If he's not doing anything, I do nothing

[ChatterMonkey]

Had an open and honest conversation with my DH (we got married this year) where my tidiness came up. I asked himi if he had any SMART goals for me in the new year (we work togethwr so work jargon is a joke...) and he brought up my tidiness. Quite rightly. His take home line was 'if I'm not doing something, you do nothing' which is completely true.

I have massive tendency to do this (without finding excuses, I think adhd is there, but i need to find a way around this rather than use as an excuse) can anyone help with advise or tips for how to be more present in housework tasks? DH has said i need to 'potter' more, but i genuinely dont notice things that need done, so I need more of an internal plan to help me pull my weight more in the house.

Sort out a rota with deadlines - if you can't see what is under your nose and needs doing then you need to schedule it and try to establish a routine.

I need to try and sort something for me personally that doesnt involve him, but improves me.

He's so non confrontational due to childhood issues with abusive parents/step-parents that it took a lot for him to open up with me today, and what didnt help is that I cried (not defensively, I was openly agreeing with him and not being confrontational, but just get emotional easily) and as soon as he realised I was crying, shut down completely and doesnt want to carry on the conversation.

So I need to work out a personal plan to adult better than I am currently.

I don't understand why the plan can't involve him? Housework is a shared responsibility so will naturally involve him, plus surely he'd be pleased to see you draw up a plan where it's clear the you will pull your weight?

“Pottering” doesn’t work for me. What does work is setting myself 15 minutes to sort out a room. Here is what I do:

1 - bag up any actual rubbish and put it in the bin
2 - retrieve anything that needs to go in the dishwasher/be washed up and take it to the kitchen
3 - remove anything that should be in another room and take it there
4 - return things that live in the room to their rightful place

Things like cleaning and laundry need to be done separately. But this is a good way to tidy up.

Because now if I want to sit him down to do a plan, he will feel guilty for making me cry.

When he realised I was crying, he completely back tracked and was saying he married me for who I was, and I didn't need to change. But I want to change.

The guilt he feels for seeing that im taking it seriously isn't worth it, I would rather just set myself better boundaries of minimum standards, and then we can meet somewhere in the middle

Because now if I want to sit him down to do a plan, he will feel guilty for making me cry.

When he realised I was crying, he completely back tracked and was saying he married me for who I was, and I didn't need to change. But I want to change.

The guilt he feels for seeing that im taking it seriously isn't worth it, I would rather just set myself better boundaries of minimum standards, and then we can meet somewhere in the middle

Someone said on a different thread about never leaving a room without something in your hands that shouldn’t be in that room.
I’ve explained that badly but basically if you are going upstairs; stop and think ‘does anything need to go upstairs’, etc. It helps with tidying as you go.

It’s this thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5467967-little-routines-that-quietly-make-life-run-smoother?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I don’t understand this bit

His take home line was 'if I'm not doing something, you do nothing' which is completely true.

Do you mean you both have downtime at the same time? Does he want you to be cleaning when he isn’t? I guess I’ve misunderstood it as everyone else seems fine with it!

You're a married couple, you should be able to sit down together and make a plan for the housework - seriously. Tell him that you want to change and that this is a method that will help you to do that. He needs to get a better hold of his feelings if guilt gets in the way of adult conversations doesn't he? It's honestly daft that you can't just both sit down together and come up with a rota for January - marriage is a partnership, not hiding away from conversations that need to be had.

Why are you crying if you’re asking him to write you a plan?
Do you mean you ask him to help sort out a plan and he says we need to do x you cry at this?
why do you think he feels guilty because you want to take responsibility for being messy?

I think it means that she doesn't clean and tidy unless she sees him doing it. Whereas normally you would be self-motivated to pick up after yourself whether or not you saw the other person doing a domestic chore.

Read about ADHD body doubling and how to counteract it.

It sounds like you need to be organised and have a set plan - so do it. A rota that you stick to (doesn’t need to be totally rigid). Dd is ND and like this. A she needs telling to do something and explaining what to do and why. She is only 14 though! I find lists help her and give her comfort.

Have a look at the organised mum method.
I think it would work well for you as it tells you exactly what to do. There’s an app.

What wrong with the idea of you both doing stuff at the same time? Thats what Dh and I do, we work on cleaning up until it’s done so we have free time at the same time. If one of us is cleaning the other will be making themselves useful too.

Also stop crying during discussions about practical stuff, you need to pull yourself together if you want to be able to have normal conversations.

If you have ADHD rotas, lists etc will be pointless. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried this for different reasons and it was only when I was having therapy for something unrelated that the therapist mentioned lists, rotas and planners don’t work for people with ADHD. No advice but if it makes you feel better my organisation is either like a clinical setting or ransacked, there’s absolutely no inbetween and I work better under the threat of visitors being due. Even in the chaos I know where everything is though, my DH is the complete opposite and I know my lack of organisation/procrastination pisses him off at times but he’s learned to live with it.

can you not carve out very short chunks of time to do particular tasks
ie 5 minutes before you leave for work to wipe down kitchen workspace after breakfast or put a load of laundry on,
10 minutes when you get in from work to run the hover round
10 minutes before you sit down to watch tv to wipe down the bathroom
10 minutes before bed to put laundry away
is that the type of thing you mean?

Why on earth are you crying.

There’s also a thread about husbands /partners that make us inert too

That makes sense, thank you.

Yes this is right. The example he gave is if he starts foing the dishes, ill come and help. But I never start doing the dishes myself.

But this way all the mental load falls on him, which I need to be better at.

I use the app Tody. You tell it how often you want to do things, split by room, and you race a monster called Dusty, winning points by completing tasks. You also tell it how hard a task is for you so you get more points for harder tasks.

I love it. It's the only thing that has got me consistently cleaning. You can also use it with multiple people. They've just brought in some new features around allocating tasks and leaderboard but I've not looked at those yet.

Can you please link to that thread.

The crying has always been a weakness of mine, I cry easily. If used to be if I was arguing with someone I would cry, and I used to be so frustrated with myself as I felt I lost the argument when I started crying.

With DH, we dont argue. Partly because he is so non-confrontational which is a long story for other reasons (and he is in therapy for) so I really dont want to be taking advantage of the fact he doesnt want to tell me to sort my shit out.