To say that my dh's cleaning drives me nuts

[lucydogz]

We clean different rooms. I 'm finished with my feet up and he's still forensically cleaning skirting boards, with halo that's so big I can't see how he'll get through the door. For me, that level of cleaning is once a year but he does it every time and is so self righteous its unbelievable. When I clean a room, I dust, brush the floor and tidy up. That's it. Am I minging or is he anal?

No but if you move him around the rooms in the house then there will be no need for you to ever stoop to those levels.

Perhaps you could alternate rooms, so they get an extra deep clean every other time.

Great minds...

Is he military or ex military by any chance?!

I'd die for a husband like that rather than the lazy cocklodgers I actually had.
Mind you men always have to take everything to extremes - all or nothing.

Great idea about alternating rooms. No, not ex-military but I think whoever said that men have to do things to extremes is right. There's an enourmous rug in the room which he had to hang out the window and now he still has to vacuum it to get the dog hairs off. Anyway, I don't mind the cleaning, it's the self righteousness that's so annoying.

Mine is ex military - does my head in.

He said this was filthy

*militrary even not ex!!!

I read something about this - how men's instinctive desire to 'win' and be competitive means that shit like this happens. Plus the 1 famous dish they have to cook from scratch with all the authentic ingredients and using every pan in the kitchen. Same thing.

Doing normal cleaning and cooking isn't surrounded by the 'glory' so it's not worth the effort.

God yes! Another one with a military DH who makes my teeth itchy with his obsessive cleaning. Mostly tidying things into piles, not actually putting them away and throwing out things I wanted to keep. Not to mention how guilty he makes me feel. But he always leaves a sink full of dirty water which irrationally enrages me.

You could rent him out op. . .

No but if you move him around the rooms in the house then there will be no need for you to ever stoop to those levels

Yep ^^ utilise your strengths

Mine is the same. The cleaning is great but the smell of burning martyr is choking at times

I'd just set him loose around the entire house. Let him clean his self-righteous heart out.

Mine is more likely to empty a cupboard or drawer, put 3 things back in, throw 2 away, and leave the rest in a pile as he "doesn't know what it is or where it goes"
Normally swiftly followed by me ramming it all back in where it came from, seething at the fact that the drawer that I had organised so I knew where everything was in it is now a disaster.

I clean like your DH I actually hate that I can't just do a basic "dust, Hoover, tidy" and call it job done. It takes me ages to clean a single room to a standard where I feel ok about calling it a day (it usually takes a whole day) as a result it means I put off doing cleaning regularly because I know I can't do it "properly" without enough time. I always tell myself that once a room is perfect then the next clean will only need a quick dust and hoover but it never happens that way.

Thankfully/luckily? (For them) I have no partner to piss off with my weirdness.

My Dh does inappropriately timed cleaning.

Me :"RIght DH, I'm just going to go put the baby to bed"
Dh:

Me: "Ready to go out?"
Dh:

girl if that's filthy then the apocalypse has happened in my microwave.

Ex-Military Dh too and cleans like this too! Do you also get the tales of when they had to do xyz during training? Mine tells some random tale about having to boot polish an entire corridor of an accommodation block....

Oh god my ex used to be like this. An hour to hoover one room. 1.5 hours to iron 5 shirts etc but apparently his way was better because he did it 'properly'. Whereas I did it with monotonous regularity. His contribution was perhaps once a month (after being nagged, usually!)

Once, (working 3 jobs one of which was childminding after school kids, as well as looking after my 6 month old DS) id come home, fed DS1 and several childminded kids and then cleared up the related detritus to Kim Woodburn standards before he returned home from his ivory tower in London, he sanctimoniously informed me that I was a smattering because I hadn't rinsed out the dishcloth and hung it across the tap to dry!

No words of wisdom OP - but you have my sympathy!!!

Mine painted the kitchen door at 10pm one Sunday and didn't tell us he was doing it so we all got gloss paint on our hands!

My DH is like the characters from Men Behaving Badly (I kid you not!), so I am rather jealous of all the excessive cleaning on here...

Another former-military DH with outrageous cleaning standards over here! At least he does it himself instead of complaining that I'm not up to par. And I like to think I am quite clean and orderly!

I'll swap you. My OH will take the same extravagant amount of time to clean a room, but when he has finished all that will be done is the vacuuming and maybe a bit of straightening up.

I would love to live in a world where dust, skirting dirt, window grime, drawer junk, wall marks and cobwebs did not exist and books did not need to be reorganised by colour blocks and then height within the blocks.

I am quite jealous to be honest. My DP is same as Lily. He will clean (every day, without asking), but it never seems to look much different especially considering the time he spends on a room. I can't for the life of my figure out what he's doing - it certainly looks like he's cleaning.