What's equitable to the mental load of food planning?

[TheBeesKnee]

My partner finds the planning and shopping part really difficult. I don't mind it. We both can cook.

I am on maternity leave at the moment and I can feel a creep of responsibility where I'm ending up doing all the mental work and I don't want to end up in a situation where that's expected and so I raised it with him today and said I could take that on as long as he took on something of equal contribution that I never have to think about.

He jumped at the offer but now we're stumped as to what that could be.

Any ideas?

Thanks everyone, some decent ideas here. I like the idea of him doing the cleaning and assigning a few things to me as I hate cleaning and do it grudgingly.

WRT to bills etc - I handle gas and electricity, broadband and netflix etc. He handles water, insurance, car stuff.

Neither of us likes laundry - at the moment I do 2-3 loads per week just during the day. He had his clean clothes sitting out for 3 weeks before I cracked and put it away as my brother was coming to stay. I was not happy about that.

Back to food:

We have a list on the fridge that we're supposed to add to when things run out. He last cooked tuna pasta for us and didn't add tuna to the list so despite going shopping we don't have a key ingredient for an "easy" dinner.

The other issue is that he is disorganised with lunches so ends up buying subway or something a couple of times per week. When he's organised he buys prepared cooked chicken and puts it in a sandwich. If I took over food prep I'd probably batch cook a load of chicken for dinners and he could use some as sandwich filler or have it with rice and could save us money.

We both like nice food so I don't think I could cope with Sunday is a roast, Monday is tuna pasta, etc. When it's his turn to cook he will order takeaway about 50% of the time.

The other thing is obviously the baby. He is breastfed so I'm responsible for him all night, all day while he's at work and realistically 70% of the evening. But that's a whole other thread.

My dh does the meal planning and shopping, and I do all the laundry/towels/bedsheets.

I think that's pretty fair!

He tidies more than me but I do more hoovering (we do have a cleaner who is fab) and the teenagers do the ironing and clean the bathroom

School/nursery
Extracurricular activities
Birthdays, presents, parties, thank yous and reciprocal invitations and hosting.
Laundry, putting away, rotating, clearing out, replacing clothes
Holidays, social life
House and garden maintenance/improvements

Surely we can't answer that unless we know how much effort you put into 'planning and shopping'?
It took me a while to find my 'go-to's but once that was done it became easy. Regular rotation, favourites saved on online shopping basket. Press add, go.
DH does the laundry, feeds cat and other small things like the bins and refilling soap/buying cat stuff.

Cleaning bathrooms and all the hoovering.

Maybe bins too, that doesn't take long.

It's a good question - I would quite like a set of jobs all set out with values.

While you are horse trading on the weekly stuff maybe have a bash at sharing out the longer term stuff too - oven, deep cleaning of rooms etc. This stuff very easily ends up in the wife work pile even with well meaning husbands.

Finances.

A fair bit! We both like good food and I'll research recipes and try new things.

This was much easier to do pre baby, we've both struggled in the last few months.

Baby is 4 months old, but we'll revisit that when he goes to nursery.

Gifts etc we do our own families because again he's disorganised. I actively chose to take a step back because I was falling into that role and his sisters still message me about gifts even though I point them in his direction each time.

Holidays we alternate years.

Home improvements is mainly me - he's into minimalism and we'd live in an empty box if he had it his way.

I do planning and online shop in our house, OH puts shopping away and does 80% of washing up. We both cook, though I do slightly less often.

we went through the mental load stuff a while ago, and I took on more in return for OH doing more cleaning/tidying etc. we’re both really happy with this. Maybe you need to do an overhaul on jobs op.

It's not laundry.

We have a food (me)/laundry (dh) split.

For food - depending on who is at home - you need to plan/shop/cook for at least one meal every day, if not 2 or 3. It needs to meet all sorts of health/allergy/fussiness criteria. It needs to be on time, and needs a lot more attention than putting a wash on.

Washing - dh does it as an when. Puts a load on before work, takes it out when he gets home. As long as school uniforms/pE kits/scout shirts are all clean again at the right point in the week, he's golden, and half the type he doesn't even manage that.

A different take on it.

If your child finds a domestic task difficult will you say that's OK you don't need to do it. Or will you teach them how to do it?

If he can afford to buy lunch out then it’s not really a problem if you haven’t cooked all week

I do all the food planning but then it’s fairly easy, we have a mixture of stuff I’ve cooked from scratch and ready meals to shove in the oven. Since covid we just get it all delivered and it’s much easier than going round the shops as well.

Maybe he can do all the washing like my dh does

I disagree with most, I don't think there is anything comparable. You can't compare it to cleaning or finances.

It takes quite a bit of work, quite a lot of thinking. Mental load. To think what you have, what you need, to make these meals, when to buy it on which day, so you don't end up buying rolls/buns for your burgers too early and then them going stale.

Batch cooking and then trying to remember oh yes I must take that chilli/marinated chicken kebabs/lasagne out of the freezer on x morning so that it's ready for x nights meal. We have 30 to 40 meals regularly, but I still get so bored of them all.

And I stand in Sainsbury's thinking I don't want to buy new potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans and broad beans to steam, to go with my steak pie, because if I never ate that meal again it would be too soon.....

I find cooking one of the biggest tasks in the household, mostly I think because it’s ‘time critical.’

If I want to clean the bathroom, dust, do laundry etc, it’s not really relevant if I choose to do it at midnight because I can’t get off to sleep or 3pm or any other in between time that suits me.
Cooking the family dinner always takes up a chunk of time in my evening when I’m usually drained from a long day at work and needing to just sit down and process, or interrupts time with the family.
it’s the relentless, oh look at the time, I need to start peeling potatoes because other people are relying on this task being completed within a reasonable time.

Op sounds in a state tbh. All this ordering subway and forgetting the tuna, means you are nowhere near organised. Is your Dh unorganised generally?

I have all basics, rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes, kidney beans, coconut milk. I have all the back up ingredients I want to make any meal. If I use something it immediately goes on the shopping list to be replaced. I don't thus run out of anything.

We have shampoo (same for washing powder, dishwasher tablets, everything) in shower, and a spare under the sink. When you take the spare from under the sink out, it then goes on the shopping list and you buy 2 more, that go under the sink. That way you never run out of anything.

You never should have run out of tuna. Why isn't there one in your cupboard always, if you are regularly making tuna pasta bake?

Laundry I would think? Although how it takes that long to plan/online shop I’m baffled. I do meal planning in my head during dull meetings at work. Then it takes next to no time to do online shop. Once you’ve done it few times, really quick to go down list of items you’ve ordered historically and just click the ones into your cart you want and maybe search/add a few extra items. Rarely do you have completely different orders, I find 90% of base stuff is same no matter what I meal plan.

I do everything to do with food and the children. We pay someone else to do laundry and cleaning (if she's not available I do laundry and we both clean). DH does everything to do with finance eg renewing things, paying bills, managing investments. We both do house maintenance but that's a language thing really as I don't speak the language most of the workmen speak so DH generally has to be around. Otherwise I would probably manage that. DH works and I don't.

Oh and my top tip re shopping lists is set up a Google list that is shared between you. Then when either of you notices something is needed you can just say "hey Google add X to my shopping list". So much easier than writing it down. That's the other thing DH does - sorting out all the tech we use.

Sorry but I really think some mumsnetters way overstate the mental load needed for cooking and meal planning 😮‍💨

Cars - water /oil/mot etc
Maintenance of appliances
Garden

Then share housework.

You are right to be wary. Once it edges over to you it doesn't tend to go back even if you return to work full time.

I was going to suggest this sort of stuff. Plus also maybe getting the right clothes etc.

I used to buy all the food & DH did the actual cooking.

I'd definitely include ironing and changing beds.

We do the absolute opposite for meal planning.

As in we don't.

One of us bungs items onto the Tesco order for ten minutes. Hands phone over, other does likewise.

Both of us pick a few things we fancy cooking - not meals but ingredients. Lots of veg and meat. And a few easy cook options.

About ten minutes to get the food in. Then just make dinners in turn based on what going off in what order.

Nobody has starved yet.

There are jobs that are need to be done daily, weekly or annually. I've noticed that men often do the annual ones and sometimes the weekly ones eg bins. These take very little mental load and many can be automated eg paying bills.

Women in the other hand get lumbered with the daily tasks that are heavier on mental load and seem to be lots of smaller jobs (cue 'fgs it only takes x minutes to do that) that are minimised but all add up.

Break jobs down like this - frequency, load/amount of thinking required and then allocate.

Depending upon how selfish your DH is think about how very important things like child vaccinations/dental etc are given to him.