Opinion about division of household labor

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
We don’t have a dishwasher, and since we are remodeling the kitchen in the foreseeable future, we don’t want to get one now. I mean, I want one in the worst way, and maybe I should push for that regardless. I also cook real meals about 4 times a week, which dirties a lot of dishes. I have no idea why the laundry is so out of control.

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Of course I don’t know the layout of your house - is there not somewhere you could put it temporarily (utility room)?
Likewise home-cooked food is better :slight_smile: , but if you are struggling to wash up whilst the house is being remodelled, maybe takeaways or microwaving would help?

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]

The cleaners who did it before the wedding cost $80, and they hardly did anything-- floors, counters, bathroom. That’s it. For dishes and laundry, I can’t imagine what it would cost.
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Well I wouldn’t use that firm again. But are there alternative companies?
I was lucky enough to get a married couple who wanted to earn some extra cash and who take pride in their work. They do a weekly clean + all my laundry for £33 ($66).

22

Hm. On the one hand, it’s not fair for him to always use work around the house as an excuse for not pulling his weight in chores, especially since he enjoys the work and you don’t enjoy cleaning. OTOH, he’s doing a lot of work, some of which actually needs doing and some of which he just wants to do. I assumed that you were happy about renovations, whereas it sounds like you don’t really care and it’s more his thing. I also didn’t realize the pattern he seems to be establishing.

I think I would say that he needs to do more chores, but as long as he’s actively working on some project, that should count somewhat (but not entirely). It partly depends on how much you want the project done too! Otherwise you’re going to have gingerbread trim on your house someday, just so he can play and get out of chores.

My personal solution would be this: I think you should have some sort of mutual agreement on what the standards are. Any effort above and beyond those reasonable standards is optional and counts as personal fulfillment rather than running the house. These standards would include how often jobs are to be done both inside and outside–from cleaning the bathroom to trimming the bushes. So, if he would clean the bathrooms every 2 months and you would do it every week, you have to take both hygeine and available time into account and establish a standard of every 2 weeks. Then if you want a clean toilet more often than that, you can do it, but it’s “extra.” Similar with everything else. Perhaps remodeling the house is “extra” because he wants it but it wasn’t actually necessary; perhaps it’s part of a reasonable standard.

You might take a look at Just Kiss Me and Tell Me You Did the Laundry: A Guide to Negotiating Parenting Roles. Yes, it’s about parenting in a two-career family, but there’s a lot about negotiating chores.

Also, I bet your husband could fix his own lunch.

He’s a grownup and needs to be able to take care of himself like an adult does. You’re not his mom and it’s not your job to do all the home maintenance.

23

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
ETA: I think it’s about who cares about what. He cares about how things look, like the lawn and the drywall. I care about things like the house being clean and having fresh groceries. He never cared about that stuff, and it wouldn’t bother him if he bathroom was gross and we never had clean sheets; OTOH, I don’t care if my lawn is 5’ tall or if I have ugly paneling in the living room.
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This is basically how chores are divided at home. Everyone does what he cannot leave undone. In the end, everything ends done, and everyone thinks they are doing their fair share and that they are not being screwed. (Or at least used to be like this, now that I am staying at home, I do most of the chores except for the grand moping of the floor, which my wife insists I cannot do right).

24

Some people enjoy Chore Wars as a tool to “count up” what’s been done by who on an objective basis, kind of like Giraffe did.

25

Ironically, we came to the I do dishes/he does laundry arrangement because I hate laundry and he hates dishes. But his version of doing the laundry leaves out everything he doesn’t like doing: sheets/towels, folding and putting away. He won’t put my socks together either-- they go in a big pile in the closet because he “doesn’t believe” in doing it (“get all white socks” is his answer to it). I think all these conditions constitute a violation of the agreement, but how can I make him do it if he doesn’t want to? Stop doing the dishes in protest? Gross. And he wouldn’t care anyway.

[QUOTE=dangermom]
I assumed that you were happy about renovations, whereas it sounds like you don’t really care and it’s more his thing. I also didn’t realize the pattern he seems to be establishing.
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I don’t care about the renovations. I wouldn’t have done it but he insists in needs to be done. The kitchen and bathroom need to be done, but that’s going to be last because it’s most expensive and we can’t do it all ourselves.

