To want to know the honest truth about how much your DH does around the house?

[ClawHandsIfYouBelieveInFreaks]

Because I am so tired of mine being shite at housework. To clarify, he works 9-5.30 in a very physical job, leaves at 8.00am and gets home at 6 so he is tired. He generally works 5 full days a week...and he does jack shit in the house.

I work from home on average about 3 hours per day. I do the school runs on public transport with 2 dds. All the housework and all the basic stuff for the DDs such as taking them to their dance lessons on weekends doing their homework with them and most of the shopping and all of the cooking.

DH does a supermarket run once a week and the DIY things. He does take the DDs swimming or to the park on a Sunday and he really enjoys that.

He mucks in a tiny bit with bedtimes sometimes.

Is this fair? He had a go at me this morning due to the recycling not being sorted into their tubs ready to go out. I maintain that he should do that as I do ALL THE OTHER STUFF and I hate doing recycling. I put it outside in bags....he could then put it into the correct tubs and carry them out but he thinks I should sort them into their tubs ready for him to put out.

Is he a lazy fuck or am I being overly demanding given that he works 6 days a week? I don't mind doing the cleaning and cooking as to be fair, 3 hours work per day at home is hardly back breaking and I'm here anyway aren't I? But surely he could do the recycling!?

We both work full time, similar jobs, similar hours. We divide the household chores fairly evenly, though I probably do more in the way of cleaning (it matters more to me than to him). My husband cooks at least half the time, nearly always cleans up after dinner, vacuums, does the shopping at least half the time, usually puts out the bins. I do all the laundry, clean the bathrooms, sweep and mop the hard floors, deep clean the kitchen, cook and shop the other half of the time, do the general tidying up, all the household admin. We have outsourced care of the garden.

If I worked considerably fewer hours than my husband, I would take on more household tasks. And that is one of many reasons why I would never want to give up working outside the home.

Sorcha The OP is talking about 2 school age children, so the amount of childcaring she does is limited to before and after school. Even if she had babies/toddlers I would disagree that housework should be split 50/50 - after all if you are the one at home, it is perfectly possible to tidy up as you go along and (e.g.) put a load of washing on. It is physically impossible for a parent working out of the house to do this.

claws your hubby sounds wonderfull to me .mines helped with the children when they were small .i was asahm.so he done nothing else .but he did work long hours .and i liked being with my boys .only problem is my boys are also useless god help the wife they get .hope she is the stay at home type .

What's all this doing the bins I keep hearing? Are the DHs making it look like a massive job, or do you have a different system to me?

We've got a kitchen bin, with a black bag in it, and it gets emptied once a day or more, and the black bag goes in the wheelie bin - once a week the wheelie bin gets put out at kerbside, then brought back in. Recycling gets shoved in a bag and dropped off at the local recycling centre in a car park on the way to school, once a fortnight or so...takes about 5mins to shove the stuff in the appropriate containers, then I'm on my way home again?

Ha Ha Daryl it's not the Dhs that are making it look like a massive job, just one of the nastiest/heaviest jobs that us women prefer not to do. Our waste has to be sorted at source, bags split/dribble/can be quite heavy.

It's a little bit of penance to remind men about the drudgery of housework.

Daryl we have two boxes with a lid for plastic, another two for glass and card...then one main bin for rubbish and a big tub for food waste....the main bin only gets collected once a fortnight and the recycling once a week...we have no car.

So it's a job to manage them all.

SAHP who has kids with them full time, and a WOHP - pretty much equal housework, unless the kids are a dream and let you do housework easily around them.

SAHP with kids in pre-school/school and time alone in the house with no work or studying to do, and a WOHP - SAHP should do a lot more housework.

We currently do 50/50 as we both work f/t and care solo for DC a lot. But at some point next year DC will get their funded hours, and so DP will be home alone a hell of a lot more during the week. So he knows he'll start doing even more of the housework.

I work 21 hours over 4 days. I also do all kids taxi-ing/organising/school and activity stuff, all the cooking, cleaning, toilets, laundry, gardening and easy DIY like painting. I walk the dog on weekdays. Recycling gets put out daily in the right box by either of us.

Husband works full time, out from 7.30-5.30. He fills and empties the dishwasher every night, makes the kids sandwiches and irons at the weekend. He also does the bills/sorts out car stuff, and walks the dog at the weekend.

The kids shower themselves now, but when they were little we shared bath/bedtimes.

We pay for someone to do tricky DIY.

It feels like a reasonable divide to me because we both have similar amounts of free time. It was harder on me when the kids were young I think.

Mine does fuck all. And he doesn't work. But he does ferry DCs around when required. I'm not exactly a domestic goddess either but will pitch in when needed. Thankfully we have a brilliant housekeeper / cleaner who accepts that our house is always going to be like a student squat.

I think it annoys me that once he's home, he sits down and that's that. I don't stop.

