aibu to ask which was harder? being a SAHP or working?

[jellybelly701]

I've just had yet another argument with DP, he was moaning that it is "disgusting" that has no clean clothes for work. I understand his point he should have clean clothes for work, but at the minute we have no tumble dryer and the washing line is out of use due to fleas from the garden hitching a lift on our lovely clean clothes and biting the crap out of me. so our tiny clothes horse has been mainly full of 9mo DS clothes. Also he just leaves his clothes in the bedroom, I don't know what's clean and what isn't. If he actually put them in the washing machine they might get done more often.

So then he brings up the fact that for the past few days I haven't done much cleaning, I've cleaned the living room and kitchen but I haven't really bothered with upstairs much. We are both quite messy people, him more than me. so what should be a every couple of days/once a week household chores are actually everyday ones. There is ALWAYS some cleaning that needs to be done, I can get the whole house up to MIL visiting standards and by the next day it's like I didn't do a thing.

My daily routine is so tedious and repetitive it is driving me insane. Just once I would like to come down stairs in the morning to a clean living room, to not have to move plates and glasses into the kitchen and take empty drinks bottles into the conservatory before cracking on with cleaning the kitchen hobs and work surfaces. we have a DS so my days are repetitive enough as it is (having food thrown/spat into your face 3x a day anyone?) I don't mind this part of course because I love my son, but what I do not love is cleaning.

I am still very sleep deprived and I have been reduced to tears I'm that tired. The broken sleep in the morning from his fecking alarms doesn't help the situation. I managed to persuade him to only set three last night instead of the usual 100, that just meant that I had to fully wake up at five in order to wake him up, he wouldn't get up, not until 7:30 (I did sleep in short fifteen minute bursts in this time)

DP seems to think that all this is easy, that women seem to manage juggling childcare with housework all the time and have no problem so why can't I? DP does work very hard at his job and I am incredibly grateful that he goes to work to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. But I feel that I deserve some appreciation too.

I'm not trying to compete at 'who does the most' I just want to show DP that it's just not as easy as he thinks to be a SAHP

So which did you find harder? Being a SAHP or working FT?

I'm sure you're not a sham longdistance

By the way, op, you do sound very isolated if he's the only person you get to speak to. Is there any way you can get out of the house at all? You sound like you need contact with friendly other humans.

I think your DP shouldn't be using a word like "disgusting" about his laundry situation, and he should be doing some basic tidying up after himself around the house.
Both of these things would show an appropriate level of respect for you and all that you do in your role, which is primarily focused on raising your son.
HTH
BTW My DH takes responsibility for washing his own clothes, though I do occasionally put some of his things in when I'm putting a load on (especially if he's put them on top of the washing machine)
I'm returning to work soon after a short break as a SAHM. I think the early years with a family are always quite full on whatever path you take through them :-)

Do you mind me asking where you are? Is there a language issue?

If not, maybe a bit of internet research could turn up some social gathering in the local area that you could walk to. It's a bit daunting making contact with new people but the alternative is continuing as you are, which sounds claustrophobic, frankly.

No plumb I mean he actually sets numerous alarms to go off every 1-2 minutes. He isn't pressing snooze.

See what I don't get, is how some men coped before their wife had kids. Surely single and childless men do their own washing? Why do they suddenly need it done for them when they become fathers?

I can only assume that these men are c*s. Although the wives can be enabling too. I have a friend who washes her husbands clothes, I just don't understand it.

In answer to your question, I was only SAHP for six months, then back to work full time, apply all the usual cliches here re having a hot cup of tea and peeing alone. I hated being at home, it nearly killed me. I will never do it again, and DS will be an only.

I cannot believe a grown man would set his alarm to go on and off for 2 hours every morning!

That and his other comments to you, show he has zero respect for you.

He's a horrible arse. Do you want to share your life with someone who treats you like this? If not, tell him and see how he try's to improve the way he treats you.

