It IS your job to keep the place clean

The BBQ Pit
1

Posting this here to let off some steam before I talk to my wife when I get home tonight.
I love you, but DAMN you’re lazy. It’s real simple, from 8:30 to 5:00, it’s my job to go to work and it’s your job to take care of the kids and keep the house relatively neat and clean. When I get home, of course I’ll help with both, but when everything in the apartment is exactlly where it was when I left, with the addition of more dishes in the sink, I have to think that you’re not keeping up your part of the deal. I mean, I’m not anal. I don’t expect to walk into a home from Better Homes and Gardens, but don’t tell me you didn’t have time to put away all the books that the kids pulled off their shelves.
I’d love to spend more time with the kids, but I’ve got housework to do. The laundry needs to be done, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, the dishes have to be cleaned, and since you weren’t hungry and didn’t feel like cooking, I’ve got to put something in the oven for dinner. Oh well, at least you fixed the kids something to eat.
I’m not an old-fashioned guy. I don’t think it’s my right to come home and do nothing all night “because I’m the man”. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something to have been done during the day.
I’ve even told you that I’ll watch the kids at night, like you do during the day, if you want to get a part-time job. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to do my job all day and come home and do yours at night while you do almost nothing.

DESK

2

Been there, DESK, and I feel for ya. Now that you’ve blown off the steam, hopefully you can think of better ways to phrase it when you have that talk. Good luck!

3

I’m sort of going through this right now, D.E.S.K. My husband is a fledgling stay-at-home–he works part time now–Dad. I’ve been very resentful about having to come home (after a hard day’s work of posting on the Boards) and clean.

He’s an excellent cook/baker so when I get home, dinner is ready. He prepares breakfast and lunch for the kids, too. And by prepares I mean cooks, not empties a can of ravioli into a pot and warms it. He’s also a wonderful parent–way better than I could ever hope to be. He changed his schedule because he wanted to spend more time with the boys. The housework leaves much to be desired, though.

I still come home and sweep and dust and mop and wipe and scrub and launder and fold and go to the grocery store. It’s getting a little old but I’m chalking it up to several things. Namely we’re still in a period of transition, expectations need to be clearly defined and managed and he hates cleaning but somehow thinks I get off on it.

I love him and we’ll get through this even if it means I have to have a cleaning lady come in once week.

4

I’m only responding because you could be my ex-husband. And amazingly enough, I’m agreeing with you (and him.)

I was working full time, and we had decided he would stay home and take care of the kids. I came home to a clean house, happy kids, dinner on the table, a kiss, a coffee, and just general domestic tranquility. It was really wonderful. Then I had my third child, and we decided to “flop”. I stayed home, he went back to work.

And I swear to you, I never got a thing done. It was an effort for me to get dishes done. Pick up the kids toys? Maybe after they’d gone to bed. Seriously, I got so little done while I was home, and there was no excuse for it. It’s true, I was lazy. I think, honestly, I was suffering from more than a touch of depression, but I really was just not at all motivated or inspired to do anything but sit with the kids. And I have really well-behaved children - it isn’t as if I was busy chasing them around all day.

I lost my husband, because rather than say something to me, he let it build, and build, and build. Eventually, it was too much (of course there were other things, but this was the big thing) and I lost him.

Don’t let it build. Talk to her, make it clear to her, see if you can figure out a way to make it work for both of you. I know I wish I could have had that chance - up until the second he said “I’m leaving,” I had no idea there was a problem.

Talk to her.

5

I do not think you are out of line at all, DESK.

Get a sitter for the night, take the missus out for a nice dinner, and lay out your concerns. Ask her if she needs help around the house during the day. After all, you are working full-time so she can stay home and take care of the house and the kidlets. You’re pulling your weight, she should pull hers.

And after a long day at work, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that dinner be cooking when you get home, if not ready to eat.

I know I’m going to get slammed for this, but Dr. Laura has a book out, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. It may be helpful to both you and your wife if read it.

Let us know how it goes.

