To tell DH that we ARE getting a cleaner - no excuses anymore.

[Writerwannabe83]

I'm going to cut a long story very short

I have suggested getting a cleaner to my DH numerous times because I'm absolutely sick of everything being left to me. He will sometimes really surprise me and go on a cleaning frenzy but it is very, very rare. I'd say of the day-to-day stuff it's usually all left to me. The only job he seems to think doing is the hoovering and even the. I have to ask him to do it.

He's somewhere between the 'not seeing mess' kind of guy and the guy who just can't be arsed. I'm just tired of it.

Whenever I have suggested a cleaner he has always said we don't need one, we aren't paying out for someone to clean the house when we can do it ourselves. I find it very ironic that he uses the word 'we' in this sentence. He makes empty promises about how he will help, blah, blah, blah, but nothing gets done. His favourite sentences are, "I will do it later." and "I will do it tomorrow." I'm tired of nagging him and fighting over it.

We have an 11 week old DS and when I was pregnant I told him that thongs would have to change when the baby came - but despite his assurances nothing has. I'm sick of looking at a dirty, messy house and feeling like it's down to me to sort it. Whenever DS is asleep I find myself doing housework, I never get any time off and I'm sick of it.

So I have decided that enough identify. I don't care how much it costs, all I know is that things have to change. I'm not doing it anymore!!

I will be ringing the company later to arrange a free valuation of our cleaning costs (for a one off big clean and also a regular thing) and DH is just going to have to like it! Decision has been made as far as I'm concerned!

Slightly worried about how lazy I might feel if I have people cleaning my house whilst I'm chilling out and watching the TV though....

"He still has time to go to the gym, see his friends, go to the pub etc - when do I have the chance to do this?"

Slightly off topic, but this doesn't seem fair at all.

I can't believe he gets to go to the gym and the pub when he's got an 11 week at home! WTF?! At this stage of 'new baby time' his time off should be going to work! :-D

Fair enough if he then takes the baby so you can go to the gym/go out to see a friend 'baby free' in between breastfeeds....

Patjen, I don't think you know what a cleaner does!!

The putting the dishwasher on, starting the washing machine etc tasks are ones that can be done in bits and bobs of time, which probably add up to your 1-2 hours a day, they happen everyday and the OP will still do them. What the cleaner will do is the task that take longer chunks of time - hoovering, mopping, cleaning bathrooms etc.

Hope you enjoy your cleaner Writer ignore the silly argument about it being " your job"

When I gave birth to our 3rd child DH took it upon himself to increase our cleaners hours from 2hrs a week to 2hours a day! It was like having a housekeeper.

She came in, washed, cleaned, ironed, cleared out my kitchen cupboards, put a meal on, etc etc. she even put ingredients in the bread maker and set it so that we had freshly baked bread every morning. This was complete luxury for me and I had the most brilliant time with my baby.

After 6 months, she had been so efficient he offered her a job in his company, not as a cleaner, in the office. But she still came and picked our ironing up for years. That was 12 years ago. I look back at that time and think it was one of the nicest things he's ever done for me ( not that he didn't do it for himself too ).

Oh, and I don't work now but I still have two cleaners who come in and blitz the house in an hour once a week.

You should each get equal amounts of leisure time, OP

do you need your DH's permission?

DH does not want me to spend money on lawn cutting and hedge cutting, but i can't do it myself (slipped disc back) and DH always plans to do it "later"... (i.e. never).

So I just book people in, they do the job, he sees it when he comes home. He is quite relieved he doesn't have to do it. It is like a silent agreement.

If I ASK him, he'll say "no", but I just get on with it, and take the money out of the joint account. And don't ask him everything. Same with a cleaner.

As he works full time, and I work part time as well s being the main responsible person for him and garden, I just don't run every decision past him.

If he were to protest, complain, I'd say" It needed doing, and you did not have time"

I'm not so fussed about DH's social life - I admit I am a little bit resentful but at the same time I do understand that whilst I'm breastfeeding I do have to sacrifice my social life a little, but I'm happy to do that. My point was more like if he's got time to socialise a few nights a week then he's got time to do some cleaning

not responsible for HIM, responsible for HOME

bravo - I have previously asked him permission but yesterday I told him

The thing that's so frustrating is that he is always telling me to relax during the day, he tells me not to worry about the cleaning and just enjoy my time when DS sleeps, but if that was the case when will the cleaning ever get done?

He tells me not to do it, he won't do it....so who does he think is going to do it? The fairies?

