To hire a cleaner to prove my point to DH?

[sameshitjustdifferentday]

It's another tedious "DH not pulling his weight in house" thread I'm afraid.

Long story short. I had a long talk with DH nearly two months ago about him not doing his fair share in the house, how disrespected it makes me feel etc. We set up a weekly cleaning rota and for a while it went well.

However it's gradually slipped back into the way things were. He will Hoover, but miss the stairs out/not Hoover up the cat/dog hair. Empty the bin, but fail to sweep kitchen floor afterwards when there's bits all over. I can only assume he thinks the fairies mop the kitchen floor, clean the bathroom, clean under kitchen appliances etc because he never sodding does it! He's also slipped back into leaving dirty plates in kitchen sink overnight which is my biggest bugbear ever!

Would I be unreasonable to now get a cleaner in? I told him that would be my next move if he couldn't sort his shit out and he hasn't. Tbh we can't really afford it, but I'm not spending the rest of my life doing 90% of the shitwork and I've told him so.

Just feeling so let down by him right now. Ironically he wants us to buy a house asap. So I can apparently go from doing nearly everything in a one bed flat to everything in a full sized house

From what you've said I suspect that even if you got a cleaner you'd be complaining and running around cleaning after them as it wasn't done to your standards so why bother.

I don't understand how this is teaching him a lesson. You spoke to him. He made a poor attempt so your saying ok I'll pay someone else to do it.

I would leave it completely and let the shit pile up sky high.

@sameshitjustdifferentday He sounds like a 'manchild'. 'Where's my trousers' ffs! Where you fecking left them ya big baby!

'Policy of Joint Agreement
Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse'

www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3500_policy.html

I really don't have high standards. Unless not wanting a carpet covered in animal hair, a kitchen floor covered in food and an overflowing cat tray constitutes high standards That is what we would have if I "left him to it" The flat wouldn't just be messy if I left it, it would be dirty. We have pets and it's a small space.

The trouble is he thinks he's doing his bit by running the hoover over and washing up. He doesn't see that nearly everything else gets done by me.

It's not just the cleaning either. We need to ring and rearrange a gas check that's due today. I told him last night and left the letter in kitchen this morning. He's pissed off to work without even mentioning it, so now I'll have to ring them on my way to work. All the sodding admin gets left to me

It sounds like he already has a live in cleaner and a pa.

You !!!!

Do it as it'll only get worse. I wish I had as over the past 20 years we have gone from him 'helping' when 'nagged' to me doing 100% of all the household chores, 90% of the childcare, and 90% of the household admin. I also work for the family business. This leaves him to invest his time and effort into business projects, hobbies, socialisng (which is of course 'work'), and patronising me about my being stressed all the time. He even gets up from the dnner table to relax in front of the TV leaving his plate on the table for me to clear away.

Can you tell I'm bitter?

Get a cleaner!

OP But does he do household jobs that you don't do? Not wishing to revert to stereotypes here, but... putting pictures up, fixing leaky taps, car maintenance, etc. My brother in law for example doesn't know what cleaning or laundry means but he does all of the DIY, most of the garden work and all of the cooking and shopping.

He doesn't do any household tasks Chrys we need repainting done in hallway, but because we haven't tackled it together it hadn't been done!

That is what we would have if I "left him to it" The flat wouldn't just be messy if I left it, it would be dirty.
He doesn't see that nearly everything else gets done by me.

Yep.
That’s why you need to stop doing those things and let him realise for himself what you actually do.
This means living a shit hole for a bit but IMO totally worth it.

Fwiw, I actually have done that by default. With the cleaning because I got ill and couldn’t do it. And with the dcs because I started working some weekends and DH had to look after the two dcs.
Strangely enough, in both cases, he suddenly realised how much there was to do which he had never quite understood before
But my conclusion was that, just children, until they feel the natural consequences of his actions, he just didn’t get it....

Why doesn't he pay for a cleaner for his half. If you're happy doing your half there's no reason you should be forced to fork out money simply because he's lazy.

Don't have children with this man. Men who don't pull their weight in the house never change and they don't pull their weight with the children either. This is a man who sees all domestic work as women's work.