6

Huh. When I look back at my marriage, I realize that’s where our major problems started too. I was working forty hours a week at McDonalds and trying to breastfeed the kid he was staying home with, and I’d come home every day to a blaring stereo and him playing video games in a filthy house. Of course, I didn’t want to be a nag…poor guy must be depressed, right? Eventually he started helping me again, but after that I never could quite trust him not to let me down. There were lots of other problems to come, but that was the first thing.

7

Thanks for the replies, evereybody.
Dung Beetle, I’m planning on being a lot less, coarse when I talk to her. My post was what I’d like to say, not what she deserves, if you know what I mean.
UrbanChic, I feel your pain. The thing is, we’re not in any kind of transition. our youngest is two and a half and we’ve been in the same place for almost a year.
TellMeI’mNotCrazy, I sympathize with her (and you). She’s an intelligent person and I know she gets bored. I wish she’d get a part time job, join a club, or something just to get out and then I wouldn’t feel like I’m doing everthing. That’s what bugs me the most. I’m cleaning the kitchen and look over and see her just sitting at the computer chatting. I’m lazy too and don’t don’t mind admitting it. But, especially when you have kids, somethings can’t be put off.
ivylass, while I don’t think I’ll be picking up a Doctor Laura book any time soon, the thoughts behind your suggestion are appreciated.

Peace - DESK

8

Sometimes, when you don’t have a lot to do, it’s hard to get anything done. When work is slow, I have the same problem, I know it’ll just take “a few minutes” to do this, or that, so I let it sit. When you have a nice, steady stream of things that need to get done on a schedule, it’s easy to just go do them. When you have free time, it’s easy as shit to say “I’ll do it once GH and Oprah are over.” then something else comes up and it never gets done.

9

I think you’re right, there, and I also think D.E.S.K. hit a nail on the head when he said that his wife is intelligent and bored. I think that was part of my problem too - I remember saying that my brain was starting to atrophy… I was built for analyzing data, writing reports, running a help desk - not for washing dishes.

I do know that one thing that does work for me - and this is the only way I can get myself to do housework that I’m dreading - is to make these stupid lists. The list itself is the biggest part of building up the motivation. I plot everything down to the minute: 8:30, kiss husband and send him off to work, 8:35, fill sink with water. 8:36, put clothes in washer. 8:37, put dishes in sink, turn off water. 8:40, wipe down countertops. Seriously, that’s what my lists look like. It works for me.

And I have one huge stumbling block. The first time I realized this about myself, I think I was about 15. I had woken up early on a Saturday morning, and for whatever reason, decided maybe cleaning the bathroom would be a good idea. I sprinkled Comet in the bathtub, poured bleach in the toilet, sprayed Windex on the mirrors. I was going along quite merrily, until my mother woke up. Knocked on the bathroom door and said to me “You need to clean the bathroom today.” As soon as it was no longer voluntary, but mandated, I had absolutely no desire to do it anymore. 'Course, I didn’t have a choice :wink: And that still exists for me today - if it’s MY idea to do it, it’s fine. As soon as I’m asked, I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m working on it.

10

Amazing but true! I’ve seen this in myself, my wife and my friends. I don’t understand the phenomen but I know about it all too well.

11

DESK, is it possible your wife is depressed? She sounds like me without my Wellbutrin… I wasn’t sad and weepy, I was just totally lacking in energy. I couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything except they absolute non-optional things, like feeding the kids, changing diapers, cleaning up if the dog pooped in the house, etc. I just didn’t see a lot of the clutter, or maybe I didn’t care that it was there. Meds helped me a lot, although I still don’t get as much done as I’d like. I do have a 3 month old, though. But I can get a few things done each day, and cook nearly every night. Although most times I can’t really cook anything until my husband comes home and can take care of the baby while I cook.

12

I am a stay at home mom- I agree with you.

We have an unspoken agreement, he makes the money and pays the bills and I do the household stuff.

Now there are days that I don’t do much. Some days, I don’t do dishes, some days I don’t do laundry. Some days, I get all out of control and remove the vent covers and vacuum the vents out.
We have three kids- they are 8, 7 and 4. Each of them are old enough to do something. My kids are expected to help when they are asked. I never ask them to do anything they are not capable of.

