DP wants me to pick his dirty clothes up after him.

[Hairynigel]

Boring old housework AIBU, sorry.
I'm a sahm with a 19mo ds, Dp runs his own company full time. I do all housework, (sometimes on weekends he will pitch in with washing up, tidying etc) I cook tea most nights, do all ds's bath times etc.

Anyway, dp has a habit of getting changed after work and leaving hs clothes artfully sprawled out on the bedroom floor. I then take it upon myself to shove said clothes at the bottom of his wardrobe where they can no longer bother me.
Dp came home today and started having a moan about this, apparently looking after ds only takes up a small percentage of my day and I should make it a priority to do more housework! So basically he wants me to start sniffing the armpits of his tops or crotch of his underwear to see if it needs washing or not, then wash it for him, then iron it and then put it away neatly.

AIBU for thinking he can pick up his own damn clothes and put them in the wash basket himself? Apparently his days are stressful enough without having to do this as well...

DP does our washing (long and boring story). Obviously, he only puts in stuff that is in the washing basket. I suppose I could try a bit of pant-strewing, but suspect they would stay strewn...

Threads like this make me so glad to be a Lone Parent.

My children are 12 and 9. Both of them know that if their laundry doesn't go into their basket, it doesn't get washed.

If children are old enough to know that, a grown man should be.

I can't believe the level of disrespect so many women tolerate from men. This thread is really sad.

Wait, what century is this? What hemisphere? Eh?

What BasilRathbone said.

Tell him to stop taking the piss, you're not his mum.

2rebecca well for me, i am not a mummy replacement - after seeing the way his parents live - they all live shit about all over the floor and DP's room at 'home' has piles of clean and dirty clothes everywhere.

He also was living alone when i left him, he just lived like a pig then too. It seemed petty to end it with someone who i liked in other ways over housework. I also work full time and am pregnant now. He has got better tho recently, and is now saying he will hire a cleaner for a couple of hours per week.

If he suddenly changed to be like this i would have left and if he ever expected me to clean up after him i would too - he just doesn't care!

It is so clever how many women are brainwashed into thinking a man's attitude to housework is "petty".

It really isn't.

It's a problem every day. If you live with someone who thinks that he has a god-given right to expect you to pick up his shit, what does that say about his level of respect for you? How a man behaves about housework goes to the core of your relationship with him - how much respect he has for you, how much care, how much consideration.

If he thinks he's above boring tedious crappy jobs at home, but they're good enough for you to do, then that means that he thinks his time, his labour, his life, are more valuable than your's. Seriously, it does.

I know this is very uncomfortable for many people to think about and men have convinced us that it is too trivial to even discuss, but if more women discussed the politics of housework, before they got together with a man, more of them would move on as soon as they saw that sense of entitlement and disrespect that so many men have got and they would have more equal relationships in their lives. Housework is where all the pretended equality goes out the window.

My Side of the bedroom is clean, sparse and tidy. His is overflowing drawers and a growing pile of clothes....not my problem.
When he leaves his empty deo and shampoo bottles on the windowsill in the bathroom, that is where they stay,sometimes for weeks on end. I don't care, if he can't be arsed to carry his crap downstairs then why should I do it?
And when he leaves shitt stains in the toilet, I just stick a post it note on the bog brush saying "USE ME". Gets right up his nose, but I'm not cleaning his shit up (literally), I have enough shit to clean up with 3 DCs nappies!

God that's disgusting.

No wonder rich people in the old days, had separate rooms and dressing rooms and stuff.

It really solved the problem of not having to have some slob share your personal space.

i totally agree basil if my DP expected me to do the housework, and behaved as tho his time was more precious than mine then yes i would leave (or i wouldn't have even gone further with the relationship).

I understand the parity begins at home pov. But what when your dp doesn't want to do it and doesn't want you to do it either? At the weekend DP wants to do stuff together and in the week we are too tired to do housework. When we do do a massive tidy, the house is messy within a day because he just starts dropping stuff all over the place again or washing up piles up (if you don't get in from work till 7 then have to cook dinner it really doesn't leave much room or energy for cleaning for either of us). Sadly it becomes a race to the bottom because i think why bother.

I'd gather his clothes up and put them in the bin. He'd soon learn to pick them up for himself.

For me, it's about the space in the home. I get really depressed and slightly hysterical if the place is a tip, so I jsut couldn't live with someone who had so little consideration for my comfort.

I used to flat-share with this guy who was a bit OCD about keeping the place clean and tidy, it used to do my head in as I used to be a bit of a slob. But I always made the effort to ensure that I didn't leave my shit around the communal areas as I knew it would really make him uncomfortable. And I hadn't promised to love and cherish him for the rest of my life, or wasn't involved in a romantic relationship wiht him - but I had enough respect and consideration for him, to consider the effect of my actions in being a slob, on his comfort and I made the effort to make him happy, because why would I want the person I share my home with, to feel permanently jittery and uncomfortable? And so for me, the fact that so many men are not prepared to go to anything like as much effort for their wives or partners, is unpardonable. If you respect and love someone, you should have some regard for their comfort.

