Sigh...about how much of the housework and stuff should I be expecting my husband to do right now?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK. Here’s the deal. I’m the sole breadwinner right now. Which is fine. I wish I could be home with my 2-year-old, but I am the one with the earning power and he is finishing undergrad. However, for various reasons he did not get into a 4-year university yet and we hope and think he will be accepted for January 2011. So for right now he is not going to school. He is also not working, as his contract job ended and we decided there was little point in getting a part-time job that he would probably just have to quit depending on his schedule. Well. We decided not to pull our son out of daycare because my husband did not want to and because we, and our son, like that daycare (husband and wife in a house near our house) and don’t want to lose our spot. (If I had been home, no way would I have left Tesseract Jr. in daycare, losing our spot be damned.)

So…aside from domestic chores, my husband gets to do nothing for hours every day, as far as I can tell. I work a lot right now, and I am in the process of fixing that issue. I currently work between 50 and 60 hours a week, and sometimes more.

We rent and are responsible for no yardwork. My husband does all the laundry but sometimes I help fold and/or put away. Any cooking that gets done, he does. Otherwise we get take-out, eat out, or eat sandwiches or whatever. He cooks maybe 2 or 3 times a week. He is, generally speaking, a great dad – plays with our son, laughs with him, feeds him and stuff. But my husband is a bit of an internet addict and spends hours daily watching local and international news on the internet as well as watching movies. The house is often a disaster when I get home. Not just a messy disaster, but there are serious issues with organization – boxes, papers, etc. Dirty dishes. If I were home, I would tackle one room per week and in a month or so the house would be organized and sparkling and there would be a place for everything. Remember: no kid at home during day. He cleans and vacuums and organizes occasionally. I clean very little. Our niece is staying with us (another story) and she cleans the kitchen, sort of.

But in my very limited free time, I want to be with our son. I don’t want to be cleaning when both of them are home all day and could be doing it. I feel like the least he could do is keep the house looking nice and clean. What do you guys think? He does handy things around the house, gets the cars fixed if necessary (meaning takes them to the mechanic unless it’s something fairly basic), and he drops off our son at daycare around 9 or 10 am and picks him up at 5 pm. If I work late, then he watches our son until I get home (sometimes 7; usually 8; can be as late as midnight).

I generally take over with our son the second I walk in the door because I want to. If I’m too tired or want to chill/rest/shower/read, he will pick up the slack but it can be a battle; other times, he does it without me even asking. Sigh… On the weekends, I usually want to do something FUN so I can get a mental break from work. (And I work maybe 4-8 hours about every other weekend also.) It is like pulling teeth to get him to go somewhere on the weekend except that Sundays we do go to our non-denominational worship service. He is a homebody. About the only thing he likes doing outside of the house is going to the movies (hard with a two-year-old), going shopping (which I like too but money is a little tight and so we can’t just buy whatever we want), and going out to eat (which I like too, who doesn’t, but again…money.) I like everything: running, cycling, hiking, museums, the zoo, picnics, the beach, a walk, whatever. He never plays outside with our son (but looks fit due to good genetics and working out most of his life).

What would you think I should expect from him as far as domestic stuff and doing fun stuff with me during this time period when he has no job and does not work?

2

I think it’s fair to expect him to do most of what needs to be done around the house. If I were a stay at home spouse, I’d expect to be doing most of the chores, and I can’t see why the same wouldn’t apply with the genders reversed.

3

If he has no child care for the day he should be at least responsible for all the housework and keeping his and joint paperwork organized. He should also do most of the laundry but sometimes because the machines take long you might have to help fold. He should also happily join in child care during after work hours even if he doesn’t feel like it.

I would not expect “sparkling clean” but I would expect tidy and reasonably clean most days. It sounds like there might be too much disorganization for him to sort it out, some people really can’t. If you can’t declutter, bare minimum should be no dirty dishes out and all places where a visitor might see tidy and reasonably clean. That includes one bathroom. Every day maybe he could have one small decluttering chore, like all papers neatly stacked in a box to be sorted out together in the evening, or all laundry in the correct bedroom. Big clutter is sometimes easier to clean up by type than room by room.

To me he doesn’t sound like a great father, he sounds like an adequate father.

4

My brother is shite at cleaning (doesn’t see dirt, would be happy living in a cardboard box so long as the top was impermeable or it was in a location without rain), but back when it was the two of them he used to be the cook and that means he also was the one doing all grocery shopping; he classified and cleaned what he could, and what he didn’t know what to do with he’d classify under “for J to take care of” - this means she didn’t need to clean the kitchen or bathroom, but did have to clean living room knicknacks. They only eat takeout as a special treat. He’s always been in charge of laundry.