I don’t know how old your children are, but if they are not infants, they can help pick up. When my kids were toddlers, we made picking up toys a game. It takes longer to have them help than it does to just do it yourself, but they slowly learn how to do for themselves.

My 4 year old likes to “help” cook. I often let her “read” the instructions on boxes to tell me how to make things, sometimes she gets to “read” the cook books when we are making something new.

We have a dishwasher, even she is able to scrap her plate/bowl and empty her cup and put it in the dishwasher.
Some one earlier touched a bit on depression, I have another thought- maybe she doesn’t feel motivated. I can admit that sometimes I get angry and less motivated to do things when what I do is not appreciated. A simple, sincere compliment can be a wonderful thing.
Good luck to you and your wife.

13

I agree completely. I had a similar problem. I was a SAHM for a short period of time, about 3 years, on and off, when my son was a baby and toddler. Some people just aren’t cut out to do the SAH thing. I managed to keep things tidy and I like cooking, so that wasn’t a problem. But I resented the hell out of every second of being away from the “grown up” workaday world. That’s not to say I didn’t LOVE being with my baby, but it was really difficult on me, psyche wise.

I was very irritable, and depressed (I’m unemployed now, and experiencing similar difficulties). I’m happiest and at my most productive when I have a decent career going on. Even while working a full work week, I could get more done at home, and be happiest at it, when I was gainfully employed.

My relationship ended for other reasons, but my stint as SAHM taught me a LOT about what I’m capable of doing. And being alone at home, except for kids, is NOT something I can handle on a fulltime basis.

It’s possible your wife is in the same sort of rut. Your idea of her getting a part time job is a good one. And as Tell me… says, do NOT let it build up. Wait until you’re both in a neutral setting, and both feeling okay (in other words, NOT tonite when you’re still a bit irritated about it), and talk to her.

14

For me the phenomino of not being able to get simple things done is closely related to my depression, to the extent that changes in med doses move me from house-lazy to house proud. It never effects my work, because that is something I do for others to deadlines and is usually somewhat stretching to my capabilities. But when it comes to keeping house it is easy to let things slide, and very difficult to keep up with my minimal householde requirements. Strangely, I actually enjoy many household tasks, sertainly feel better for doing most of them, but for some reason there are times when I just cannot motivate myself to do them.
So I sympathise both with you and also with how your wife may be feeling. I wouldn’t know how to test or even bring up the possibility that your wife may be suffering depression, and quite possibly she isn’t suffering anything of the sort. So I can only suggest perhapse if you can afford it getting someone to clean the house once a week, allowing your wife to get back in control of her situation, and also releiving you from needing to do so much housework yourself.

15

I totally agree with the “if you don’t have much to do you won’t get anything done” phenomenon. I believe it’s because procrastination is for lack of a better term…contagious. One it begins it’s hard to get it to stop. If you’ve got a ton to do and it never starts, it doesn’t have a chance to grow.

When all I did was work full-time, my apartment was a total sty. I only cleaned when it got so nasty I couldn’t stand it anymore. Once I started law school on top of working full time, my apartment is often spotless. It’s because I don’t have TIME to procrastinate. I never get the chance to start. My alarm clock goes off Saturday morning, I get out of bed and immediately start cleaning the kitchen. From there I go to the living room, bathroom, then my bedroom. Then I shower and go to the library. I don’t give myself a chance to procrastinate. If I sit at the computer and log on to the boards, I gurantee you I won’t get a damn thing done the whole day. Then there will be HELL to pay the next day. I can’t afford to give myself the chance.

I also agree with others who have said the OP’s wife may just be bored. For me at least, boredom leads to depression. Depression leads to being unmotivated. Being unmotivated leads to not getting shit done.

Good luck.

16

Are you me?

Here’s my problem: First, it’s the “not much to do = nothing gets done” syndrome. Eventually, that turns into “Holy fuck, I have so much to do AND NO TIME!!!”. Of course, my son naps which is a big window of opportunity right there. But then I come… here. And chat. And LJ. Or Montel’s supposed to be good today. Or something.