Hah! This hilarious and would be more funny if it weren’t probably true.

We did, I thought, but then the laundry started getting out of hand. If he has to do a chore he’s not interested in it, I have to ask him. If I have to ask more than a couple of times, I get angry, and then he feels I’m nagging and not appreciating all the things he does.

If I didn’t make his lunch, he would get Burger King every weekday. That’s what he did before we were married, and I didn’t want to be a widow at 50 because he died of a heart attack. I insisted he cut down on the fast food, and this was the only way I could get him to do it. And… that’s how he gets me to do everything. He just won’t do it if he doesn’t consider it important, and if I want it done, I either have to ask/cajole/nag him into doing it, or do it myself. I don’t like nagging, so I try to step up and do it myself, but I feel it’s too much now. It’s aggravating. Add to that the fact that I lived alone for 10 years, with one small break for a friend crashing here for a few months, so I am not skilled at negotiating these things.

26

Argh. I totally see where you are. It would drive me mad too. If laundry is his job, he can’t just pick the laundry he likes and leave out the towels! I’m not sure about what you can do about it (I’d ask my husband for his opinion but he’s still at work! It’s almost midnight!), except what finally got my husband out of something kind of similar. He started doing the dishes because he loves me and it makes me happy, instead of because they’re sitting there. He doesn’t care much about the fact that the dishes are sitting there, actually, but once he realized that doing chores is an expression of love that makes me happy, he got better. I also got a little better at asking him to do things instead of quietly seething about his blindness about the chores that need doing.

(Incidentally most people say that a chore-doing husband gets laid more often. I’m not saying that it’s a good idea to manipulate and withhold, not at all. But the fact is that a woman with a considerate, loving husband feels more affectionate and less resentful, and resentment is a wonderful libido-killer. Whereas a happy wife who feels loved is happier in bed and is then more likely to overlook small flaws. It may be useful to point this out sometime, I don’t know.)

It’s a lot better to establish an upward spiral of love and service, rather than a vicious downward spiral of resentment and neglect. Figuring out how to do that is the tricky bit!

I sympathize on the lunch thing. If there is any possible way to get him to take responsibility for his own health instead of putting it on you, that would be really good. I’ve heard of diabetic men who wouldn’t control their own diets (one apparently preferred diabetic comas to any personal effort–he wound up divorced and then dead), sick men who wouldn’t make their own doctor appointments for anything…it’s not a pattern you want to help establish, but how to go about it I don’t know.

Yeah, I’m really helpful, huh? Also I’m freezing, so I’m off to bed and a heating pad.

27

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
If I didn’t make his lunch, he would get Burger King every weekday. That’s what he did before we were married, and I didn’t want to be a widow at 50 because he died of a heart attack. I insisted he cut down on the fast food, and this was the only way I could get him to do it. And… that’s how he gets me to do everything. He just won’t do it if he doesn’t consider it important, and if I want it done, I either have to ask/cajole/nag him into doing it, or do it myself. I don’t like nagging, so I try to step up and do it myself, but I feel it’s too much now.
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Forgive me for speaking bluntly, but this guy sounds like one hell of a manipulator, and he’s managed to manipulate himself into a great deal. He gets a full-time maid(you) who does essentially all the work of running the house, cooking, cleaning, and all that - not to mention the likely fringe benefit of reasonably regular sex. And he gets to work on the household projects he wants to work on, when he wants to work on them, and otherwise doesn’t have to do a whole hell of a lot. Assuming that he’s the one who’s more interested in remodeling the kitchen eventually, he’s even making more work for you (doing the dishes by hand) just by the prospect of a future project of his.

This may be deliberate on his part, or it may be unconscious, but damn, he’s good at it.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s unconscious. Still, here you’re only four months into your marriage, and he’s not even trying to be accommodating, to see things from your side. If he’s like this now, I can’t see things improving once the romance and newness wears off.

