To say no to request to clean his house?

[Rose789]

I feel like a bitch and I’m awake at 1am worrying about it.
My brother and sil have 3 kids. Between ages of 4-10 (so all in school)
Brother works full time sil works part time (3 days a week)
Kids spend every Saturday night at their grandparents house.
Sil has been signed off for work for depression and is struggling and finding it difficult to get the motivation to do anything.
I text sil and told her if she ever needed any support or someone to listen I’m here for her.
Spoke to my brother told him if there was anything I can do to help let me know e.g if they wanted me to have the kids overnight or if they got stuck with the school run.

He’s messaged today saying what would be the most helpful is if I could go round and clean the house as it’s a bomb site and sil isn’t doing any housework and he hasn’t got time with kids.
I’ve said no for several reasons

1. I have my own house to clean. Yes it’s hard trying to clean around kids I understand that. But that’s the same for everyone. The oldest 2 are more then old enough to start helping in the house but they have no chores at all. They will eat sweets and just drop the wrapper on the floor. Have a drink and the cup just gets put anywhere.

2. My dad has a lot of health issues. As a result I spend at least one day and one evening a week cleaning his house doing his washing making meals, getting shopping. My brother occasionally visits and doesn’t help at all.

3. I was ill at the start of the year and spent a lot of time in hospital. Dh managed to clean the house, look after the kids and visit me, and work full time. Brother and sil picked up dd from school on one day. No other help- or offers to help.

4. the kids are at their grandparents every single Saturday night. Blitz the place when they are gone if you can’t do it when they are there.
   I would kill for a night off every single week.

I know my reasons are valid. But I do also feel awful for sil I have been in a similar position where everything was just too much of an effort even getting out of bed. While the mess and dishes and washing piled up around me. It’s an awful place to be and it might help her if the house is clean and tidy and she doesn’t need to worry about it. But she has a husband who is just as capable as she is at stepping up and doing the cleaning.
I’m such a people pleaser I’m really struggling to stick to my guns and refuse to help.
I’m not being unreasonable am I?

@CaptainBrickbeard
Haha it's OK - lots of posts !!!

Your brother needs to get of his fu king arse and clean his own house. Offer to take the kids for a few hours Sat or Sunday so he can crack in with it. He’s going to have to get a cleaner in or start doing more.

But @MrsRusselBrand we DO know he isn’t a salt if the earth type given that he has never helped his ill father while happy for his sister to cook, clean and shop for said I’ll father EVERY WEEK and he didn’t help the OP when she was in hospital. So we do know that he’s lazy and selfish!

[quote MrsRusselBrand]@justanotherneighinparadise
He asked his sibling . I would always ask my family first
To those touting the whole gender 'men are lazy bastards ' card - how would you have responded if this was a female asking , very differently I bet . And that means you are making gender assumptions .
The bother could be a lazy piss taker or could be the salt of the earth. NONE of us could possibly know that [/quote]
Who’s to say,? The OP has disappeared!

My money is on the brother being a cheeky fucker whose behaviour has probably resulted in the SILs depression. But I’ll admit I’ve been here for nearly a decade and I’ve read some absolute horror stories when it comes to other people’s relationships.

@grumpycivilservant
Your brother sounds like a lazy, sexist, mysoginist. And a cheeky fucker to boot. What did his last slave die of?

Why ?? How on earth have you come to that conclusion ????

If the OP was talking about her sister asking for help , would you say the same ?

Jesus wept

It does sound like you made a general offer of help then became affronted when they took you at your word. Yes your brother could do it himself or hire a cleaner but it sounds like a difficult time for them and you did offer to help....

well you did offer,
but you could offer to help him do the cleaning, give him moral support or something. bit cheeky asking you to physically clean.

@justanotherneighinparadise

True

• and OP seems to have gone quiet . Hope she is OK , whatever decision she made

Great sister you are. Offer to help but moan about being asked to do something that's helpful to them.

But weirdly the SIL hasn’t reached out for help has she? The husband has asked for help because there’s a house staff vacancy and he’s hoping to fill the role for free. I would imagine SIL has no idea he has even asked.

Have you ever had depression or lived with someone with depression?

Because my experience is that someone who's depressed wouldn't even notice that the house is a shit tip, and if they did all that would happen is they'd feel even more broken by it. There's no way they'd ask for help for so many reasons.

I just can't comprehend a mentality where someone would offer to help a family member in need but be selective and judgemental about the sort of help they asked for. To be frank, if it were my brother, even if he wants to sit on his arse and get some rest or go for a walk while I cleaned I would genuinely not care.

There's a lot of assumptions based around gender on here (assuming that there aren't randomly a lot of posters who know the family) which is ironic really, because some people are complaining about the brother's own (assumed) gender based assumptions.

@kursaalflyer
Helpful.