I want to change. I really, really do. But I need a schedule, a map for every minute of the day. Before I do that though, I need to get my whole house clean. I can’t start a new schedule of picking up everyday if the whole house is a mess, right? But this isn’t fair to my kid, and it’s not fair to his father (who we live with, even though I’m not “with” him… because I “don’t do anything”, which is completely and horribly true). I guess it’s not really fair to me either. I’m not being the best mom I can be and it’s pretty clear that I wasn’t the best SO I could’ve been.

Ugh. I’m trying.

17

True story: a good friend and his new wife move to the USA for a job he’s always wanted. At the same time she is pregnant with their first child, and after two years has a second child. For 3 or 4 years after moving there, she does the absolutely minimum necessary to get by, pretty much just sits in a chair, feeds the kids, and puts on weight.

Every day he comes home to a house ankle-deep in toys and crap, dirty dishes, and no dinner. He makes the dinner, cleans up as much as he can stand, and continues renovating the house in his spare time. She does contribute to this, at least.

Finally the renovation cycle gets to the kitchen, it is totally redone and a pleasure to be in. Within a few months she has picked herself up, lost weight, and actually does her bit around the house, cleans up, cooks the family dinner on workdays, starts to make friends with the local families, etc.
Now looking at it from her perspective: she was dragged to a new country she didn’t particularly look forward to living in, to a house and area she had no say in, expecting her first child at the very time she is being removed from her own family and friends for the first extended period, and no hope of getting a job. I think she was just protesting at the dislocation and powerlessness she felt in the only way she could.

My own reading is she essentially had post-natal depression (exacerbated by the dislocation of the move); as soon as it started wearing off from the first child they had the second. So once that wore off, and with a kitchen that was a pleasure to be in rather than a nightmare, she gets back to her old happy self.
So you might think about it from her point of view. How much say does she have in her current situation? Coild she be feeling powerless and resentful? What can you do together to address these feelings, if so?

18

Now let me give you a different take on this:

I am a stay-at-home mom with 4 kids ages 6, 4, 4, and almost 1.

On any given day, I am capable of doing one thing. I can for example do the laundry (up to 5 loads start to finish, not including folding).

On any given day, assuming it is not laundry day, I can clean one room (everything tidied and mopped or vacuumed).

On any given day, I am capable of making one trip out of the house (grocery store, chiropractor, doctor’s appointment, kids’ physical therapy, dance class, park, etc - can make multiple stops, but one trip.)

The rest of my day is taken up, not surprisingly, by dressing children (sometimes repeatedly), arranging 4-5 meals/snacks (preparing, overseeing, cleaning up), getting the baby to take a nap, breastfeeding the baby, reading to the older kids (we homeschool), tending the yardwork (also my job), emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry (if it didn’t get folded), putting away laundry, sorting out fights between the kids, patching scratches, doling out medicines if necessary, keeping an ear out for kids in other rooms…oh yeah, and I like to sit down sometimes too.

My house is a disaster area. Fortunately for me, my husband can tolerate an even higher level of mess than I can - I doubt he’d notice dirt until it was capable of supporting commercial agriculture ($1 to Dave Barry)), because my house is a disaster area. But no one, no one can claim I’m lazy or not doing anything. Well, my MIL does, but that’s a different post.

Absolutely, I can go into another room and clean it. While I do, the room I am not in is being trashed because the kids are unsupervised. Or they get into the pantry and eat unauthorized foodstuffs before meals. As my house has 9 rooms, it may be more than a week before I get around to a room to clean it since the time before, and in that time, the room has become a wreck again - it’s mostly toys, you understand, of which we possess far too many, but the carpets cannot be vacuumed until all the toys are picked up, and it may take me so long to pick up all the toys that it simply doesn’t happen, because of the other things I must do - sort out fights, make meals, run errands, go to appointments, flip the laundry, etc.