Oh I see, fair enough with the bins thing then - I'm down in the bowels of the country, it will take about 15 years for the arrangements the rest of you have for council-provided services, to filter down to us

At the moment it's about 60/40 me/him - though we both work full time. But that is because he has serious back problems and if he is on his feet too much, he flares up and then cannot do anything. It isn't worth pushing it, he really does what he can. It isn't going to get better, he finds it very frustrating.

We both work f/t.

thurlow is right. huge difference between sahp with school aged dc and younger dc. With a toddler I tidy as I go but annoyingly toddler messes as he goes and school aged dc are no better. Neither is dh for that matter.

All the washing.
All the ironing.
Half the cooking.
All the shopping.

About half the cleaning - all the bathroom cleaning.

We've got a kitchen bin, with a black bag in it, and it gets emptied once a day or more, and the black bag goes in the wheelie bin

How many of you live in your house? Surely you're not filling a black bag every day of rubbish?
And if not that's a huge waste of black bags.

We have one black bag in the kitchen bin and that stays there all week. On a Sunday I empty the bathroom bin (largish as have one dc still in pull ups) into it and it goes out. It's all non recyclables, no food as have seperate food waste, so nothing smelly or that could go off. Once a week is plenty here.

A lot. But he has OCD. If I don't do EVERYTHING down to putting away washing up immediately rather than leaving it to dry then putting it away he has to do it.
I do washing, washing up, the bathroom.
He does hoovering most the time, the washing at the bottom of the basket or if I've had a day off from it and all the cooking.
He won't let me cook.

DH hoovers the stairs & all rooms upstairs once a week. He takes bins out to be collected but doesn't put the rubbish Into the outside bins. He cuts grass & washes cars when told for the 20th time! He generally does the tumble drying of clothes as machine in shed & I hate going out to it. He doesn't sort the clothes after.

He is disgustingly messy & it's 99% of our rows. After living together 5 yrs you would have thought he would have wised up!! I refuse to be broken & insist on him tidying up after himself.

I do everything else inc household admin & budgeting - his maths is shite. My dad does all our DIY.

When I was recovering from an op & sick in pregnancy he did all housework & I wasn't too concerned about the standards to be honest!

I like doing housework, I take pride in it but it's getting the time. I'm off on maternity leave & hoping to go back 3 days but I imagine house roles will remain same. DH does 3 x 12hr shifts every wk & has a 4 day Wkend.

Hmm not an awful lot. He cleans out and lights the fire most days, cuts he grass and washes the cars.
He tidies up the kitchen and loads the dishwasher after I've cooked.
I bake most evenings and he always helps tidy up afterwards.
He hoovers if I ask him, tidies kids toys away and most nights he is home he does bath and puts the children to bed.
He doesn't cook really but will make the kids tea if I am busy or will make me lunch/sandwich.
He puts the bin and recycling out when prompted too.

Mine does way more than I do. It annoys me to be honest. He washes up before eating.

I sit down and have finished my meal before he eats. I can only eat if piping hot, he's not comfy if there are dishes.

I disagree with those saying if you're a sahp with kids at home you should spend all your time playing eith them. I think it's good for kids to learn to play on their own and when they're too young to be able to do that, most babies sleep in the day (I get not all, but most). So, it should be easy to do an hour or so of chores.

NoSunday the black bag isn't always quite full, but if there is food waste in there then yes it goes out every day (the label on my roll of bin bags says degradable, if that's relevant) I cannot stand coming down in the morning the smell of onions or egg peelings in there . None of our waste is separated, besides recyclables i.e. No separate food waste like yours. I also have one in nappies and one in night time pull ups. There are 5 of us in total.

That's what i meant, when i said our collections are.obviously very.different down here, when they bring in food waste separate collections i guess it will be different in my home? I can imagine a black bin bag then lasting 3-4 days i guess

I have a preschooler and a baby, I don't feel at the moment I get enough time actually playing with them as I would like, but they still absolutely fill my time without much room for cleaning, just with their general care. Kids can be great at playing on their own, but taking care of their need for proper attention is also an important part of being at home.

This week I have had very little time for anything cleaning wise except for day to day putting out fires stuff. I would sink under it if DH didn't pull his weight and muck in at the weekend.

The other day I managed 15 minutes of reading and stacking cups with the baby in the morning whilst the older one was at playgroup, and 20 mins lego with the older one while the baby napped. Plus a park trip and some general rough and tumble silliness before dinner. And that was a good day.

In between feeding, changing, helping with toilet, laundry, making snacks and meals and cleaning up, general tidying, emptying bins, helping them with various things, getting out for some fresh air and exercise, sorting out naps etc, shopping, there is just not time for dusting everywhere, vacuuming upstairs and down, bathroom cleaning, finances done.

I already hear myself saying 'in a minute' to my kids far too often, that is not why I'm at home. If I tried to fit in any more housework during the day they would be desperate for a bit of one on one attention and it would start to be noticeable in their behaviour.

More than me

I mean my DH does more than me.

But even small children can be involved in helping with housework, they can help load the washing machine, give them a little sponge to help clean the bath, . Sure chores take longer but involving them means they get attention and chores done. I even remember hanging out laundry while breastfeeding a baby in a sling.
It's not rocket science.