Do you shop for your own clothes? I know a lot of guys who don’t. I do, but I’m a freakish clotheshorse who likes nice suits and the clothes-shopping process. But I can’t imagine buying HER clothes, unless she sent me out with a specific request to purchase item X on sale on store Y.
I buy my own clothes, because there’s enough variation to make me uncertain if anything not tried on at the time will fit.It’s often wise to take her along, though, because I have legendarily bad taste in clothes. If this confirms the engineer/scientist stereotype, that’s not my fault.
I absolutely won’t buy clothes for her, except as a gift, and then I’m careful about sizes, and get a gift receipt.
I do the dishes, vacuuming, sweeping, washing the floors, shopping, taking out the garbage, dusting, and, of course, outdoor work like mowing the lawn.
I tend to cook dinner most nights (especially in summer) and on weekends. She’ll cook dinner maybe once a week.
She usually does laundry.
Cooking: back and forth wildly, depending on work schedules, exhaustion levels, etc. Some weeks I do it all, some weeks shedoes it all.
Kitchen cleaning: generally whoever doesn’t cook, cleans. Sometimes the cook also cleans, depending on what else is going on.
Bathroom, vacuuming: she does it more.
Shopping: Almost all me.
Finances: split. I handle credit cards and various child-care thingies; shehandles utilities; I handle cable; etc.
Child care: when I’m around, we try to split it. I always handle bath time. But we have an infant, which necessarily gives her an uneven set of duties. [edit: I handle diapers, burping, soothing, etc., but I can’t nurse]
Cats: she feeds; I clean litter box.
Plants: me, although I handle them poorly.
(Male, have been married for 20 years)
I pretty-much-exclusively handle:
- Yardwork and snow removal
- Auto maintenance
- Small household repairs
- Finances
My wife pretty-much-exclusively handles:
- Meal preparation
- Kitchen cleaning
- Landscaping (see above; she plants and tends things, I remove that which needs removal
) - Interior decorating
- Pet care
We split:
- Grocery shopping
- Laundry
- General household cleaning
We don’t have super-official divisions that we have charted out but the way it generally falls is:
Me:
Gardening, but he helps with the hardest stuff
Vacuuming, changing sheets, dusting
Purging & organizing
Menus and grocery shopping
Him:
Garbages
Auto Care
Equal and as needed:
Cooking
Cleanup from meals/general kitchen cleanup
Bathroom cleaning
Sweep and mop
General tidying
Laundry
Pet care
Also we have grade-school kids that have some regular chores like unloading the dishwasher and cleaning their rooms, and as needed are told to just get over here and help already, and without the complaining thank you.
ETA: I’m female and we’ve been married something like 13 years last I checked.
I run the Brewery and Foreign Car Service while she’s in charge of the Sheep Dip.
I do 99% of the cooking since it takes her at least 90 min to cook anything and I’m normally hungry when I come home from work.
I pay for a maid to come in once a week and clean up and that is my only contribution to the house work besides that I fix things when they break and do most of the outside work, picking up after the dogs/mowing/general maintenance. She does the laundry and cleans in between housekeeper visits, takes out the garbage/recycling, picks up the mail and takes care of the dogs feeding/watering/vet visits. She also handles our finances and general record keeping.
It works for us because we each see ourselves doing a higher percentage of the work. I’m curious what will happen when she defends her dissertation and starts at her new job with a 45-90 min commute.
She does most of the cooking, I do most of the washing up after. We shop together; she pushes the cart and sends me on “sorties” with a hand basket.
We each do our own laundry.
She does all of the house cleaning because I have a vastly higher tolerance for filth than she has.
Yardwork and snow removal? We have a condo association and illegal aliens for that.
Woman with a male “domestic partner” here.
We take care of ourselves for breakfast and lunch, and that includes doing our own dishes. We are each in charge of 3 dinners per week, and eat out either on Friday or Saturday. Whoever didn’t cook dinner does the dishes and cleans up the kitchen.
We pretty evenly split chores like emptying the dishwasher, cleaning the litter boxes, feeding the cats, etc. We do our own laundry. Snow shoveling and leaf-raking is pretty 50/50.
We each have different strengths, though. He is good at getting done the basic chores his mother taught him were important, like “clean the bathrooms every 2 weeks” and “clean the floors” and “mow the yard” and “take the garbage out.” So he does all or most of those. In addition, he bought this house before he knew me and let the yard go to pot. I told him I didn’t pick this house, I didn’t let the back yard turn into a mess, so he is in charge of fixing the landscaping problems that developed on his watch (though I tend to pitch in anyway).
I am good at going through rooms on a daily basis and picking up, straightening up, wiping up, organizing, decluttering, and doing little fixes that he tends to just let go forever. I am the one who cleans the cupboards and dusts and throws out all the junk mail and sews the buttons back on the sofa and washes the towels and afghans when they need it. I am the one who deep-cleans the kitchen. I am the one who washes down walls and repaints in a neat and tidy manner. I take the DVR back to the cable company and change it out for one that doesn’t just record a blank screen half the time. I call the repairmen, the plumbers, or remind him to do it (for stuff where he still hasn’t gotten around to putting my name on the bills yet). I sweep out the garage when it needs it. I do things spontaneously, when they need to be done. I come up with our household routines. I am the one devising the Five Year Plan of home improvement projects that need to be done. He doesn’t see that those things outside the chore list he grew up with need to be done, or forgets them, or just thinks it’s too much hassle. He is not organized and hates “administrating.”