It took them a while to figure out how to split tasks, but that’s what they did; for a year they would review the split about once a month, and shuffle over any tasks which weren’t being done to both parties’ satisfaction (the options are “his”, “hers”, “split” and “both together”, where this last option is used to try and teach the one who’s worse at it how to do it). Now they do it again whenever the situation changes (changes in work/school schedules, for example).

Coming up with figures is difficult, but he definitely should be shouldering most of the housework, right now, simply on account that he’s the one spending most time there (and he’s not working from home). Is he doing any work re. that degree, such as pre-reading on subjects? He should do that too.

5

On the one hand, yes, it would be nice of your husband to do the vast majority of the housework right now.

On the other hand, I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect him to suddenly do a large part of the housework if he’s unused to doing so, and especially if he’s content living with a higher degree of clutter than you are.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the two of you to sit down and talk about what exactly is he doing all day–frittering away his time on the internet? But I’m not sure you should expect a sudden realization that the house is cluttered and he could do something about it.

I fear there are no easy answers on the “I wanna do fun stuff on the weekend” and he wants to stay home and fritter front either.

Best wishes.

6

News and movies ? Eh, that’s not bad. That’s far less debilitating than playing WoW.

7

If he has never learned to clean, and doesn’t know what your expectations are, you might have to sit him down and get him organized. You could introduce him to flylady. You could help him come up with a chore chart. Yes, even grownups have “bathrooms-Monday, bedrooms-Tuesday” chore charts.

Tell him what you expect.

“Before you pick up the kids, you should get all the dishes done. Also the floor should get swept up and the counters given a quick wipe.”

“Every day, either before you pick up the kid or before bedtime, you should pick up and put away all the toys and all the other “crap.”” Or maybe time right after daycare - a two year old at daycare is familiar with picking up his stuff (at that age we just used laundry baskets and dumped everything in. Sorting toys into type came later.)

“Once a week, the bathroom should get cleaned. Once a week the kitchen floor should get mopped.” Once a week, the vaccuum needs to get run over all the rugs, and the duster over all surfaces."

I’ve done this with kids, and this should break into three fifteen minute quick clean sessions a day. Fifteen to pick up. Fifteen to police the kitchen, fifteen to do today’s cleaning task.

8

How old is this niece you mentioned?

How does she spend her days?

Your husband should be doing more to help you but equally important is that he should be trying harder to keep you happy.

9

I agree with most of the others here. The husband should be manning up and taking care of some things that need doing. But … being talked to like he is a child is not the way to motivate someone. Nothing like losing you job and then being talked down to every day to make a person feel like scrubbing grout. If the OP was a man talking about his wife laying around all day we would be hearing shrieks of rage (and rightly so) about how difficult it is to keep a house and all that that entails. It is easy to see jobs that other people should do. Would anyone here support a man drawing up a list of household chores his wife is expected to do each day?

My wife quit her job a few years ago and tried out the housewife routine (out kids are out of the house.) The first month she tried tackling projects like you mention, organizing the clutter, getting in shape, painting the house and such. Things are going to change! By the third month she wasn’t even getting out of bed in the morning. It ain’t as easy as it sounds apparently.

I would bet he is just marking time because next moth he will be in school. You know, sort of taking a vacation. You need to have a realistic talk about what he should be doing with some sort of goal in mind. Since he is the one in charge of the housekeeping then he gets the deciding vote on what level of cleanliness should be achieved. And keep in mind that cleaning a house where a 2-year old lives is an order of magnitude harder than, well, almost anything.

10

He should be doing it all. I never understand why men need to be taken in hand for this sort of thing. My SO is a wonderful man, and I am damn lucky to have him, but he mostly doesn’t see mess. And I never ask for the house to be spotless, heavens no. Just the basic things.

For example, I wash the dishes 99% of the time, but about twice a year I work until around 11 Pm at night. Just 2x a year. I think I should be able to come home just those 2 days to see no dishes - after all, they are only his dishes! But guys just don’t seem to get it until you tell them. And I hate babying/nagging. Just do it. It’s your house, too, isn’t it?

11

My husband is in a similar place. He lost his job a few months ago and I still work full time so in my mind I want him to do more cleaning but he would be happy living in mess piled up to his ears. It is worse though because we both tend towards clutter and it takes some real effort on both of our parts to get things done. As bad as I am about keeping things clean he is significantly worse. He just doesn’t understand the need to clean things. He can’t see the difference between the bathroom before I clean it and after I scrub it and get it super clean. He doesn’t see a reason to sweep the kitchen since it is just going to get dirty again anyway. He will literally look at a sink full of dirty dishes and get a plastic tub to put next to it so he has another place to stack more dirty dishes.