This isn’t just about your chores. It’s about what your marriage is about, whether you really have one, whether you got snookered into this marriage on the expectation that the dailiness of it wouldn’t all fall on you, whether there’s something here worth saving, or whether you should kick this guy to the curb.

28

I think he’s making understanding a prerequisite for acceptance–since he doesn’t understand why certain things matter to you, he’s decided that they don’t, really. This “she can’t be serious” attitude seems to be a pretty common phase of early relationship negotiating, and it’s almost worse when you are really, really in love because you understand so MUCH about the other person that it’s easy to assume that there aren’t any parts to them that you don’t “get”. You, obviously, understand this, accepting that the remodeling is important to him, even if you’d leave it be.

So I would suggest some very long boring talks about your relationship in which you make it clear that certain things really do matter to you and that you can’t be happy without them and that you can’t do it all yourself–not for two people. And everytime he tries to explain why colored socks, clean sheets, whatever, really shouldn’t matter to you, say 'but they do." And when he brings up the remodling, you make the point that it doesn’t matter, cosmically, if it takes one year or two years to get done–it’s a long process, you’re content with that.

Does he take your job seriously? Sometimes people have trouble understanding how anyone else’s job is all that hard compared to their own. Teachers are especially vunerable to this–people remember school, and they don’t understand that what they saw their teacher do was actually only the tip of the iceberg, they think teaching 2nd period biology was Ms. Smith’s whole day. Furthermore, they fact that school gets out in the afternoon can make people think subconciously that we have “more time”–nevermind that we get there at the crack of dawn (or well before, this time of year), and that we often stay hours afterward for tutorials, grading, or paperwork.

Lastly, I wouldn’t have a come to Jesus right now. You are, I assume, about to be off work for a couple weeks? If you have a huge discussion tomorrow, that give a week or two for new patterns to start to form, and then you will be home. When I am off, it always screws up all our household routines, and I would worry the same thing could happen to those new habits that are still so green. I would wait until the week after Christmas to really talk this out and make resolutions about how you are going to do things “in the New Year”. Part of those resolutions can be that things will be renegotiated in the summer, when you have more time, presumbably, and the outside of the house needs more care.

29

I love arguments about the division of domestic labour because they are always so slanted towards making the other partner the bad guy.

When I was married my wife used to constantly harangue me about how little I did around the house. Once we separated she started to complain about how hard it was doing everything on her own for the family. I guess she had finally worked out that I was arranging my work hours so that I could get home and cook dinner every night, do the washing and hang it out and bring in the previous days wash and put it away. Suddenly it became apparent that the lawn didn’t mow itself every week in Summer and it wasn’t a team of fairies that mopped all the floors each Saturday morning and the guy who had been kicked out was the one who spent hours every Sunday doing the shopping. Seems the same guy used to bath the kids half the time and put them to bed and drive them around to sports and arty stuff or school events or social events.

I used to just laugh at her complaints and tell her, “Imagine how much harder the adjustment would have been if I had been making any contribution.”

30

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]

I do all the grocery shopping, dishes, mopping, cleaning the bathroom, cooking all my own meals and the vast majority of his, including packing his lunch daily, scooping litter boxes, taking out the daily garbage and recycling (he brings them to the curb but won’t deal with it otherwise). I hate housework and I’m bad at it, I would add. Also, as a teacher, about once a month I have 80 papers to grade in about a week, which takes about 10-15 hours above my regular work schedule to do, on my own time. In fact, I’m procrastinating on grading some as we speak.

[/QUOTE]

sigh
Whah.
My god, you cook your own meals? Egads!
Ok, enough of that. I couldn’t help m’self.

Here’s how it is, in a nutshell.

No matter what, I think that now and in the future, you’re going to still believe that the division of labor is unfair, with the assumed majority of chores being completed by you. Seriously, who complains about cooking their own meals as one of the chores? Is the cat yours, or his, or did you get it when you got married? None of it matters.

If it needs to be done, do it. If you want help doing it, ask. One of you has to take control of the situation regarding division of labor.

I didn’t slack off on regular chores when I ripped up all the flooring in the house and replaced it with hardwood floors. And this is a 3000 sq ft house. Nor when she repainted the whole house did she “slack” or get a break, because their was no break to give. We just do it when it needs to be done, and if we need help, ask.

