Women with partners who dont pull their weight...

[Klostro]

So my DP is a nice guy and everything but I do way more. To make it worse I work from home.

This morning I started using an app called Time Tracker. Its dead easy to use, you hit play when you start a task and stop when you're done. I'm tracking everything I do, food shopping, dishwasher, laundry, cleaning etc. I plan to see what the total billable hours are by Friday evening and then sit down and discuss with him.

Anyone interested in joining?

Ooh, me please! We've got DD1 who is 3 1/2 and DD2 who is 5 months. I may as well be a single parent most of the time for the flipping help I get. How do you calculate time with the girls though?! And can I track him too?

This is interesting.
I often doubt myself because DH does the financial side of stuff and I know that is a lot of responsibility although not sure how much of his time it takes up. He will also alternate get ups and bedtimes with me although he rarely sees any mess or anything beyond the kitchen.

I'd like to give this a go.

Alrighty then, I have company! 😁
Attached is a pic of the app I'm using.

We're already well into Monday now so I suggest you estimate how much time you've spent on already doing tasks today.

I dont have kids so not sure how ypu could estimate time spent with them. You'll have to set some sort of "rule" for yourself and stick to that. So if he spends half an hour playing with them in the evening, maybe dont count your half hour, but count all other time with them.

In this app you can create different categories so you can have cleaning/cooking/kid time/shopping etc categories. I hadnt realised that so have just been tracking it all today under "household".

My situation is way easier than most women on here. I work full time but no kids. I also work from home.

Still though, already just today I've done 45 minutes, and there's still.the cooking and tidying up this evening. I estimate that by Friday I'll probably have clocked up 7 hours, which is insane when you think about it. Thats a working day.

I'm being really objective about it, so i only hit play when im actually doing the task, im not sneaking in the coffee at the end or whatever.
Equally, im being objective with him: he has a food related business so once a week he goes to a supermarket and he will pick stuff up for us there. That doesnt stop me counting my food shop hours though. Because when i go to the supermarket its a journey on purpose for the household IYSWIM.

Pic of app

I think men forget how much work it is to take care of kids and the household. My husband used to nag me, until I left him alone with our kids a few times for a few hours and he fast remembers not to complain. If he does complain, I threaten holiday for a week away leaving him with the kids and I go alone lol. Thats enough to knock him quiet. lol.

@hidinginthenightgarden

I live alone and I take care of all my finances, paperwork etc. I’d estimate I spend about an hour a fortnight on it. Sometimes more in a concentrated burst if I’m looking at remortgaging or something. Hope this helps.

@Mamabear12
Whats prompted this is theres always been this insinuation from him that "we're both as bad as each other". But we're not.

I do not keep my house very clean, I will admit.

But every day I do the dishwasher, laundry, wipe surfaces, meal plan, food shop, cook and tidy away. So then on a Saturday he'll nip the hoover around and be like "god we really need to keep on top of our cleaning". So yesterday I was pretty curt with him and said "you know, every day I (see above list). On top of working my 7/8 hours. So yeah, I'm afraid I cant be bothered to hoover. Because its actually quite a lot of time over the week".

Then he looked a bit bashful and was like "i know i know".

But in my head I was like "I dont think you do mate".

😁
Hence the tracking plan! Im also hitting play even for very small tasks. Example, we have a glass of wine but he cant be fucked to put them in tje dishwasher afterwards. Thats getting tracked. They all add up.

@hidinginthenightgarden
Meh I take care of financial stuff too, these days lots is automated so I dont see that it takes up that much time. Maybe am hour a fortnight as the above poster says!

Lol. Let me know what the tally is at the end! Sometimes people do not realise how much work the other person is doing. Or maybe the realise, but they don't want to increase the amount of work they do! I admit, my husband does pull he weight, as he works super long hours and supports the family, plus pays for a cleaner. But, we have two young kids and a puppy, all of which creates mess so our house is not always tidy. When he complains I always get super annoyed because its impossible for me to take care of everyone, plus keep house super clean (unless I am tidying after my daughter goes to bed at 9pm!).

Well to be honest this does not sound very nice. You are suppose to be a partnership working together not having a 'who works the hardest competition'.

It is incredibly hard when you have young children and are both working so DH and I used to tackle it from a different perspective. Basically we made sure we had the same amount of 'free' time. So if he went out with friends one night I also had a night out. The rest of the time we were working/looking after DC's/doing housework. That way it didn't matter who did what, and we didn't get into the I emptied the dishwasher last night conversations.

Since when have every day tasks become billable hours been a thing?

I can't join you cause I'd have to fess up to how much time I spend on MN!

I threw my husband out on the weekend for this offense. After 5 years of trying to get him to do his bit I have given up. It is rather liberating!

I agree that presenting your partner with a bill for services rendered is a fairly grim thing to do.

But when i got a fulltime job and dh became a SAHP when ds was 7, i can't forget how he said 'oh an hour a day should be enough' - for EVERYTHING - house, laundry, food planning and shopping, car, garden, financial, admin, mental load/planning, errands. I didn't say he had to do it all, he just thought an hour would be loads. It told me that he thought id been making ridiculously heavy weather of it all for 7 years with ds, my part time work and then my degree. And the first day he actually did a load of laundry start to finish (no ironing but everything else), he looked at me with a wild surmise and said 'this takes quite a long time doesn't it'. He really wasn't a dope. He had never valued what i did enough to actually look at what it involved.

@Annandale
I wasn't actually going to present him with a bill it was just a turn of phrase!
I agree though, I think a lot of guys totally underestimate it. Like a meal is cooked and laundry is done and they dont really get how boring it is and just how many hours gets spent on this kind of stuff

This is a genius idea. Genius. Could we crowdsource a selection of headings?
How do we account for mental load?

I actually have a very good balance with my DH - it's a positive of being a rad Marxist feminist!

I also earn less but after the bills are paid, we have exactly the same amount of disposable income