Sorry haven't read the thread - I think you (and anyone in a similar situation) should go for it if you can afford it - otherwise it means you are spending your life nagging and feeling resentment...it is really hard to have to constantly clean up after others...with no pay or gratitude.
We got one in a shared house - 5 of us a mix males & females...I had ended up doing most of it (lower filth threshold). After countless rotas etc not being followed it was wonderful just to have the communal areas clean...and not a lot of money shared between us all...
One of my flatmates had said we didn't need one - a waste of money - we could do the cleaning ourselves. And what needed cleaning then? Even that made me . I said the bathroom so he went off to do it - came back a few minutes later asking where the stuff for cleaning it was. I said in the 3 years you have lived here how many times have you cleaned the bathroom? His embarrassed answer was never..and he then agreed to getting the cleaner!

Op have read the whole thread somepeoples...well one posters comments are laughable. I am a sahp at the moment going back to work soon as have been off for several months, i have 2 children a 3 and a 6 year old. SHOCK HORROR i am getting a cleaner!!!!!!!! As of next week. Twice a week for 2 hours, they will not just clean though but change beds and bit of ironing for me too. My dh works full time and does do his fair share but i cannot keep up with it. Yes we too also argue over cleaning and actually i do believe it will make our marriage better as thats one of the sourceof arguments. I could do it myself of course, two hours a day TIDYING not cleaning and 6 hours over the weekend cleaning, but you know what my 3 year old wants me to play, play, play. Am im bored of saying not at the moment, go an occupy yourself i need to do the kitchen. Sod it i am soooooooo excited! And comments about women doing it in the 3rd world.....yes, but we dont live there do we. My parents, grandparents all coped, again yes, BUT if they could have afforded a cleaner im bloody sure they would have got one.

Enjoy your cleaner, but dont get them to not do ur dh bathroom, thats not nice.

@ unlucky - the other day I asked my DH to make the bed up with our spare bedding (our usual bedding was in the wash) and he actually had to ask where it was kept

The same when I asked him to fetch me a muslin cloth for DS. Baby has only been in our life for 11 weeks, maybe I'm expecting too much of him to actually know where DS's things are kept. Perhaps if he sorted out the laundry once in a blue moon he might know....

Ha, I would definitely expect him to know where the muslins are. He's obviously not been puked/pooed or weed on enough!!

Go for it!

But he's never going to stop being allergic to fairy liquid, is he?

Look, I know a married man with children who works 60-odd hours a week running his own business. He lives in a large house and his house is spotless; he enjoys the 3-4 hours on a saturday morning he spends cleaning. His wife doesn't mind a bit !
He finds the repetition and cleaning therapeutic, the rest of the time is an hour or so putting a wash on and dishwasher which they both do.

You know whether or not you get a cleaner is neither here nor there, really. It won't solve anything if the ONLY thing he does is cook and it never occurs to him to rinse out a cup.

So me saying you shouldn't and others saying you should is irrelevant really, as it is the seemingly little things that get to you.

He didn't change when you were BOTH doing the same things i.e. working at the same time, a time when it was clear that things should be 50/50, he is not going to now. He doesn't mind mess that's the truth of it.

So you relax your standards and put up with it or ask him to go if it bothers you that much.

or you get a cleaner.

You sound unhinged patjen, if you think divorce is preferable to getting a cleaner.

Writerwannabe, DH and I have been married 10 years. A couple of years ago we came to an agreement that I would pay for us to have Sky Sports as long as he watched it in the bedroom and did the ironing at the same time (I hate ironing).

To this day he still leaves the ironed clothes on the bed in piles because he 'doesn't know where DDs stuff goes'. We've lived in this house for 5 years and the drawers/wardrobe haven't moved.

Some men can be dicks but at least I'm not ironing any more

lteve - that sounds like a very good compromise.

patjen - I'm tired of telling you the same thing over and over again so form now on let's just agree to disagree. And I agree with genz if you think divorce is preferable over getting a cleaner then I worry about you.

Getting a cleaner for a few hours a week won't really make much difference at all, Gennz not if he won't help out the rest of the time. Which he doesn't seem to be able to do.

Anyway, it's symptom treatment all of this. The fact is that even when they were both working, he didn't do anything. THAT is so disrespectful; I'm sure even the most old-fashioned man thinks he really should do a bit when his spouse works, too.

And, yes, I've known people divorce over one of the spouse's inability to rinse out a cup.

To be honest, Writer my dh and I work full-time -on holiday at present- if he didn't help around the house at all, I would find it highly disrespectful.