Sometimes, I do everything in the house for a while, because of whatever reason. Sometimes, its the opposite. But I (nor she) no longer complains, because that’s just the way it is. There’s so many more things in the world to worry about than who scooped the poop out of the litter box.

So if you’re tired, ask him to help, and explain that you’re really tired and could use a hand. If you nitpick, or he does, it’s not gonna get the laundry done.

And for Ogs sake, don’t make a list of what you did/he did as has been suggested by others.. You might as well make an appointment for marriage counseling and bring the list with you. It would save a step.

31

We had a challenge, its gotten much better. When I said “honey can you do the dishes” he would do the dishes - not the pots and pans, not wipe the counters down, not sweep. Now he understands that when I say “do the dishes” I mean “and make the kitchen generally tidy.” Same with laundry. Laundry was the process of getting clothes into the washer, through the dryer and into the basket - folding and putting away were optional parts of laundry (it still ends up in the basket more often than the drawers - but at least now its folded in the basket. So make sure it isn’t just about semantics.

He seldom dusts or vaccums and has cleaned two bathrooms in fifteen years. But he does more than his share of the cooking and yard work and kid stuff.

With the kids, we’ve had success with a Saturday “chore draft.” We make a list of everything that needs to get done and everyone “drafts” what they will do (we rig it a little - Brainiac4 and I grab hard jobs or jobs that an adult needs to do - the kids are fine cleaning bathrooms every OTHER week - but not every week). You might have success if you make a list of the things you need to get done and share it with “I can’t get my whole list done if we are going to have any fun this weekend- which of these would you like to help me out on.”

32

[QUOTE=FourPaws]
sigh
Whah.
My god, you cook your own meals? Egads!
Ok, enough of that. I couldn’t help m’self.
[/QUOTE]

I cook all mine, and most of his. It’s not that I cook all mine, which I did before and have always done, it’s that I ALWAYS do all of mine and MOSTLY do all of his, and he never reciprocates by cooking for me, not even on special occasions.

33

This is a tough one, Rubystreak. I do about 90% of the chores and yardwork. We both work full-time, but I put in 40-hour weeks and my husband (who is a first-year teacher, so you know what that’s like) is working between 50-60 hours a week. I also care about having a clean house and a decent-looking yard, whereas he is oblivious to that kind of thing. It’s something that I’ve struggled with, and I’ve come to realize that it’s not that he expects me to do all the chores, it’s that he doesn’t see why they need to get done at all. If I didn’t do them, that would be perfectly okay with him. Realizing that helped a lot.

I’m not thrilled with our division of labor right now, but I’m content with it. However, I am worried about what happens when we have kids. I don’t want them to get the message that Mom does all the scut work.

34

I’m sorry to say this, but you have two major problems here:

  1. You two have set up your relationship so that, a large part of the time, you are relating as mother-and-child, rather than as husband-and-wife. You nag, he acts petulant. This is not only true of your interactions over housework and remodeling, but also over the fast food situation. The fast food issue actually has you breaking one of the cardinal relationship rules: “Don’t marry a man (or woman, for that matter) and then try to change him into what you want him to be.”

  2. Your husband has a pretty serious selfish streak. It seems he would rather have you doing them all and have it put strain on your marriage and make you unhappy than to do his fair share. It’s sounding like he thinks he married himself a maid, and he obviously doesn’t care that you’re unhappy about it.

I wish I had some advice, but every couple I’ve known who has had these problems has either 1) remained married, but unhappily so, or 2) broken up. I hope you can find a way to solve the problem, but if your husband isn’t invested in changing too, I don’t see how it can happen.

35

[QUOTE=Q.N. Jones]

I wish I had some advice, but every couple I’ve known who has had these problems has either 1) remained married, but unhappily so, or 2) broken up. I hope you can find a way to solve the problem, but if your husband isn’t invested in changing too, I don’t see how it can happen.
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I don’t think it’s as dire as all that, given that it’s only been 4 months since they moved in together. There are a lot of false starts and misunderstandings and role adjustments at first. I agree that after a couple years of this, it will be one of those unsolvable problems, but this early in the game it is very fixable. There just needs to be talking, talking, talking.

