To get fed up with DH leaving stuff EVERYWHERE!

[ILoatheMickeyMouseClubhouse]

Am I?

DH is a messy person by nature, but he is just taking the piss at the moment. He leaves cups, plates, wrappers and packets wherever he has been using them. Today this meant a half-drunk mug of tea on the dining table, 3 glasses in the living room and about 6 next to his bed, plus 2 crisp packets on the living room floor. Shoes and coats are left wherever he takes them off. Clean clothes and dirty clothes are all in one heap on the bedroom floor. There is a pile on the dining table of his "crap" things like work paperwork, a brochure he ordered, random bills of his etc. Furniture in our bedroom is piled high with things of his that he doesn't put away, everything from his passport to a pair of flip flops of his. He played football last night and his bag complete with a sweaty top thrown on top in in the kitchen, it was smack bang in the doorway this morning.

It's getting now so it really is out of control; I have a young toddler and it's hard enough to do housework as he gets up to allsorts when i'm busy, but in order to clean the house I have to tidy DH's crap away first, it takes ages. I have tried putting everything of his down by his side of the bed, explaining that I needed it out of sight to keep the house tidy and he retaliated by putting loads of clothes by of mine that he'd got out of drawers and cupboards in a heap by my side of the bed, even getting tags out of the bin for a pair of shoes I'd bought and throwing them on there too. He put DS to bed last night and just left the dirty nappy in the bedroom. Wet towels are again just left wherever he is when he finishes using them, whether that's on a living room chair or on the bannister or the hall floor.

I'm totally fed up with it, I'm very assertive and do tell him to put things away but he doesn't and won't. The house just feels like it's a mess ALL the time because he won't put things away. Even our 2 older children keep their rooms reasonably tidy and clean.

Another thing he always does that pisses me right off is as soon as anything needs doing, for example the kitchen needs cleaning after dinner, he goes "to the toilet" and sits on it for 45 minutes playing Angry Birds. He does this sometimes at the kids bathtimes and bedtimes too, just disappears into the downstairs loo. If I say can he be quick as X or Y needs doing, he says "Oh so I'm not allowed to go to the toilet now" and is really childish.

I just don't know what to do; I am a SAHM and am more than happy to do the housework/washing/ironing/cooking but not to be a servant cleaning up all his junk.

What SGM said.

What the fuck!

(And what was with all the commiseration and "oh, men are impossible but we luv 'em" posts? It had improved by page 4, but I'm still hopping mad...)

I complain about my husband leaving particular stuff around carelessly. He complains about me leaving different things around carelessly. But no-one responds by taking the neatly filed stuff and tipping it all over the floor!

Your darling husband punished you by making a huge amount of mess because you had the audacity to complain.

It's disgusting, nasty behaviour. Don't be lulled into thinking it is any way normal or something you have to settle for.

Oh, and my husband and I are teaching our 2 year olds to put clothes in the laundry baskets by colour, as a game. That's right. Two years olds can put clothes in a laundry bin.

This is not normal.

Dumping your clean clothes and stuff from the bin in retaliation sounds as if he got angry and vindictive. To be blunt: do you want your little ones to see and grow up with that? Do you want them to find that, whenever daddy is criticized or gets cross (whether or not he's right), he will react like that?

My dad would do this sort of thing, and believe me it is terrifying for a small child trying to understand the anger and destructiveness that motivates messing up someone else's space and things just to prove a point.

one word - SHED
that is where anything that has been lying around for more than a day goes if I want things to be tidy.

He has said that everytime I put things down by his side of the bed he is going to do the same thing to my stuff again. I've asked him what to do with all his stuff if he's going to take such huge offence to me putting it somewhere (and I did literally pile it up neatly, I didn't ruffle it all up and shit on it or anything, you'd think I'd done that from how he's carried on), and he basically said it's not a huge deal is it, put it away properly or leave it.

OP don't allow him to treat you like that. It will only get worse...

Oh, is he. So, he's not even going to claim it was a momentary lapse of judgment. He's going to carry on trashing the house if you move his stuff out of the way.

I am furious on your behalf, Mickey. Furious.

It's supposed to be your home, too!

Who picked up the things he so spitefully threw all over the floor to train you that your job is to tidy up after him?

He is a nasty bully.

Don't make your children grow up in a home like this.

So, he's given you three choices - ignore the mess, or clear up after him, or try to make him pitch in and suffer the consequences. Nice.

It's one thing tolerating an agreed amount of mess (as some posters seem to do), it's quite another for him to insist that he has the right to make the house into a complete pit (regardless of the fact that it makes your life much harder in terms of cleaning) and to tell you that it's not a big deal. Well, it isn't a big deal for him, is it - he doesn't have to shift the crap every time he wants to run a hoover around (and I'm going to put a fiver on him never doing that).

