Do it! Doooooo It! I’m laughing so much at this idea! Double Dog Dare you, Do It!
Bet he won’t leave it there again, and will remember next time when you laughingly warn him about the next incosiderate habit consequence!
later, Tom.
But doesn’t that make you furious? Housekeeping is an important, shared responsibility, and one of you shirks his part of the job and to add insult to injury, tries to justify that by prtending to be a helpless victim and by belittling housework and calling it words like " unneccesary frills" " anal retentive" “neat freak hangups” “lighten up” " a clean home is a sighn of a wasted life" etcetera etcetera.
Would you, for a second, tolerate that kind of attitude at work? CrazyCatLady’s translation of this attitude into a work situation is spot on.
Pick them up and hide them. Eventually he’ll run out, mumble something about The Vortex, The Pantie Monster. Your undies are just not safe around here. 
But my response to that coworker isn’t to nag; the work that’s his is his, the work that’s mine is mine, and the work in that example appears to be perfectly splittable (I have no idea what those reports are, but it seems as if they are prepared individually): I’m responsible for my part, the coworker for his. And I don’t expect my coworkers, or my subordinates, to do things the way I would do them. It sounds to me as if you expect your husband to do things exactly the way you would. Sorry: if you want things done your way, do them yourself. If you don’t want to do it yourself, learn to accept that it will not be done your way.
FYI, this is all the definition of “passive aggressive” behavior and it really doesn’t fool anyone.
Basically the premise is that you do the least amount of work possible in a shoddy a manner as possible. Either deliberately or subconsciously, the person’s hope is that between their half-ass job and their argument that they actually did what was asked, the asker will find the process so tedious that in the future they will just do it themselves.
Sure…why not. It could happen.
It used to make me furious; however, I found that if I’m specific, what I want will get done. If I’m not, he won’t even see it. He just really doesn’t seem to see the mess until it gets really, really bad. And if I quietly go about my business and ignore him ignoring the mess, my resentment builds up and up and up. I definitely think he should see the mess, but he just…doesn’t.
What does irritate me is that when I ask him to do something and tell him when, he’ll ask if he can do it later. We can compromise, but if I really need something done, I’ll tell him. Unfortunately, he’ll put it off and put it off until the last possible moment, then he has to stay up until 2 a.m. to do it. I try really hard not to let that bother me. After all, I’ve gotten to a point recently where I just won’t do the things I’ve asked him to do. I used to just throw up my hands and do it myself. But I won’t anymore because he will do it and he should do it. I try very hard to not to nag, but sometimes it does happen. If he complains of being tired, I just calmly say, “Maybe you should have an earlier night tonight. Thanks for doing the dishes.”
Truthfully, he’s lots more anal than I am, which is one reason he procrastinates. If I wipe the counters, I usually go around the appliances. He takes them off the counters, wipes, then puts them back, sometimes sorting through the things on the counter and organizing them along the way. That can turn a 20-minute job into something that takes an hour and a half. But, if he wants to do that, it’s his business, but it does take longer.
The issue is one of control. Who gets to set the definition of what clean is or what constitutes what a good job is? He has a standard and you have standard, but what makes your standard correct and his incorrect? You are just as unwilling to adjust to his standards as he is to adjust to yours. Try to find a common standard through negotiation and compromise or accept that you have different standards.
There are four stages to marriage breakdown, criticism, defensiveness, contempt and withdrawal. It seems like you are in stage three, which is good news because pretty soon he will be out of the picture and you can keep your house however you want it and your cats will not mind all the nagging.
FYI, it’s also the definition of “nagging control freak, who will never, ever acknowledge that any other person can do anything that lives up to the freak’s standards.” It’s also the definition of “never learned the right way to do job X and didn’t die because of it;” the definition of “doesn’t begrudge the time it takes to do a half-assed job, but thinks doing a full-assed job yields a diminishing return;” the definition of “one person was taught that towels are folded along the vertical axis, then horizontally and the other who was taught that towels are folded horizontally, then vertically;” the definition of “one person who believes the bank’s computer does a lot better job of reconciling the account than the other person using a calculator;” and so on.
Just to clarify, are you responding to me or someone else?
'Cause everything’s about me, you know. 
A big part of why I got divorced are outlined in this threads. There is no law that says that I or anyone else has to be married or have a live-in SO. It simply isn’t worth it for many people. There is no way I am going to be nagged in my own house or do chores to someone elses standards. I just moved out and got my own place and made a mental note never to repeat that mistake again. Life is too short to argue about grocery shopping and the best way to mop floors. I can handle that just fine on my own. Other people should reevaluate their fundamental assumptions about the way things have to be if there are too many conflicts of this type. There are other options.