36

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
I don’t think it’s as dire as all that, given that it’s only been 4 months since they moved in together. There are a lot of false starts and misunderstandings and role adjustments at first. I agree that after a couple years of this, it will be one of those unsolvable problems, but this early in the game it is very fixable. There just needs to be talking, talking, talking.
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And compromising, compromising, compromising. By both people. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I am simply saying that it is very rare to fix this kind of problem to the satisfaction of both parties, in my experience. And her husband’s attitude toward it–that he will just keep working on the house every day, maybe forever, rather than do his part around the house–does not bode well for mature compromise, IMHO. I hope I’m wrong and that he will be willing to change too.

37

[QUOTE=Q.N. Jones]
And compromising, compromising, compromising. By both people. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I am simply saying that it is very rare to fix this kind of problem to the satisfaction of both parties, in my experience. And her husband’s attitude toward it–that he will just keep working on the house every day, maybe forever, rather than do his part around the house–does not bode well for mature compromise, IMHO. I hope I’m wrong and that he will be willing to change too.
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Of course. Willingness to see that there is more than one way to look that the world, and that the other person’s perspective is as valid and as grounded as yours–in other words, stopping trying to convince them that your way is right and instead trying to find a solution that works and is fair according to both perspectives. This early in a relationship, I think it’s as likely or not ignorance, not indifference, that is driving the situation–one has to hope the husband has no idea how overwhelmed he’s leaving his wife.

38

Okay, I am going to pipe in here…

I can see and understand your frustration because I have been through the exact same thing you are going through except one difference - I was to my ex-husband, what your husband is to you.

I was (and admittedly still am somewhat) extremely lazy when it came to things around the house. He always was active about cleaning up around the house, so I never really took it upon myself to take an active interest in it. I would come home from work, sit my ass on the couch and watch TV. He would come home, start dinner, clean up said dinner, do the laundry… all that stuff… and when he asked me to feed the dogs, I would bitch because, “I’ve had a long day…” or “He was already up, why can’t he do it…” There were fights about it…

Sadly, I didn’t really see my actions or my part of the marriage falling apart until we were divorced. Don’t get me wrong, there were many other issues and problems. That was just one of many. I didn’t really realize all the things he did for me, the dogs and the house until I moved out and was on my own. It hit me like a ton of bricks the amount of stuff he did around the house, plus his full time job.

I was a horrible wife.

So I really don’t have answer for you but to say, I think you have a right to be upset. I saw what it did to my ex (me being extremely lazy) and what part it had in the falling apart of my marriage.

I think it was one of the last things he said to me was that he felt like he was my maid… thinking back on it… I took total and complete advantage of him… and he knows it. I have admitted it to him.

I hope you guys can work things out.

39

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
This early in a relationship, I think it’s as likely or not ignorance, not indifference, that is driving the situation–one has to hope the husband has no idea how overwhelmed he’s leaving his wife.
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You have a rosier view of human nature than I do.

40

We talked about it this weekend, a lot. He says that he didn’t realize how much it was stressing me out and how much it really did matter that I was doing all this stuff, only to have it undone in a day. He promises that he is going to help more. He says it’s easy for him to ignore the messes because he tells himself it’s not always going to be like this, but while it’s all under construction, what point is there in making it nice? I explained that I didn’t agree with this, specifically and especially on issues of hygiene and sanitation. I also explained that I truly don’t mind if it takes him longer to finish the renovations if it means that he helps with the rest of the house, which I guess he needed to hear. I hope that this is going to alter the course of things. We’ll see.

As for the fast food thing… yeah, it’s me trying to change him, I guess. He wants to eat nicer lunches but would not do it for himself. And I am willing to make the lunch. It saves us money and is better for him. I just need him to step up in other areas that I’m not as good at. I really am NOT good at cleaning and I hate doing it, and gain little satisfaction from it. Cooking and making lunch issatisfying because the product is enjoyable, healthy, and makes me feel happy. It’s cleaning up after that oppresses my soul.