Getting a cleaner won't help the fact that he has little regard for your feelings/thoughts.

Patjen you are right that it won't change the husband's attitude, but it will make the OP's life easier in the meantime until she may feel strong enough or ready to make some changes, so what is wrong with that? You were telling the OP she should be willing to do it all and sympathising with her DH!

actually i can see patjen's point on the divorce/cleaner thing. perhaps not in your situation, but a partner's total abdication of any responsibility of an important part (whatever that may be - cleaning, children, money, anything) of your shared life is not necessarily an unreasonable thing to LTB over, particularly if they are then not open to alternative suggestions about how to manage that situation, and are not willing to change.

i've said upthread that i don't think it's going to solve the problem of him being lazy with respect to housework, but it does solve the problem of a particular aspect of that housework falling on your shoulders, by contracting it out. i would be wary though writerwannabe of everything else still falling to you fulltime (tidying before the cleaner comes, general household admin and organising, looking after the baby), as this doesn't sound like fun even with the burden of the weekly clean contracted out

however, my view is always if you want a cleaner and can afford a cleaner then go for it, regardless of your circumstances

A lawyer working long hours has surely justification in hiring a cleaner

Why is justification necessary?

I'm at a loss to understand why the fact that a couple of hours housework is technically doable means that the OP must do it. Yes millions of women have blah blah blah and as you yourself point out patjen, there are women in the third world who look after small babies AND do back-breaking work on top? Sometimes involving walking 20 miles a day

But why does the fact that other women have looked after babies and done housework/other work/walk a gazillion miles at the same time mean it's wrong for someone who can afford it to outsource that to someone else? I genuinely don't understand that logic.

I could wash my car myself, but I get DH to take it to the car wash where they do it by hand and pay them to do it. I could paint my house myself but I pay a decorator to do it. Etc etc etc

Lots of things are perfectly doable but people opt to pay someone else to do them rather than doing it themselves. Why is this so wrong?

patjen I wanted to ask, what about healthy babies who:

1. Only catnap in the day?
2. Only sleep in someone's arms?
3. Don't sleep well at night, leaving the mother exhausted?

And I wondered where the four hour deep clean would fit in. But actually, I think those questions are irrelevant because even if you have a textbook perfect baby with reliable and conveniently timed sleep, I still doni think it's some kind of outrage to have a cleaner if you want one, simply on the basis that cleaning is dull and gross.

Your argument is based on the premise that Writer's husband is downtrodden and miserable at work with no leisure time (ignoring that he goes out regularly to the gym and pub) so his hard-earned wage shouldn't go on a cleaner. Well, even if he was miserable at work, would it really make him feel better if his wife was miserable at home? Would he really begrudge her putting her feet up and watching tv for an hour? Does her whole day have to be spent doing tasks - either baby related or housework?

Getting a cleaner isn't some kind of moral failure. You still have to do plenty of chores, which she will eg washing up, doing dishes and emptying bins. You just have someone to do the bigger tasks like mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms etc. So what if heali parents of healthy babies want one? If it doesn't impoverish the household - and if he can afford gym membership and regular trips to the pub then they aren't struggling - why not make everyone's lives a bit more pleasant?

And maybe he enjoys his job and finds it rewarding and fulfilling anyway. And she deserves to fi d her maternity leave fulfilling and rewarding. It's a precious and irreplaceable time, if she wants a cleaner so that she can enjoy it more then why not?

Well I feel she should be doing the bulk of the housework now, yes, but the fact is that when they both worked full-time in jobs he wouldn't do anything.

I got to be honest here and say that most of the men I know in this position accept that they should do some housework, too.

For him to not shows disregard for the op's feelings/thoughts. This has carried on now she is on maternity leave, he expected her to do it all when she was working without complaint, now she is at home, he'll expect it all to be done by her even more! After all, she's even in the vicinity to do it!

The cleaning is just symptomatic of a bigger problem; he doesn't listen to her and that can be very wearing. So you know, it's not nuts to suggest that people break up because of a dirty pile of dishes.

Enjoy having a cleaner. I cry when mine is on holiday because there's so much stuff that needs doing anyway, that to find another 2-4 hours in the week is just a huge headache.

My top tip with a partner who suggests (not any more) that we could "do it ourselves" is to get the schedule from the agency that describes what the cleaner will do. It will read very similar to your post about doing the washing up v cleaning the kitchen from top to toe. Then you have an actual list to point to when DH suggests that you can split it between you. Trust me, he'll reconsider cleaning the bathroom when he sees a list that is more involved than squirting some domestos down the loo....