because we rent. We’re both somewhat hopeless, mechanically, so that is one aspect of home ownership that I do not look forward to.

15

The division of labor in my house was always:

Mom cooks, cleans (everything), does laundry and dishes. She also worked 40 hours a week.

Dad mows, takes out the garbage (we had a compactor which made really heavy bags of trash), cleans the cars (once or twice a month in the summer) and the garage (once a year). He also worked 40 hours a week.

Kids kept their own stuff picked up, helped with everything else.

Then my mom got angry at my dad because she would work until 6 pm, then come home and he would’ve been home for two hours and dinner wasn’t started and he’d be watching TV. The labor became a bit more equal after that. And we kids were old enough to do the dishes ourselves.

Now, we split most things evenly. I cook most nights, he does the dishes every day. I do all the laundry, he cleans the bathtub (stronger back) and I clean the rest of the bathroom. We split catbox duties, but he takes the dog out.

16

My dad always worked from home, and is a neat freak, so I think he did a lot of cooking and tidying up. He also gets up freakishly early, and on the weekends uses this time to bake muffins.

My mom always worked outside the home during the day (except when we were really small). She grocery shopped, did laundry, vacuumed (one of my most consistent childhood memories is of my mother wrestling with the vacuum cleaner on Saturday mornings, complete with the smell of burning fan belt … she never had one that worked properly), and also baked delicious things.

Both my parents bake much better than they cook. Upon reflection, this seems like a rarity.

My husband and I do not follow this pattern. We both cook (and IMHO we both cook better than my parents), and the one who doesn’t cook, cleans up. (Usually.) I bake when I’m feeling extravagant (and I usually clean up after that, too.) He doesn’t bake much/very well, because he still hasn’t realized that baking (unlike cooking) requires strict adherence to a recipe. So we end up with flour and butter baked into hockey pucks, that he insists are nice. I think I have finally convinced him to not bake any more unless he swears up and down to follow a recipe to the letter. Once he does that a few times (and comes up with something tasty, what’s the point of baking if you get something that’s not tasty?) he will be permitted free-er reign.

We each do our own laundry, I of course do the towels and sheets because if I didn’t, they would never get done. I clean the bathroom and do most of the vacuuming (I’ve got a beauty, my mother is terribly jealous). He produces food out of our garden, and that takes up a lot of time what with the planting and digging and composting and worm feeding and so on, so it works out fairly equitably in the end: we both feel equally hard done by.

17

Utility drawer? You people are nuts.

Everyone knows it’s called a junk drawer. :stuck_out_tongue: