Not sure if this is upsetting…

[Chopsticksushi]

My husband leaves all of the cupboard doors/drawers open (when cooking in kitchen but also in any room he’s been in). It’s annoying and I’ve asked 1000s of times if he can close them.

He left doors open this eve and I joked ‘you should give me a massage if you leave the doors open’…he agreed saying this would help him remember. F he can remember because there’s a ‘punishment’ surely he can just remember?

If he ever asks me to do something I take it on board…if I didn’t he would get annoyed!

Any thoughts?

My only thought is "Why would this be upsetting?"

That's really annoying. Why does he not just shut them? I do tell DP our kitchen units are soft close, not self close.

Mine does the same and I also find this infuriating! Especially when I walk into the dishwasher door and bash my shin.

Adhd a lot of the time cupboard doors and drawers will be left open?

Do you have kids? A good house rule is to "reset" every room when you leave it. Applies to toilets, sofas with blankets / cushions, picking stuff up off the floor ... get the room tidy as you want it and then house rule to reset as you are leaving a room. When he comes up to bed (if you are there first: did you reset the living / room / kitchen / whatever? no? could you do it please? The concept of resetting everything back to how it should be before you leave a room is a really good thing to train into him and any kids. Also good to narrate when you are doing it (this applies more to kids than adults, but if its something he doesn't know ...)!

(And yes, it's annoying and thoughtless, but need to be super clear about what what you want looks like ...)

Call him back to the kitchen to close them every time - open doors on kitchen units are a hazard. Inconveniencing him is the only way he’ll learn. It’s a bit ridiculous to have to apply the strategy I use for my primary age kids not remembering to flush the toilet and put their shoes away on a grown adult, but there you go.

I leave cupboard doors open all the time. I am not aware I am doing it so some kind of "punishment" (whether joke or not) wouldn't make much difference.

I have an alarm on the fridge to stop me leaving that open! I have also left keys in the front door many times. The other day we went into a shop and when we got back to the car I had apparently left the passenger door open I remember that I got a bit flustered because I was trying to get DS3 out while the person who was parked next to us was remotely opening their sliding rear doors (they had not seen me) but I still am not sure why I left MY door open before walking back to open the rear door - it makes no sense.

I don't necessarily think him saying something would "help him remember" means that he is choosing not to try harder to close the doors. Before I was diagnosed with ADHD (which is likely the cause of me leaving things open because it's a feature of the crap working memory which comes with ADHD, not suggesting this is the only cause of open-cupboard-itis) I tried all sorts of things to try and change the motivation around things I could never seem to do reliably. It just seemed the logical thing to do. If you want to change behaviour, make an incentive or a penalty, right? Well it turns out not necessarily. Once I understood that certain things e.g. leaving my keys in the door was happening not because I didn't think it mattered to leave my keys in the door, but because my working memory is crap and I'm liable to just drop a task halfway through if something more urgent comes along (and my judgement of what is urgent can be a bit off as well) - someone with a normal level of working memory would, most of the time/if they haven't been distracted in an incredibly major way, remember about the keys and go and retrieve them.

So now rather than get cross at myself which has no effect whatsoever, I have a very simple rule - I do not ever let go of keys which are in the door, and I always have a place to store keys which I can reach while I have at least one foot outside the threshold. If I have to put down what I'm holding to open the door, I do that and take the keys out and hang them up before I pick up the item again.

If he has a genuine blind spot about the cupboards then no amount of motivation will make any difference. But he might be under the illusion that it would.

He almost certainly has ADHD!

I think she's asking if it's upsetting that his logic seems to be:

When you ask me, it's not important so I won't change my behaviour.

When you inconvenience me, it is annoying so I will change my behaviour.

I think this is a false premise, because nobody leaves cupboard doors open to save effort or because they just want them to be open, that doesn't make any sense. Even if you prefer the look of open shelving, open shelves don't have a massive door sticking out into the room getting in the way. Leaving cupboard doors open seems to be linked to having a blind spot to the fact that it has even happened in the first place.

True…thanks for the perspective!

I do that and it’s an irritation to dh too. Even when he points it out, I sometimes can’t figure out what he’s on about. It’s something I try to remember, and on a good day, I’ll think to pause and check (feels like that scene in Sixth Sense) but if I have a lot on my mind, it just doesn’t register. Sometimes I’ll close a cupboard and he’ll give me a sarcastic round of applause, and 30 seconds later I’ve left another one open,

In my case it’s adhd- my brain is future focused, always halfway to the next thing, often trying to juggle too much at once. Rewards (and punishments) don’t work particularly well because that requires a better connection with past.

We have a house rule that if something bothers you, it’s your responsibility to sort it out. So dh will close cupboards and turn off lights with some lighthearted pomp and ceremony. But there are other things that he is completely oblivious to, that I take care of. He doesn’t see things that need painting, and laundry is invisible to him until it overflows the basket. It’s swings and roundabouts. And we both try and appreciate each others strengths.

My thoughts are - is DP astral projecting into your house? He does my head in (once nearly literally when I stood up from the washing machine to find that he'd opened the cupboard door, taken two mugs out over my head and left the fucking door open AGAIN).

Not even nearly knocking me out acts as a reminder past the initial horror and panic. So I stopped doing the washing. He does it now - and he got a look to check he was alive rather than sympathy when he stood up into the cupboard door instead.

DH is another one for leaving doors open and it frustrates me no end. Still...

The other day DH was in the kitchen. I was sitting in the lounge and suddenly heard a bang, followed by "Ow - fuck fuck!". He's not normally one for random swears, so I ambled over to see what was occurring. There was DH clutching the top of his head and doubled over in considerable pain, and the kitchen top cupboard door was wide open. I asked what had happened. He'd bent down to put something in a bottom cupboard, stood up rather too quickly and his head had come into forceful contact with said open door.

That'll teach him.😂

This is a very common ADHD trait. I’m sitting looking at a load of open drawers in my bedroom now. It annoys me, but I still do it. I am often surprised when I walk in the room and all the drawers are open!

I've smacked my head like that on the open doors so many times!