As others have said, he is trying to train you. If you want to continue the marriage, you need to make it crystal clear that attempts to train you to be the little wifey will neither work nor be tolerated. Don't just ignore this, make it clear that this shit does not fly with you. In your shoes, I think I'd buy a lock for all my cupboards and wardrobes. I sure as shit wouldn't be leaving him open access to trash all my stuff whenever I "misbehaved".

So he doesn't care about you enough to consider how you feel about his mess? He's also said he'll repeat his bad behaviour. Are you sure you want to be with someone who has so little regard for you and is prepared to behave so childishly and not apologise for it. Please lay the law down to him or you'll end up even more miserable than you are now.

I generally agree with the tone of responses on here but with one caveat. My DH went through a patch of similar (but not so bad) bolshiness when DS was small. We eventually thrashed it out. The bottom line was that he felt he came a long way 5th in our household (behind me, DS, dogs) and, frankly, he was right. I was using him as a cash-generator and not much else. I showed a bit of appreciation for his (extremely) hard work in supporting us - he got reasonable.

FGS!! Then WALK OUT. What else can you do? Really - do you want this for your kids? Look thirty years into the future. Them visiting with their own families and being embarassed to see their pig of a Dad and Grandad wordlessly holding out a coffee cup for downtrodden skivvy Gran to take to the kitchen? 'oh he's always been like that - she never challenges him, it's miserable for her but honestly it's not worth it now, he's always been a bully'.

Do YOU want to wait until they've left home, look across to the PIG you're married to and think 'Right, this is it then! Domestic servitude without even the happy home life and the kids now - roll on, next 20 years!'

What I said earlier:
OP, if that little lot 'awaited me' (implication: my little woman job to do for the big important manpig), I'd be packing a bag, and leaving with the dc for either a friend, family, or even a B&B for the night. Or two or eight nights.

Text to the manpig: 'I've left - there was barely room to move in the house for the piles of sheer disrespect you'd left me to clear up. Me and the kids are at xx, I'll call you tomorrow but will be busy between 2 and 3: I've got a solicitor's appointment and relate to sort out. Let me know if you want to start pulling your weight or whether you're just going to be busy once more pulling my neat, taken-care-of, tidy stuff out of the cupboards just to make the abusive point that you think I'm your slave and should just suck up your appalling treatment of me. Take care darling, bye x'

What Shouty Hamster said, do that!!

Hes a bully and is treating you like crap

Honestly, this man is not just untidy, he's abusive. He thinks he's your boss/owner and therefore entitled to punish you if you are disobedient or suggest in the tiniest way that yo uare a human being, worth of respect and his equal.
I really don't see a lot of hope for your marriage. Sadly men like this invariably show their true colours when there are small DC. And these ARE his true colours - selfish, sexist, entitled, abusive and a bully. Any nice behaviour he displays is an act to keep you compliant and trapped.

If you were in an office, and you complained about unequal workloads, would it be acceptable for someone else to shred your finished files from yesterday, so that you had to do it all again?

I wish I had taken on board before I married ex DH how much his mum ran around after him and even his sisters to a certain extent.

With ex Dh is wasn't a case of him not caring or being lazy or just plain chauvanistic it just did not occur to him to do these things as he had never had to.

As a poster said above 'A two year old child can be taught to put clothes in the laundry basket'.

Train DC's from an early age that a clean house and clean clothes are not a god given right and help from them is expected. It makes them much better people later on in life.

Hope you can sort this out OP as it really was a deal breaker for me.

Not got time to read the whole thread yet but from the OP it just sounds like he's an arse. It goes way beyond being messy. The retaliation makes that pretty clear. Will be back to read properly later.

Imagine you had a daughter whose partner treated them this way. Wouldn't you be appalled? Wouldn't you think the main problem was that this man treated her like a servant and there was no true partnership? Wouldn't you be telling her that if he loved her, he wouldn't behave like this?

Wouldn't you want her to get out of there? Imagine if your ds treated his partner this way. Wouldn't you be ashamed? Wouldn't you be telling him that if he went on that way, he'd lose the relationship?

Wake up!

What. a. prick.

I don't know how you can stand it.

I generally agree with the tone of responses on here but with one caveat. My DH went through a patch of similar (but not so bad) bolshiness when DS was small. We eventually thrashed it out. The bottom line was that he felt he came a long way 5th in our household (behind me, DS, dogs) and, frankly, he was right. I was using him as a cash-generator and not much else. I showed a bit of appreciation for his (extremely) hard work in supporting us - he got reasonable.

And BS to that. What about her hard work in looking after his children and his house? It takes literally seconds to move a bag, take a cup to the sink, put a shirt in the laundry basket. She's hardly asking him to spring clean the house.

Surely they have guests/family over occasionally. Does it not bother him that his parents might see his mess, or would they conclude that the OP is being a 'bad wife'.

If you're prepared to put up with him, I would take him at his word. Leave his stuff around. Don't wash it, don't move it, just deal with yours and DCs' laundry and see how he goes.
But frankly his bullying retaliation is worrying. He dumps his stuff all over the house and the only place she's 'allowed' to move it to is the washing machine? Scary.