Spuddy - get a dishwasher!

Seriously, that instantly cuts down on the amount of mess in a house - you never have to have dirty dishes hanging about or piling up in the sink, it's always in the dishwasher waiting to be washed.

ashamed... I couldn't live like that and certainly couldn't sleep in a bedroom like that. Probably why I always end up bloody cleaning!

I don't get all disrespectful wanker business though. Is there really no greater injustice you could get than a smelly tshirt?

It bothers me when things aren't picked up, but it's not a gauntlet thrown down to fire my piss boiler up. My husband would happily wear socks that don't match, one that hadn't been washed no doubt, probably with a hole in it but I really couldn't muster more than a good tut over it.

He's generally very nice. I like him. What more is there? Nobody is perfect. I've got foibles by the bucket load. What's a pair of mucky socks matter when you love each other?

It would matter very much to me, it's a dealbreaker. I don't want to spend my time doing more housework than I need to, because it's dull. So I expect everyone I share my space with, to do their fair share so that we can all do more interesting stuff than housework and yet still live in a clean and comfortable environment.

But if others are happy with the people they live with making their environment uncomfortable and having more leisure time than they have because they do less boring housework, that's fine isn't it, they have different priorities than me and different dealbreakers, perhaps ones that I wouldn't even notice, let alone have as dealbreakers. The OP isn't happy though, that's why she posted.

I do love these threads. They make me feel normal.
You either say right I shall wash but only if you put the stuff in the laundry basket if you dont then I wont. Stick to it. No arguing about the division of labour whose time is more precious or why you werent put on this earth to be his mother/slave/saint. If its not in there then its does not need washing and no sniffing required of pits, crotches or otherwise(Dear God).

Yay yay yay to everything basil rathbone has said, I was trying to formulate my thoughts into coherence and you got there first.

Dh has always known "if it isn't in the washing basket, it won't get washed".

Ds is 5. I am working to train him up. A few days ago, he was getting dressed for school and shouted "mum I only have one pair of pants left, could you please wash some more for me, thank you mummy" manners maketh the man....l

twatty I agree to a certain, my DH is wonderful in every other way. Doesn't stop you getting frustrated.

'to a certain extent'

It never ceases to amaze me how often DP is surprised that he has no socks or pants left. I have two laundry baskets in a very small bedroom that he could touch with his foot if he shimmied down the bed a bit and stretched. I used to scurry round picking them up off the flOor, but then thought "what the fuck am I doing?" I know for a fact that he did his own washing while living with his mother, so I stopped doing it this means my side of the bed is lovely and tidy and I can get a Hoover to it regularly. I always have clean knickers and socks or tights. He, however, can not and does not. Not my problem.

Sorting through somebody's dirty, floor-strewn laundry is a guaranteed, sure-fire way to heat up the passion and desire for said person.

Nothing would make me want my DH more than to daily check his underwear for skid marks before dutifully carrying his wet towel from the middle of the bed to the towel rail in the bathroom, carefully folding and hanging it up because he's far too important to do it himself, of course.

Um... NOT...!

Of course, it would ostensibly be simpler for everyone if my WOH DH left his wet towel on the bed, stepped out of his clothes and left them there for me, a SAHM to sort, and for me to just do it, unquestioningly. Much simpler for everyone.

But, quite frankly - fuck that. Being treated like a skivvy, a maid who has nothing better to do that act as a 24/7 man/child-servant to everyone in the house would have me go from loving him to resenting him, to actively disliking and eventually loathing him and would pretty much kill any sexual desire I feel for him. I am not being overly dramatic. It would.

Lucky you and lucky your DH if picking up after him as if he's an untrained Neanderthal toddler still has you fancying the pants off him and wanting him as a sexual person, but it certainly doesn't work that way for me.

It would be semi-interesting to know what the sex lives of couples where the DH expects the DW to run round after him is like. Do you still fancy the arse off him, even though he treats you like a skivvy? Are you always up for sex with him? Considering how inconsiderate he is out of the bedroom, does he morph into an incredible, giving lover each and every time in the bedroom?

Thank Christ I have a DH who isn't an arse. I do not understand people who put up with this shit, and then go on to marry it and have children with it.

DH used to leave his clothes on the floor - really annoyed me. I used to get really cross about it. Until I just moved the laundry basket around to his side of the bed and voila - problem solved. DHs clothes now go in the laundry basket. (Mainly because there isn't enough room for them to go on the floor now!). Simples. We're both happy!

Agree with everything said by Basil and others. In addition, why are people blaming their DHs' mothers for their slobby behaviour. Surely they all had two parents?

It doesn't make you wonder too much why some women go off sex

they don't go off the sex itself, they simply lose respect for and stop fancying the entitled slob they are living under the same roof as

or, if they are brainwashed enough to pick up after the said entitled slob day after day (as well as everybody else), they are too tired to fancy anybody