And oh yeah: my job is never, ever done. There is never a time when you can a a job is completed. No boss to give you a pat on the shoulder and a way-to-go. Books on the floor? Hell, who cares, I’ve got 47 other things to do. On the list of priorities, that’s about #48. They’re not hazardous, they’re not unhygienic, they’re just books and they’re on the floor. BFD.

Follow me so far?

Now, last year, I got put in the hospital for 2 months during my very precarious pregnancy. Within a few days my husband was on the verge of screaming insanity. He was so overwhelmed that within a month he more or less shut down. He was, I believe, in ‘reactive depression’, so bad that he could not motivate himself to do much of anything that didn’t involve absolute need. I’m not sure how he’d have coped if he hadn’t had his mother’s very generous and gracious (and yes sometimes difficult if you read my posts from that time period) assistance. He did his best, please don’t understand. But it was too much for him. He can’t keep 499 things going in his mind at once. He can’t juggle 3 (let alone 4) kids’ needs, pick up after himself as well as them, do laundry, manage the dishwasher, go to appointments…he loses track of things.

Let me tell you how glad he was when I came home, even though I was still on bedrest: I could run the house from bed. I could say ‘now go and start a load of whites, and put the colored clothes in the dryer’ and he could just do those things. Then of course the baby was born and I took the house back over again.

I guarantee you he has never complained about my housekeeping again, because he’s been there, done that, and couldn’t do it.

Our house is a mess, but he never runs out of clean socks, underwear, or shirts. Our house is a mess, but there’s always something for him to eat when he gets home (not dinner, but food anyway).
Our house is a mess, but the kids are healthy, looked after, being educated, polite, and well fed.
Our house is a mess, but the dishwasher is run, emptied, and filled up again, the sink is not full of dishes.
Our house is a mess, but the yard looks great.

You know, a person’s got to pick his battles, and this is one he’d rather not fight.

I could keep the house clean, if I neglected the kids’ safety, dumped them in front of the TV to babysit them, and fed them frozen meals. Hell, I could keep the house REALLY clean if I dumped them all in public school so I had all those hours to myself to clean, but we value the homeschool thing more than a clean house.

So it’s all a matter of perspective.

Maybe the OP should send his wife off for a 3-day weekend and take over the kids, the house, the laundry, the dishes and EVERYTHING himself for a dose of walking a mile in his wife’s shoes. And if he still wants to rant about books on the floor, I’ll listen with great delight.

19

First off, no update. Our oldest had to go to the doctor when I got home and it turns out she’s got an ear infection. I certainly wasn’t going to pile this on my wife too.
Choatil, a couple thing I want to clarify in response to your post. First off, I don’t expect her to do everything. But how hard is it to pick up the girls towels from the living room floor after they’ve had a bath or toss a glass in the sink?
RE: your list
Our house is a mess, but he never runs out of clean socks, underwear, or shirts. I do the laundry in our house. The only thing I ask is that she sort out the kids clothes by outfit because I’m lousy at telling what goes with what. Personally, I’d just hang it all up and forget about what’s “supposed” to go with what but she wants them put together. The problem is that I’ve got six plastic bins of clothes that I sorted by size to make it easier for her to match up and a week later they’re still no closer to the closet. I even asked her what we could get as far as shelves, storage, whatever to make it easier for her.
**Our house is a mess, but there’s always something for him to eat when he gets home (not dinner, but food anyway).**There’s always food in my house too. In fact, my wife is a great cook. The problem is that half the time I get home and she didn’t bother cooking anything. I’m not some kind of fanatic. A couple frozen burgers on the Foreman is fine by me. I don’t thinks its fair that I have to do it half the time.
**Our house is a mess, but the kids are healthy, looked after, being educated, polite, and well fed.**Ours too. I haven’t said anything about her parenting skills.
Our house is a mess, but the dishwasher is run, emptied, and filled up again, the sink is not full of dishes. My sink is usually filled with dishes and we have a dishwasher too. I’d say I do the dishes a majority of the time in our house. I am also the one who cleans the kitchen (and bathroom).
**Our house is a mess, but the yard looks great.**No yard (yet) . We’re looking for a house but right now it’s just a nice apartment.
As for sending her away for a nice three day vacation, neither one of us has spent much time away from the children but as far as down time goes, she’s in the lead. I’ve been out once in the last two years (one evening).
This post isn’t meant to come across as snarky or anything, it was just the easiest way to address your comments.
And to all who suggested that it may be depression, I think you’re on to something. I think I’ll bring that up.

