Housework. The Great Divide.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I know they say that money is the root of all evil. But I’m pretty sure that is wrong.

The root of all evil is house cleaning or more to the point a lack of house cleaning.

Leechboy is missing the cleaning gene either that or he lost it, or put it in his trouser pocket and then washed it (without separating the colours from the whites) and now it’s a wad of fluff on the dryer door.

Does he imagine that the clothes he drops on the floor will magically wash themselves? The dirty nappies he leaves on the change table will somehow put themselves in the bin?

I’m pretty sure he thinks the dishwasher is broken because he very rarely puts dishes in it. Although it is possible that he believes the dishwasher to pack itself by osmosis as he usually leaves the dishes sitting on the bench near it.

And he seems to be developing a hearing problem because requests I make such as “can you please change the cat litter?” are interpreted by him as “can you please leave the cat litter as it is - dirty and foul smelling, so that the cats will go to the toilet elsewhere?”. Possibly this is a translation problem and I should phrase all my requests as Shakespearean sonnets.

Cat hairballs are rolling past like tumbleweeds in a desert, a mountain of washing threatens to swamp the laundry, towers of dishes are precariously balancing in the sink and he is blind to it all.

The occasions on which he does clean are to be celebrated and feared - like when he cleaned out the fridge because the honey had leaked. It was beautiful, a lovely clean fridge, with the honey returned to its spot on the door upsidedown and already leaking.

I do so love him but truly house cleaning or the lack thereof is the root of all evil.

:smiley:

2

It’s a boy thing.
We know we don’t care.
We also know that if we don’t care that you will eventually do it.
So, we short circuit the thing and play the don’t care card immediately and you start doing it.
When you start doing it, we leave you to continue to do it.
But seriously, we don’t care.
It’s not that we not caring.
It’s just that we don’t care whether we wash our clothes from a heap in the middle of the floor or from the laundry basket.
We also assume, it’s our cat, you clean its litter box, unless of course it’s our cat, then we just don’t care.

3

This is why they take us aside in junior high school and teach us about whips. Were you ill that day?

4

Well do the clothes magically end up in a basket, the dishes jump into the dishwasher and the diapers leap into the bin? (By magically I mean with your intervention?)

As long as his tolerance for clutter lasts longer than yours you will always be cursed with housework :slight_smile: You need to care less! Trust me with a new baby this is easier than it sounds.

Hubby and I are notoriously terrible about dishes. Unloading the dishwasher seems to be the bane of our existance. I don’t mind loading at all but for some reason emptying just sucks :slight_smile: We compromise with a lot of paper plates and takeout.

Laundry - well I can’t complain here as I haven’t done laundry in quite some time. I do have to occasionally ask if there are clothes in progress when I can’t find things but he does all the laundry so I can only complain so much :slight_smile:

I haven’t touched cat litter since I got pregnant with our daughter 3 years ago. (and we have 4 cats)

The secret is that once you get him to do something… you leave it to be his responsibility thereafter :slight_smile:

I vaccuum but it is like bailing the titanic with a ladle. We have a dog, 4 cats, and a 2 year old. When we add the boy in the fall I fear I will just have to give in to the fur and toys completely.

Take heart. By the time the baby starts to strew small plastic toys to the four corners no one will notice the dishes or anything else. I do get comments from my MIL sometimes like ‘oh I see someone was playing in here today’ Um yeah she plays everywhere! We have a ranch (not a huge spread with horses… just the house style name) and that’s as good as one big room unless we gate her out of places.

I also tend to put things I need him to deal with in a place where they will be very inconvenient for him and he has to take care of them :slight_smile:

5

It’s not necessarily a guy thing. We have a natural division of labour in my household. I do 90% of the cooking, I am responsible for the kitchen’s cleanliness, I do all the vacuuming, and 50% of the clothes washing, dusting and cat care, and 100% of the gardening. mrs jjimm does her share of washing, dusting and cat care, and 100% of the bathroom, the ironing, the bedrooms and the living room, and is supremo of general house tidiness. In my experience, most guys who are useless around the house appear to have been brought up to be that way. They just don’t care about the mess and are happy to live in it.

It’s up to you to re-condition the poor fella to give a shit, preferably through punishment/reward techniques (food pellet vs. electric cattle prod recommended), brainwashing, and CIA mind-control techniques.