So, he has the most “official” chores on the list on the wall, but all told, I put put more time and WAY more thought into keeping house than he does. He just wants to tick things off a list and be done.
Fortunately, we are both happy with this and value each other’s contribution. We also have similar attitudes about just how clean the house should be, which definitely eliminates strife.
I am responsible for meal planning, grocery lists, and cooking. Although if I am unwell (which is far too often), he will do the cooking. He does the grocery shopping.
I take care of finances, and also general planning and admin (I’m the one who thinks about vacations, retirement savings, health appointments, summer camps, etc). He will pitch in as needed/asked.
He takes responsibilty for cat litter, garbage, car cleaning, yard stuff.
I am the one who does daily childcare (little one is just in morning preschool), but he does his fair share of child care for sure. He takes them for long stretches on the weekend, and does every other bedtime.
We both pick up the house as needed.
He does the laundry, I put it away.
We have a cleaning lady come once per week. This is quite literally a marriage saver for us.
My wife and I are both retired. When we had a young family, she stayed home and did most of the housework. When our youngest was about 10 she started working. She did nearly all the cooking and the kids did most of the cleaning up after dinner. Since I often worked from home, I did my share of changing diapers and generally watching after the kids (I did most of my work in the living room). After she started working, I took over some of the cleaning, but she did virtually all the cooking. I washed the kitchen and bathroom floors every two weeks. For a while, we had a cleaning woman once a week, but she wasn’t satisfactory and we let her go.
After I took early retirement, I started doing some of the cooking (maybe a quarter). I still do that cleaning. My wife won’t let me anywhere near the laundry room for reasons I have never understood. I do most of the dishes.
Early in our marriage, she noticed that I balanced my checkbook only to nearest $5. She took over the finances and has kept that up ever since. The only thing is I have never done online bill paying and if something happened to her, I would be at a loss. Other financial decisions are made jointly and have not been a source of conflict.
Like Skald, I do most of the cooking (Five dinner a week, Sunday breakfast, school morning breakfasts for the Little Frig). I also do the meal planning, weekly grocery shopping and most of the dish washing.
I sort, wash and dry the laundry. I change the sheets on our bed. Theoretically, the Little Frig folds the laundry, but for most of the week we’re all hunting through the laundry baskets for our clothes. The Little Frig also changes her own sheets once a week.
I handle getting the trash and recycling out of the house and to the curb.
I do the yard work, in season, though Mrs. Frig will help out shoveling snow. I’m the gardener.
Mrs. Frig does general housekeeping: dusting, vacuuming, etc. She pays the bills and keeps track of the banking. (I do the taxes, though.)
The Little Frig is supposed to clean up after herself and help Mom clean the bathroom. Sometimes she does that. She feeds the goldfish.
I work; he stays home with the baby. He does far more than I: I pretty much do laundry, bills, some grocery shopping. I do probably 75% of the childcare when I am home, but I want baby time. Everything else, he does. I haven’t unloaded the dishwasher since the baby was born.
Myself:
100% of finances, taxes, bookkeeping, paperwork
100% of yardwork
100% of cleaning disgusting things (toilet, tile grout, greasy ovens, dusting the fans)
100% of home repair
80% of washing dishes
50% of laundry
40% of child care
15% of cooking (I’d do more without the incessant critical micromanagement… seriously, if you want me to cook more, back off and let me do it).
The lady:
100% of vacuuming the floor for 20 minutes on Saturday and acting like it’s an neverending chore
85% of cooking
70% of child care (here again I want to do more, but a certain control freak needs to have everything in exactly a certain way).
I shop. Wife cooks. No one cleans.
Not really fair since he is only home one week in two, but I do about 90% of keeping us clean, fed, and in legal compliance averaged overall. When he is home he’ll help clean if I point out something specific for him to do, he will accompany me to the grocery store but have no opinion about what I buy, and on his own will keep the cat boxes scooped and his personal laundry clean. Other than that, it’s me. On the plus side he has never complained about what he gets fed or the state of the house, which can get pretty dire during the busy season at my job, and will always be happy to do his part when requested, so mostly I feel like I’m ahead of the game.
ETA: on the other hand, he will complain if the bed is not made, but waits for me to come in and make it with him rather than doing it by himself. Sometimes I’ll mess up my side and leave it just so he can chide me about shredding the bedding like a hamster. It’s the only time he criticizes and I wouldn’t want him to feel deprived.
I shop, clean the kitchen & cook. My husband handles the trash, kids’ laundry and vacuuming. We handle the rest about 50/50, except for childcare. The kids sort of gravitate toward me, so if I’m home and they’re home, they’re usually milling around me while I’m doing whatever it is I do.
I’m on paternity leave just now, so I’m doing most of what needs to be done.
Under ordinary circumstances, I do the groceries, the finances, and dinner. She does general straightening up, vacuuming, anything involving furniture, design, or space planning, and she keeps our schedules. We have someone come in and clean every two weeks. We mostly each do our own laundry.
Husband earns 99% of the money, and maintains all the computers/electronics in the house.
I do everything else.