Peace - DESK

20

Another possibility - is there any chance that, for lack of a better way to put it - she’s just not suited to being the manager of a house with small children? Some people aren’t. Some people do not multitask well. Some get bogged down in the mundanity (?) of the everyday, with nothing to differentiate one day from the rest, and no end to it…ever.

I will use my husband as an example, not to criticize him, but to show how someone may not be suited to household management:

My husband is a linear thinker. He excels at what he does, which is to work with a database, and other projects, at Microsoft. He can sit down and focus on a task for hours or days, and think it through from start to finish, and see every step in the project in his mind before he even starts, and do it step by step until he’s finished. This by the way is something I am utterly incapable of without the use of written lists, which inevitably get lost instantly upon writing them. My brain just doesn’t work that way.

My husband does not multitask well. When he is required by circumstances to run the house/care for the children for more than a few hours at a time, he rapidly becomes overwhelmed, and while I might be inclined to explain this as unfamiliarity with the job, he does not improve to a point of comprehensive functionality with time. Rather, he will look at the house and go ‘gahhh’ and be unable to decide what to address first. He may keep up on enough laundry to make sure there are socks and underwear to go around, for example, but they’ll go out and eat fast food rather than attempt to assemble meals from what’s in the fridge and freezer. The vacuuming won’t get done. Forget about mopping the kitchen floor. The kids will be dressed, but usually in the same clothes for days on end (as when I was out of state for 2 weeks) because choosing clothes is a struggle for him. And of course, with the clamoring demands of 4 kids on his attention, his linear thinking on any task is disrupted and he loses focus. Frequently this means he does not get back to the task…ever. His brain just doesn’t work that way.

I would not be suited to doing his job. He is not suited to doing mine. We complement each other very well, as it happens, and that’s a great thing.

I propose to the OP that, while depression may well be a factor here, the suggestion of such may be offensive to his wife. (My MIL, upon hearing I had begun a course of Prozac during my extended hospitalization (mostly to deal with the interpersonal stress I was having with her but of course I couldn’t say that), informed me that I should have been on meds long before, because no normal person would live in a house as dirty as mine and I must clearly have been depressed for a long time. I held my tongue rather than point out that her son’s bedroom when he lived with her was a rat’s nest (he organizes by making piles of stuff) and he hasn’t changed since. So I have no idea how to bring such a subject up, but I’m pretty sure that tying it in to the house not meeting the OP’s standards would not go over well. Maybe “Honey, you’ve seemed awfully down for a while lately, have you ever thought you might want to talk to a doctor about it?”

I can see that there’s a problem, absolutely. I’m not sure the problem is as simple as “she’s depressed” or “she’s a slob” or “she’s lazy” or any other simple suggestion that might be tossed out. It could be multi-factored - mild, treatable clinical depression caused or compounded by a lack of job satisfaction, and/or a feeling of being trapped in a ‘job’ with no future, a high tolerance for clutter and chaos, and simple unsuitability to the demands of household management. She (and the OP, and the two together) probably would be helped by talking to a therapist. But that still doesn’t mean she’d be ‘fixed’ and start doing a better job cleaning the house, only that perhaps you both would understand how she prioritizes, and why.

As another side note, even if she is clinically depressed and goes on medication, this may not be as much an improvement as it seems. I despised Prozac. Sure, it stopped me crying nonstop, and allowed me to feel hunger again, but it turned my entire life into a flat nothing. I didn’t cry, but I didn’t laugh. I didn’t feel hurt and obsess on insults, but I also just didn’t care. I was glad for what it gave me at the time, but I was happier when I could wean off the stuff. My emotional situation would have probably improved dramatically if I could have changed my life situation or even discussed the problem with the source of my conflict, but this …well, isn’t possible. I hope the OP and his wife can have a very positive outcome.