6

Sounds to me like it’s time for you and leechboy to have a little talk. Make sure you have his attention, and tell him exactly how you feel. For some couples, each person can just do things as they need doing, and this works fine. More commonly (this is the way it is with hubby and me), a division of labor is needed. If A,B, and C are Leechboy’s job, and X,Y, and Z are your job, then you go ahead and do yours, and let him worry about his. Don’t criticize the way he does every little thing; if you do, he’ll eventually think, “well, if I can’t do anything right anyway, what’s the point of trying?” If something’s really bothering you about the way he’s doing one of his chores, you might offer to show him an easier way to do it, but if he says, “Nah, I’ve got it”, leave it be!
My hubby is as thick as an anvil (I luvs him, though), and hinting at things, etc. just doesn’t work. Only this direct “this is your job and this is my job” works. Alternately, if it’s a time that I have 18 things to do at once, I’ll call him into the room, and say something like “Right now, I have to do dishes, cook dinner, set the table, and change the baby’s diaper. Which of those chores would you like to take off my hands?” He picks the stuff he finds least offensive, and the understanding is that it needs to be done right away. He doesn’t feel too put upon, because he has choices, and I feel better because I’m getting help.

Best of luck!

7

Oh, I totally sympathize with you, leechbabe! In my situation, I have talked about this with my partner, but he really seems to think that he does a good share of the housework. What really annoys me is that he works from home, so it would only take him two minutes to make the bed when he gets up in the a.m., and 10 min. to do the dishes–but there everything sits till I get home from work. I’d talk to him about it and he’d get all defensive and it’d just dissolve into an argument.

Now I just come home, sigh, and start cleaning. This must have kicked in some guilt gene he has that I didn’t know about, because as soon as I start doing this, he jumps up and starts cleaning, too.

8

I agree that it is not just a guy thing. There are in existence men who are compulsively tidy, and trust me, you don’t want one.

9

Papa Tiger was a 46-year-old bachelor when I met him. He is truly compulsive about dirty dishes not being left out for even three seconds. Drives us all CRAZY.

On the other hand, he can do laundry. And I mean he can DO LAUNDRY. He does a better job of taking care of my delicates than I do. So laundry is HIS. Bathrooms, however, are mine; he apparently fails to notice how truly grotty a toilet can get, even when green things are starting to crawl out of it. (I let the one he uses most go just to see what would happen. It was Not a Pretty Picture.)

OTOH, years ago I was so frustrated by my first hubby’s failure to assist around the house that one day I said, “Can’t you do SOMETHING around here to help me out? Like maybe vacuum the carpet?” He looked at the carpet an inch thick in dust and dirt and said, “Oh, does it need vacuuming?”

All I can say is, good luck. I’m not sure which is worse, a guy who sees the dirt or a guy who doesn’t…

10

I don’t think it’s gender-based. I, a female type person, am quite neat and tidy – re my own hygene, grooming, clothing. But in my house, the clutter is out of control. And somehow, a lot of the time that should be spent on basic cleaning is instead spent on futile attempts to control the clutter. Except when I get too depressed by it all and just stop doing anything but the bare minimum.

11

My husband goes in a strange extreme cycle with cleaning: during the week he does nothing, lets the messes pile up, yells at me if he doesn’t have clean socks (never tells me he is out of socks though, and once he starts yelling at me for it I then expect him to do it himself), tells me I don’t have to clean today let’s clean tomorrow.

Then on the weekend, he goes into insane obsessive “it’s not clean enough!!!” mode, takes out ten bags of garbage, blaming me for why there is so much of a mess. I don’t mind cleaning if we both clean. But during the week he creates such a huge mess that I REFUSE to do it until he helps. The best part is, while he is going cleaning crazy on the weekends, he tells me I am lazy and that on the weekend he just wants to relax but I make him clean. Whatever. I used to knock myself out cleaning a year ago when I first came here, but when I realized he was going to expect me to forever more be laundry-dishwasher-vacuuming-etc person, and worse, YELL at me about it, I stopped.

12

I am close to being one of those guys. But not to the point of hatred.

I agree with jjimm when he said

13

In my experience, most guys who are useless around the house appear to have been brought up to be that way.

This is so true.

The men in my husband’s family don’t do shit, never were made to. My FIL grills a mean burger, that’s it. The only thing I saw my GrandFIL do was wash dishes occasionally and peel potatoes, nothing more, ever.

DH is a prince compared to the both of them so I don’t complain too loudly that I get stuck with most of the housework. In return, he doesn’t complain that the laundry room is in a constant state of disarray.

14

That’s not always true. First hubby had to do a lot of his own housework because his mom (who was a lovely woman but a bit odd) apparently went to bed for ten years :eek: and so he and his brothers and dad pretty much had to fend for themselves. But he was still an inept housekeeper.

