To refuse to clean the blender?

[IAmNotACleaningService]

DH goes through phases all the time that last for a month or two. It was swimming for a while, and now it's smoothies! Whenever he is in one of his obsessions phases I am expected to facilitate it.

Anyway, when he makes smoothies he uses the blender. And every bloody piece of fruit and drop of milk we have in the house. He then forgets to clean the blender and worktop and leaves a smelly, sticky mess for me to clean up. Our blender doesn't go in the dishwasher as it needs taking apart to clean, and takes ages to do.

He made a smoothie yesterday afternoon and left the blender jug, the blender machine and loads of spilt smoothie all over the worktop. I left it and left it but to be honest it looked gross so I've had no choice but to clean the worktop today. DH then phoned me from work and asked me to wash the blender up because "He'll fancy a smoothie tonight" Oh and can I go and get some bananas and strawberries too?

I told him no to both of the above, and apparently I am being unreasonable because I have Mondays off work. I would wash the blender if it was easier to clean but it is absolutely caked with thick dry smoothie as he didn't even bother to rinse it after use.

AIBU?

Where does this idea come from that men don't care about this stuff? OK I've not heard a blender-specific convo before but I'd definitely been with a group of blokes in the pub bitching about how their other halves getting ready to go out and leaving clothes all over the bed, powder make up getting into the air and settling on their shirt.... And a big beef is that the first thing they have to do when they get home is not go to bed after a night out but clear clothes off the bed, sigh, bloody wife/gf. That seems pretty comparable to me - a minor instance of somebody not tidying up after themselves that becomes not minor because it inconviniences the other person. It's a big sexist illusion is that men are 'above things' like petty annoyances which they ARENT AT ALL but some ridiculous people insist on persuading the stereotype.

OP, I agree you probably need to talk to him. And I think the idea of putting the dirty blender back into its box is a great one!

Ah , the mythical homogenous man hedgetrimmer.

Bit like the mythical homogenous woman.

Neither actually exist... What with us all being individual, nuanced and semtinent beings an' all.

So he knew he'd left it caked in crud and was executing you to clean it? Tell him to bugger off and clean it himself.

Oh and I use my stick blender in the high narrow jug it came with to make smoothies. Super quick and bugger all washing up.

To cut the costs, frozen fruit is fab plus it makes it milkshake like....

I cant imagine a man being so upset over a dirty blender!They would either clean it,or ignore it,not start a thread on mumsnet bitching about it.That is why we dont run the world yet!

No, the reason women don't run the world yet is because of dumb doormats like you who run around skivvying after men and giving them unrealistic expectations of the rest of us.

Reminds me of my previous job where the kitchen was a tip due to lazy colleagues not cleaning up after themselves and some doormat woman I worked with took in her cleaning products from home and gave it a scrub down. The fool. Lazy dirty people will never learn if you keep on cleaning up after them!

You are twisting my words

I am not a servant to anyone but i do enjoy looking after my family,so does dh,maybe i am just lucky,i dont know what other peoples dhs are like.This just would not be an issue in my house.I would either leave it or clean it up.

The last few posts sound quite nasty and bitter,its no suprise you have husbands who leave crap lying around everywhere and harve no respect for you if you are this poisonous.

Really? Tbh my partner is fantastic. He's done a 12 hour shift at work but still washed the dishes up after tea.

I had respect for my (now) x husband. But then it waned. It's hard to respect a man who says 'the limescale the builds uo behind the lip bit of the bath, I noticed whilst I've been getting showered that it's build up and you haven't cleaned it. I didn't say anything for the last couple of months with you being pregnant, i thought you might have trouble bending down to clean it, but now you've had dd, are you going to get a cloth an wipe it?'. Other thoughtful things he'd do was to walk out of the en suite to tell me the bin in there needs emptying. Or why should he put his clothes away if I was the one who'd washed, dried and ironed them then I should finish the job and put them away. This mans only contribution was to cut the small patch of grass once a fortnight. He wouldn't even wash my car when he was washing his.

I was working full time at home and part time on a night shift job. Maybe if you had that kind of a life hedgetrimmer you'd see why the OP and most of the contributors to this thread thinks the OP's dh is out of order - it's similar not ok behaviour

Oh btw - in the 2 months he'd left it to build up, never wiped the bath after his shower once.....

YANBU DH wanted to try the green juice diet so I bought him a juicer as a surprise. I said I was not willing to dismantle and wash juicer in the mornings, but if DH was in a big hurry any time he could run a sink full of hot soapy water and dunk the parts in before he left. I would then finish the process. He has never failed to clean the juicer, even if he was rushing to leave the house at 5 am. He also buys his own green stuff, although if I am shopping I will top up if he is running low.

I'd buy the fruit if I was going out anyway. But as I usually do the food shopping then I'd just increase the usual fruit order to cover the smoothies as well.

I wouldn't wash the blender though, or even if I had done on a couple of occasions to be nice, that would soon stop if my partner ever had the gall to suggest it was my job rather than his.

OP, has he washed it yet? Has he made more smoothies? Or is it a total stand-off while the blender starts growing new life forms?

YANBU OP, he is taking you for granted. I'm guilty of doing this to my DP sometimes, though I wouldn't treat him like unpaid help and call him up to pick up and run around after me!I do him favours and he does me but if I took the piss and constantly did it then I'd expect DP to tell me to jog on, not just refuse my unreasonableness.

Does the blender stand off continue?

And YANBU, this is nothing to do with being kind and everything to do with you declining to be treated like a servant.

He's also greedy and selfish to scoff the fruit intended for everyone, including his children, and not replace it.

In our house it's the responsibility of the person who made the mess to clean it up. If DH called/texted to say he'd forgotten to wash the blender, could I put it in to soak, I'd do it. Your DH's request I'd laugh at and refuse. If he said "if you go shopping today, please could you.." I'd do it. If he asked me to go and get him things, I probably wouldn't. It's more likely that he'd tell me he intended to go to the shops on the way home and check whether he should be buying anything else.

So he called her and asked her to clean the blender? He knew he hadn't cleaned it and called ahead to make sure the twat-support system was working.

He knew he hadn't cleaned it and called ahead to make sure the twat-support system was working.

Nail on head.

Come back OP, dying to know what he said when he came home to the mess he'd made and no fruit!

Damn, thought there was an update!

Don't give in! YANBU.

I have just read this in utter disbelief.

Why would a grown man not rinse out the blender?
Why would said grown man ring up to ask his wife to do it for him?
Why would someone extrapolate from this that men are not bothered by cleanliness?

When I read comments like this I assume that people making sweeping generalisations have never met a family like ours where it tends to be the other way around.

Did he sort out the blender in the end OP?

Um, hedgtrimmer, the reason women don't "rule the world" is because we live in a patriarchal society where everything is set up for the benefit of men at the expense of women. It really is as simple as that, and absolutely nothing to do with women "being petty" about entitled men enjoying their patriarchy-given position of privilege and expecting women to service them domestically.

I'm equally baffled as to how you think a woman complaining about being treated like a domestic servant would cause men to actually to respect and stop cleaning up after themselves. If my DH "lost respect" for me because I refused to be a doormat, I would show him the door fairly rapidly. Luckily, that would never happen as my husband is a reasoning adult who accepts that a) the house is as much his responsibility as mine and b) has enough respect for me to clean up his own mess.

cause men to actually lose respect

I have never been so on edge before re a kitchen blender.

Please please please OP just tell me what happened.

I bet she ended up doing it.