Don't be grateful because he works; he's not doing you a favour - all capable adults work to pay the bills unless they are at home caring for their child which is what you are doing.

If you were working then he'd have to take 50% responsibility for child care and housework. As it is he should be working and doing 50% of the housework and sharing childcare when he's home. I assume you don't down tools for the evening when he gets home so why should he?

My DH used to be out of the house from 7-7 Mon to Fri and I used to practically hurl Dd at him when he walked through the door

Work as a partnership and tasks will be a lot less tedious. Don't buy into the SAHP does all wife work whilst the Great Provider slogs at the coal face shit! You're his equal not his handmaiden.

I found being a SAHTM a lot easier because I got to dictate what got done and when in the daytime. Totally my decision about how the time was spent and the chores done. DCs demands being taken into account, of course.

I found it quite hard to have others allocate my time when I went back to work.

At his first alarm, get up and get the baby. Put baby in your bed, go and sleep on the coach. babyproof bed first He'll get up.

And I think I'd probably hang his clothes up in the flea-ridden garden if I did it at all.

depends on age of kids IMO.

I worked 3 days a week when I had a one year old and that was waaaaay easier than subsequently being at home with 2 under 2.
However, it got a lot easier when the oldest turned 3 abd went tp nursery 3 mornings a week.

My youngest just turned 4 and the last year has been a piece of piss tbh, though dull beyond belief despite me working evenings, studying and training for a marathon.

IMO unless you are really into your house or have a conveyor belt of young children SAHM is tedious.

SAHM much harder than working when kids young. Easier once they are at school

Personally I've found them hard in different ways. FT work outside the home was hard because of the never-ending 'go to work' factor and the intensity of it--you can't just juggle your day around to spend the morning with a friend while you work. However, looking after twin toddlers is hard because it is physically and emotionally exhausting. I fall into bed at the end of the day and can't really escape or take a holiday unless I pay someone silly money or beg the grandparents to drive 3 hours down to our place.

I am currently a sahp.

my H works hard around the house too, as I have health issues.

He did once say to me (when I had moaned about him leaving dirty crockery around): 'oh, I have put it in the zone of the dishwasher'.

I said: fine, I'll put your dinner in the zone of the cooker then.

He likes a decent meal to come home to.
He puts stuff in the dishwasher now!

Seriously, don't pick up his dirty linen - and the laundry isn't 'disgusting' it just isn't done for good reason (d/d and fleas in gdn)

You are not his mum.

oh if you're ds is only 9 months and you're sleep deprived then you're in the very worst of it, op. sympathies

I think that being a SAHP has higher highs but lower lows than working, so it depends on which end of the spectrum you're at - and when home with kids the high highs and low lows can happen the same hour as well!

I've had a great experience as a SAHM (dc are almost 3 and almost 1) as tend to have more high highs than low lows but the hard days are SO hard because you've got no-where else to go to "get away" from your job, not spontaneously anyway. It's also tough when being at home slowly erodes your self-esteem so I get that for some people it's much harder than work

You are in the state you are in because your DH is a massive steaming dog turd of an excuse for a person.

It is nothing to do with being SAHM/working. Both are hard. But everything is twenty times harder when you are being actively sabotaged by living with a prick.

Do you know what I'd do? Ask - no, tell - on pain of separation - for him to go elsewhere for a fortnight. A fortnight, so a proper stab at it. No alarms - proper sleep - that ALONE is a major killer. Your own mess to organise, no other adult fucking it all up by leaving shit everywhere, then expecting you to magically know how to sort it and in what order to facilitate THEIR life schedule (that's impossible to do, by the way - if you want other people to do stuff to make your life easier, TELL THEM WHAT IT IS YOU NEED DOING, OR MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO DO IT! by e.g. putting your dirty clothes in the wash.

Get rid of him for a while and see the difference. Really. Only trouble is, you probably won't want him back... because what you will see is that your life is easier and happier without him...