Papa Tiger’s mom is a wonderful housekeeper and expected him to do well in that arena, and what he didn’t learn from her he learned from the military. (Hence his amazing laundry talents.) And yet he’s still incapable of noticing some types of household dirt.

Go figure.

15

I am single. I live alone, save for a cat, who does not help with much. For the most part, I like this. Why? Two consecutive live-in partners whom I supported and fed and cleaned up after. Each of them came for dinner, liked the cooking, and stayed for a year.

My latest beau is definitely of a different mindset. He brought me to his place for dinner, after I made it clear there would be no moving-in going on. (He thought I was being really funny. He’ll learn.) He made a really good phone call, and presto, Greek food on the table. Apparently perfect housekeeping all round. I decided to reciprocate, actually made him dinner at my place, complete with the “don’t move in” warning. (He still thinks this is comedy.) He loved the cooking, helped me clean the kitchen, and courteously went home before sunrise.

Not ready to meet his mom. Curious about how much she had to do with his courtesy and housekeeping skills. Wondering just how far into this, that will last.

16

I agree Leechy. It’s the genes, not a training thing. I’ve been trying to train my grots for years now, and they still can’t recognise an overflowing bin, understand that a clothes line is where you hang your wet clothes, and don’t even get me STARTED on the bloody dishes!

You have my sympathies…'fraid there’s not much hope for you.

:wink:

17

Having spent the better part of the weekend with my MIL I noticed that she has exactly the same problem with her husband as I do with Leechboy. Thus I know where he gets it from.

At one point FIL opened a jar of coffee and spilt a great deal of it over the bench and floor. He looked around to see if MIL had seen it and realising she hadn’t made his coffee and walked away leaving the mess. Left me giggling because his facial expression was exactly the same as Leechboy’s.

I have tried putting a cleaning roster on the fridge but that failed.

My current theory is that I am not doing any cleaning unless Leechboy is home to assist me, that way he can not avoid it. Still I seem to have to fight to get him to help.

On the upside he has no problems changing dirty nappies and is looking after Bub today whilst I’m at work.

18

We have a dog (golden retriever), 4 cats, and a 7 year old. I feel your pain.

We totally suck at housework. Starting at the end of August I’m gonna be hiring the aunt of an acquaintance of mine to come in once a week and clean. Yay!

19

My husband is a megaslob. Throws trash on the floor, spills stuff all over and doesn’t even bother to wipe it up, leaves dishes hiding around the house until they grow fur…

His mom still did his laundry when he was in high school!!

20

OpalCat, my brother’s gonna be 28 and my mother still does his laundry.

FTR, Mr. Levins and I are actually both very sloppy people, so we rarely disagree about housework. Neither one of us really cares most of the time, and then once in awhile one of us will go into a Cleaning Funk and hyper-clean everything…and the other one doesn’t even offer to help b/c it’s understood that this is a Phase, and not a condemnation of the present mess, or a silent request for help.

He is, however, solely responsible for:

a.) any hairballs that clog up the shower drain,

b.) taking out the trash, and

c.) the scrubbing of anything kind of nasty, like the toilet-bowl, the shower, etc. Anything that requires scary chemicals and elbow-deep labor is his job. I’ll do the maintenance cleaning, like the dishes, the vacuuming, the dusting, and what-not. If it requires anything more, I won’t do it. He knows this. The same way he knows that if a roach shows up–and in summer in Texas it’s pretty much a given you’re gonna see one or two of the lil monsters–it is his job to kill and dispose of it. Even if he’s sound asleep and I get up to pee, I’m still gonna wake his ass up and make him go kill and dispose of the thing. I Just. Won’t. Do. It.

Overall, we understand these things and agree that until we both improve simultaneously, there will be messes around the house and that we are both equally responsible.

Ergo, we never argue about The Great Divide.

(I do remember a debate about the shower hairball initially; he’d never lived with a girl before so he didn’t understand that every few months or so, the drain would completely clog up with hair and this was the price of having a girl in the house who had more hair than he did. So sorry. I always used Drano to get rid of them, but he thinks that’s wasteful and pointless and that they should be removed manually…and I said, hey, knock yourself out. I’m not about to dig out that soap-scummy hairball out of the drain, and if you try to make me, you’ll die trying. I’ll gag and choke and die myself, just at the thought. So now he knows better than to even bring it up; he just fishes it out every few months, and never says a word.

These things take time to train.)