Our solution? Throw parties and invite people over. We hosted Thanksgiving this year in part because it forced us to do a significant amount of cleaning. I had a party last week because it forced us to pick up and clean again. We are considering hosting a poker night or something next month to force us to clean again. He will clean and pick up the mess if other people are going to come over but he just can’t see it when it is just the two of us. It makes things much easier this way. Eventually when he is working again we’ve talked about it and decided we are going to hire a maid and consider the cost an investment in our sanity.

12

How much of the housework and stuff should you be expecting your husband to do right now? Not much, since he’s already demonstrated to you what he’s willing to do right now.

Now, I do agree that you should expect him to sit down with you and have a conversation with you about how you need the house to look. Then see if he has any suggestions. You can mention that you have a “mental list” or way of going about things and see if he’d like to hear it or have you write it down. You can tell him you enjoy this website (flylady) and found it helpful when you were responsible for maintaining the household. It’s very difficult for someone who’s not used to it to break chores down into manageable chunks without aid. Or you can see if he’d rather take that part time job anyhow, simply to have money to hire help. Or something else entirely that neither you nor I have thought of.

Tell him what you need, and discuss with him how the two of you together can fulfill that need, same as you would if you suddenly had a need to travel or a need to avoid dairy products. Do it calmly and with love, not in the heat of an angry moment. Remember that “filthy” or “cluttered” are subjective terms, and you don’t get to dictate what those terms mean, but you do get to, 100%, say what works for you and what doesn’t.

13

You present this as a temporary problem but it’s not. The problem is that he sees himself as someone who shouldn’t have to do housework and he acts like a child in that he can’t do the unpleasant tasks before he gets goofing around time. What are you going to expect from him once school starts? Are you going to let him off the hook because of it? You need to hold him accountable for a portion of the housework. You’re both going to be working at something outside the home so you both should be working in the home, you’re a team.

14

I think that’s a pretty harsh interpretation of his motives. What I see is a guy who used to do nothing, being occupied with school and work, who is now “on hiatus” and, in his mind, on something of a vacation until school starts again in a few weeks. He *is *doing more than he used to, and honestly, people who have all this stuff done for them for a long time often just don’t see what needs to be done or know how to do it.

I mean, the fact is, neither you nor I know what he’s really thinking. He could be clueless, could be feeling depressed and emasculated, could be a jerk. But somehow I doubt **tesseract **would have married a jerk, and giving him the benefit of the doubt is probably a more effective mindset to begin communication from.

15

“Never attribute to malice what can be explained through incompetence” is as good a motto for relationships as it is for everything else.

That said, when one partner is bringing in income and the other isn’t, I think it’s important for BOTH partners to be very careful about falling into a “parent/provider/boss” and “child/consumer/employee” dynamic. It’s easy to do, but it’s a fatal plague on a relationship. Now, and when he is in school, you both need to feel like you are both contributing equally to the relationship, that you are both full partners. The actual, objective fairness matters less than the perception: if either of you see him as less valuable, as having less of a vote, as being less competent, less adult, it will hurt both of your and your children. You’ll begin to feel scorn, and he’ll begin to feel shame, and then both of you will resent the other.

So I do think this is a big deal that needs to be carefully negotiated, but it needs to be more than a “get him to agree that” type conversation. You both need to find a level of contribution that you both feel is equal.

16

People just have different standards of cleanliness. I’m willing to believe that the average woman likes things cleaner than the average man. But Internet threads about the topic always create the impression that 99% of women are cleaner than 99% of men and I just don’t buy it.

I am, admittedly, quite an outlier on the cleanliness continuum, but I’ve never dated a woman who kept things as clean as I like. In fact, I’d say women in their 20s are downright messy compared to me, 26, and older people.

I theorize that in threads of this nature there are literally thousands of slovenly women hiding out not participating, and only the clean women come out to complain about their boyfriends/husbands.

That said, tesseract’s particular situation is a lot different than general men/women cleanliness standards and I think he should be doing more around the house.

17

When hubby lost his job and suddenly I was the breadwinner for several years, you bet your ass he was “Mr. Mom” – even though we have no kids and I work at home. Hell, even when he did manage to scrape up some cruddy job, he still did the bulk of the housework. And pretty damned well, too. He’s got a better job now and is taking care of more of the bills, but he still does most of the dishes, about half of the cleaning, and his own laundry.

OP’s hubby needs to man up, get off the Internet, and start pulling his weight.

18

A tree fell on our shed a couple of months ago. I waited and waited for my wife to go out there and rebuild the shed or, at least, cut up the tree and split it for firewood. I even tried a few hints about winter coming and the need for fire wood. I’ll never understand why women have to be taken in hand for this sort of thing. I love my wife but can she really not even see a shattered shed with a tree laying on it?

19

Based on this post, I think you should expect him to keep right on doing what he’s doing. If you want him to change that, it would be a good idea to talk to him about it.

20

There’s no “should” about it. There are lots of different ways for to people to organize their marriage, and no way is better than any other way.