So tearstainedbakes you think it’s reasonable that the OP already gives up one day and one evening a week to clean, cook and shop for their father while her brother has never done anything at all to help and she should now clean her brother’s house because his wife is depressed?

If he had always helped with the father, if he had helped OP when she was in hospital and it was just that now his wife is ill he is overwhelmed then fair enough. But he’s never helped anyone else struggling with their housework so why is he now entitled to have the OP take on a third house to clean (in addition to the two she is already responsible for!) even though he has a child free night every week and could absolutely clean his own house then?

Tearstainedbakes, if there are a lot of assumptions on here they're on the basis of sex, not gender.

I’ve also been where you SIL is. Does she know your brother requested this? I know if it was me and my SIL had to come clean my house it would make me feel even more of a failure (not saying she is, that is just how you feel when depressed).
Say that you don’t feel comfortable as it would feel like an invasion of space.
Offer to look after the kids so he can clean.

I would have said I am happy to help you by doing it together.
Send your SIL to her parents and both of you do it one Saturday.
Get some order in the house and it might make it easier for her to keep it.

Well @CaptainBrickbeard if she does that, she should've said, I'd like to help but I'm already stretched with doing everything for DF.

Not a disingenuous "is there anything I can do to help".

Why make empty offers?

It wasn’t an empty offer. She offered to look after the kids or be there with emotional support or do the school run. That’s not an empty offer.

I can't believe all the handmaidens suggesting that OP go over there and do it with him in order to show her useless brother how to clean a house. He is a grown man. I'm sure if there was a necessary task for work he didn't understand he would google it or find another way to figure it out. But because it's cleaning and that's 'women's' work he'll stand around haplessly while his house piles up with dirt and rubbish and then call on another woman to fix it.

He is an able bodied adult. Single mothers clean their homes every damn day. He can 'spend time' cleaning with the children or take OP up on her very generous offer to mind the children while he cracks on with cleaning his own house like an adult.

Clearly if the shoe was on the other foot, this brother would not be rushing over to OP's house with mop and bucket ready to clean for her. He has had many chances to show up for his own father and for OP but he has not done it.

OP- offer to have the kids. Keep offering an ear to SIL. But by no means are you obligated to don your maids uniform and go clean their home just because you were kind enough to check in with them while they are having a hard time.

He's allowed to ask. You are allowed to say no. Don't let anyone make you feel like you owe them your labour.

He specifically says he hasn’t got time with the kids to clean. Fine, you can take the kids for a while and that frees him up to clean. I wouldn’t be going round to do the shit work for my brother either, especially as you already clean for your father.

Surely is is way more efficient for him to ‘blitz’ his own house as he knows where everything needs to be put away and where everything is. The hardest part about preparing to clean is putting everything away.

Oh and I hope your SIL is better soon. It's a tough time to be a mum.

Have you ever had depression or lived with someone with depression?

I have, my mother. I spent long periods as a teenager playing housekeeper for my father and siblings when my mother was an inpatient. My father was a very pleasant, inoffensive man, I loved him very much but he was totally fucking useless. I look back now and hope that my mum accepted voluntary admission for a break from the relentless daily grind of trying to cope with her mental health problems and be all things to all people.

I wonder how many women ask men to clean their house? Zero I bet.

He's asked you because you're a woman and he's a man and he thinks cleaning is a woman's job.

Ignore the other women on here making you feel bad for not wanting to scrub his shit stains off the loo. I would do pretty much anything to support my siblings if they were in crisis but I wouldn't clean if they were physically capable of doing it and he is. He just doesn't want to do it.

I think I would go and do it as a one off....give them say, 3 hours of your time.

Take some rubber gloves, stick on some headphones with music or a podcast, and just start.... do a 'turbo tidy' of every room. Open the windows and get in some fresh air, Stick some washing on, clean the bathroom, clear the kitchen worktops and push the Hoover round.

Make the place feel nicer and look nicer. It doesn't have to be like a palace, but if they're feeling overwhelmed and anxious about the state of their house, it is something that you can do in a relatively short time that will have a big impact on them.

I'm sure you'll feel satisfied after you've done it.

Don't say "if there's anything I can do, let me know" again then.
Next time make sure you say, "If you want me to take the children to school to help you out, let me know".

However, having got yourself into this mess, you're now going to have to extract yourself. You're going to have to think of something that you can do to offer instead, eg. "Unfortunately cleaning the whole house wasn't what I meant, but I could take a batch of washing and run it through the machine if you could muddle through with the house yourself" or something similar...

I'm wondering how many women, when offered help from another woman would jump to "the house is a bomb site could you sort that out?"

Notice it's a mess because SIL isn't doing the housework & he can't whilst looking after the kids.

So first thought is surely-if someone could have the kids then I could crack on & sort out my own house?