He will occasionally come and tell me he has no work trousers

Oooh it like the line out of a Mills and Boon book

How the fuck do these manchildren hold down a job?!

Chrys the sort of tasks you mention are a drop in the ocean compare to te daily grind of keeping a house clean.
Men should never be able to get away with no doing any housework at all because they have repaired a tap once in the year —and it took them a whole two hours to do it—

If you have room for a dishwasher, even a tiny tabletop one, it will make a difference

I don't want to live in a shit hole even for a while though. It's unhygienic when you have animals. I'd be even more unhappy than I am.

For the posters saying don't have
kids with him...I can't have children. Infertility issues.

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

Would he care if you didn't do it tho OP?

In these issue i think that's the crux of it. If he wants it done but doesn't want to do it (Like my dad who does no housework but wants a show home and bullies anyone with a vagina to do it for him as it's our job) then yes get a cleaner or leave him. If he actually doesn't want these things done then you may need to compromise or lower your standards or get a cleaner or leave him. Because it wont change.

My DH said to me once that he wouldn't live being nagged at anymore. He wasn't going to do any cleaning and that was it. He didn't see the point. Had never done it and had made a conscious decision not to do it as it doesn't bother him. He said 'why was my yes stronger than his no' - ie why did my standards get to be the ones we adhered to.

It was then up to me what i did. Hire a cleaner/leave etc

thatwouldbeanecumenucalmatter I know right? Proper gets my fanny going when he says that

Do it as it'll only get worse. I wish I had as over the past 20 years we have gone from him 'helping' when 'nagged' to me doing 100% of all the household chores, 90% of the childcare, and 90% of the household admin. I also work for the family business. This leaves him to invest his time and effort into business projects, hobbies, socialisng (which is of course 'work'), and patronising me about my being stressed all the time. He even gets up from the dnner table to relax in front of the TV leaving his plate on the table for me to clear away

Read this OP and be very afraid, this is your future.

hellofresh you need your own thread - we need to sort you out.

No room for a dishwasher. I hate them anyway. I'd rather just wash up. We don't really use enough plates to justify one.

My DH said to me once that he wouldn't live being nagged at anymore. He wasn't going to do any cleaning and that was it. He didn't see the point. Had never done it and had made a conscious decision not to do it as it doesn't bother him. He said 'why was my yes stronger than his no' - ie why did my standards get to be the ones we adhered to.

It's not so much it didn't bother him, just that he was safe in the knowledge that you would continue to clean just as his mother did.

In my experience if you leave things that you are bugged by, you just get to be bugged by them and the other party blithely continues with their routine. My partner is a grown man who can look after himself, but I saw what his living space was like when we lived seperately. We have different standards. He freely admits that if I’m away he luxiariates in not cleaning, with a mad tidy a few hours before I return.

The household admin does tend to fall to me, and diy/ house maintenance wouldn’t happen unless I scheduled it. But he is willing, able and takes responsibility for things if I ask him to. And things where I don’t ask, like the bins and laundry. He purely does the washing up because I made it clear that was important to me. He really doesn’t care about whether it’s done or not. He cares that I care. If I decided to go on strike, I’d be waiting a long long time for him to even notice. I decided that I was happier either doing the things that bugged me that he was never going to notice/ care about (dusting) and I’d ask him to do the things I really appreciate not having to do (washing up). The other stuff he takes on himself. While it’s not applicable to the op, he’s taken his role around the house more seriously since I got pregnant, too.

Blame the patriarchy, I’ve been groomed for a life of caring about cleanliness of bathrooms. But I also think this is a ‘rocks are hard, water is wet: whether you like it or not’ situation. You have to work with who you partner is, and understand that their motivations are different to yours. Therefore I don’t think that stopping cleaning works because generally other partner does not care. Find out what motivates your partner (happily mine is making me happy) and use that. But also pick your battles and maybe just accept that you care about different things.

Nope. He had lived alone for years and never done it - i met him when he was 30. There are months when i don't do anything either and he doesn't care or even notice. He actually gets irritated at things being tidy because he finds it easier to find stuff in his mess. So he wants his trousers to stay in the middle of the floor rather than try to remember which drawer they live in.

Sorry - that was in response to Riding.