Have you stopped to consider that maybe you are anal retentive and maybe you should lighten up? Not you specifically. I don’t know you at all so I’m not judging. I’m just saying that when one person thinks they’re doing a good enough job and the other person continually demands that they do a better job, the former will begin to resent the latter.
The work analogy absolutely applies. Nobody likes a micro-manager, especially when they’re doing a job they hate. If the minimum is fifteen pieces of flare and I show up wearing fifteen pieces of flare, don’t nag me to wear more. If you want me to wear thirty pieces of flare then make the minimum thirty. Otherwise, I’m going to do as little as possible to get by.
Maastricht, a couple of years into my marriage I accepted the fact that I will always do more housework than my husband, because I like to live in a cleaner house than he does. Is that fair? Maybe not. But my husband is a kind, loving, smart man with many amazing qualities that far outweigh his ability to ignore a sticky kitchen floor. To me, it’s not worth causing strife over.
I would suggest that the two of you make a list of things that absolutely must be done in order for your household to function (for example, cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, dishes). Divide those up in whatever way works for you. Once you’ve divided up the responsibilities, you need to let him do things the way he does them. (I’ll admit this can be difficult for me, but I’m working really hard on it.) So he only cooks three or four kinds of meals? Well, as long as they’re reasonably healthy and taste decent, the family is getting fed, right?
As for the non-essential stuff (dusting, vacuuming, etc), just accept that if you’re the only one who cares about it, you’re the one who’s going to do it. It kind of sucks, but it sucks a lot less than getting into a spiral of snipiness about it. Or hire a cleaning lady if you can afford to.
This.
One possible way to divide the chores (which won’t work for everybody, but will work for some) is simply along the lines of whoever gets bothered more if X isn’t done. I could nuke dinner five nights out of seven, and be perfectly happy; my wife wouldn’t. So she does most of the cooking. OTOH, crumbs and stickiness on the kitchen counter bug the hell out of me, so I clean up the kitchen after supper. Along those lines, we each do our own laundry, and I do the towels because dirty towels bother me before they bother her. (Used to do the sheets too, but we finally decided to get a cleaning lady to come in once every 2 weeks, and she does the sheets, which works for me. :))
My story is similar.
Which is why one good solution is if each person washes his/her own clothes. Then the only person you have to get mad at if it’s done wrong is yourself.
And if the only purpose of cooking was to make sure everyone had enough calories to survive another day, I could agree. But the homemade food isn’t just “better tasting, more appealing, etc.”; it is likely to be healthier, possibly much healthier. This is important for anyone, but particularly if one or both partners are watching their weight, watching sodium intake (a biggie with prepared foods), has allergies or intolerances, on a restricted diet for other reasons, etc.
It is of course entirely possible to have too high standards; if you’re not willing to eat anything that wasn’t prepared from scratch, regardless, then that’s a huge problem if someone doesn’t have the ability, time, and inclination to cook from scratch every evening. It is also of course entirely possible to set one’s standards too high with housekeeping. I’ve got a book on home organization that says something like “A four-person household with two small children and one bathroom will need to clean the bathroom daily; a one-person household with multiple bathrooms may be able to get away with once a week.” :eek: I have never lived in a household in which it was necessary to clean the bathroom more than once a week, other than spot-cleaning spills and such, and I can’t imagine a situation outside a dorm or barracks where the bathroom would need a full cleaning daily. That doesn’t mean boxed macaroni and cheese every night is “just as good” a standard as a mostly home-cooked meal with some thought to nutritional content, or that waiting until you almost can’t go into the bathroom for the stink before scrubbing the toilet is “just as good” as giving the bowl a good swishing out every Saturday morning.
Maastricht, it seems to me that the ultimate problem here is not the housework but that your husband is not taking you seriously. Sure, maybe his standards are different from yours, and maybe there are areas where you can give way a little, as well as areas where he could do better. But the way to work out those differences in a marriage is through respectful communication back and forth. Your husband isn’t doing this; he’s belittling and dismissing your opinion. That’s not how two adults who love each other should talk to one another.
Now, I don’t know his side, and I don’t know how you communicate with him. You may have some of the same problems expressing yourself in a respectful, mature way; you may not. But I think you two would be healthier in the long run if you both addressed the deeper issue first, and agreed to try to improve the way you communicate. It will be easier to work out the housework after that. There are books, classes, and counselors that can help with this sort of thing. (And if your husband isn’t willing to give any of that a try, then you’ve learned something right there).
The thing I’ve learned about marriage is that you won’t change anyone. Sure, you can refine some edges here and there, but if you marry someone who doesn’t like to cook, he’s not going to turn into Emeril LaGasse in this lifetime, and you must accept that.
Surely he has strengths. That’s why you married him. Use those strengths and let him contribute to the household that way. Where he is deficient is where you step in. The most successful couples are the ones that complement each other, not ones who are alike.