I am a SAHP and find it very difficult to do housework when the DC are around.

Anything I put away is immediately fascinating and is taken straight back out again. I hang up laundry and it's great fun, running under it and grabbing at it and pulling it down. While I'm doing dishes is prime time to hit a brother.

DH is not helping much at the moment, so it doesn't get done beyond essentials. But he doesn't moan at me about it. If he wants something done, he does it. He doesn't tell me to do it or moan at me that it hasn't been done. If there's a moan, it's that we need to do it and he does mean we. I would be very unimpressed if he started to tell me it was all my responsibility because I was at home.

Your DH is being a complete and utter prick - his attitude needs to change, immediately. It is not acceptable to treat you the way he is.

You are a SAHM not a SAH do-everything-for-DH

At the very least he needs to

• Grow up - he's an adult and a parent, not a slothy teen.
• Put his dirty clothes in laundry basket/washing machine.
• Put his cups/plates/rubbish where they belong before he goes to bed

You need a new rule - neither of you sits down until the other does. Once he gets home from work, chores are split. Dinner/dishes/ds/tidying up/other bits.

Yes he has been at work all day, but those chores need doing in the evening - so you split them. End of.

Other things that you could do in the evenings as well - put the washing on & rubbish out etc so that you wake up to a clean and tidy house.

It's not good for you to be living in a messy house and you both need to work on putting things away rather than just putting them down. It's easy once it becomes a habit :)

As for not getting out much - that needs to change. You need to get out, see a bit of life and make some friends, chat to people. Being stuck at home with only DS for company and DH when he comes home is not good for you!

Put your foot down about things changing!

fleas in the garden though, what's that all about?? I thought they needed a live animal host to survive?? have never heard of what you describe

Oh, and I assume from the alarms thing that he's also a useless unmotivated shite. So, he PLANS to get up at 5, but won't, so sets alarm after alarm as he knows he won't, then gets up at 7 like a loser anyway?

Good God. Really, do you want this to be your life? A life with a twat like this?

And I would turn off his alarms if he set a lot. Set your own, for the time he realistically needs to get out of bed, and literally kick him out of bed. Setting a lot of alarms does not make anyone get up any earlier than they intend.

I found being a SAHM significantly easier in terms of housework, even when my dc were small. But while I was predominantly a SAHP, I was working one day a week, and that one short day a week out of the house did keep me sane.

I'm a firm believer that a SAHP should do the vast majority of the housework, but if you're having to come down to dirty plates being left in the living room overnight then your DH is a slob, and that I wouldn't be happy to deal with.

Housework doesn't include picking up after someone to the extent that they don't even have to put their own drinks bottles in the bin or their plates in the sink/dishwasher.

I found staying at home far far easier. I suppose it depends on individual careers but I regularly pull 14 hour days and still have all the housework etc to do when I get home.

Working can still be preferable as it can give a sense of purpose etc but fail to see how staying at home is harder.

Sorry, you need to put your foot down about the alarms. Why can't he sleep on the sofa/in another room if his sleep is so important it outweighs that of a new mum and a tiny baby. I wouldn't, just wouldn't, have my sleep disturbed like that. Under any circumstances (my husband wouldn't try to do it either but that's another problem).

As for housework, my husband once commented on my houseworking ability when at home with a small child, or rather he used to make 'constructive comments' on how I could improve. I told him my home was my place of work, so, if he carried on, I'd be visiting his work the very next day to help point out all the things he hadn't done and to make some helpful suggestions on how to improve (with the baby in tow as well). Mysteriously he didn't fancy this option and shut up about the house.

Neither of us love housework, it's boring, we muddle along (no cleaner), would your life be improved if you knackered yourself out and had a sparkling home? No, because you are married to a not very nice person.

I think it's time for some boundaries and lines in the sand, the first being you never ever disturb a sleeping mum and baby.