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?

Well, I think lots of people have been depressed and have a very visceral understanding of how overwhelming and impossible to face a messy house can be in that situation so have projected that into their berating of the OP without taking on board that a) the brother isn’t depressed, b) he has a history of lazy and selfish behaviour and c) he isn’t distraught with worry over his wife but is just inconvenienced that his cleaning appliance is on the blink and looking for the next available woman to fill the vacancy.

Then there are the people who have completely internalised the idea that housework is a woman’s sphere and that men are incapable or exempt from it, and they can’t afford to face the fact that this isn’t true because they don’t want to confront it in their own lives.

Finally, I guess there are also more people than I realised who are absolutely and completely literal in their understanding and genuinely, truly believe that if someone asks ‘anything I can do to help?’ that this means anything in the world no matter how excessive and unreasonable the request. I can only imagine that these people get into a lot of confusing social situations...

Or is it 'I'll help with what I feel able to give, which is not necessarily what you want'?

And just to add, when it comes to the literal interpretation of ‘anything I can do to help’ I think people are focusing way too much on the word ANYTHING and not enough on the word CAN - as in what the OP can physically and emotionally take on. Given the caring she does for her father, no one reasonable would think that she can now take on her brother’s housework in addition to everything else she does. But people are just reading the word ‘anything’ and giving it far too much weight.

Disgraceful behaviour from your brother. How many people have 24 hours off from their children every single week. Please don't help him any more.

Your brother is a lazy assed pisstaker. You are lovely op, and you will walk into a shit top every time you go to his house. If you rescue him again will become a pattern. Please, for the sake of your own family and sanity, do not get sucked in. He is capable, he just doesn’t want to. Tbf I hate ironing and cleaning and if I could guilt someone into doing mine I’d be tempted.....

@Imworthit

It wouldn't be unreasonable but you offered to help... So help them clean up or pay for a cleaner as a treat.

YOU don't have to do anything you don't want to but I'll only help with the things I feel like not what you need is a pretty hollow offer.

When he spends his time/money getting pissed?

He can afford his own fucking cleaner.

I'd be giving him a few home truths after the weekends antics. He is completely taking the piss out of you. I feel sorry for their kids.

@Imworthit

It wouldn't be unreasonable but you offered to help... So help them clean up or pay for a cleaner as a treat.

YOU don't have to do anything you don't want to but I'll only help with the things I feel like not what you need is a pretty hollow offer.

Em and why can’t her brother help his own wife and himself, by cleaning his own mess during the full night and day that OP and the grandparents are taking care of his kids? OP already shoulders all the responsibility taking care of their dad!!

What an absolute bellend your brother is OP.

Please send him a shitty message and tell him he’s proven his laziness and you won’t ever help again. I’d probably also throw in how I understand why is wife is depressed living with a lazy shitbag like him, but I’m not known to pull punches when I’m pissed off

No wonder the woman's fucking depressed.

She's got a bone idle pisshead with sweaty bollocks glued to the sofa sucking the life out of her.

If she gets rid, she'll be far, far happier within days, especially as she won't be seeing the money go on crates of beer as well.

The things us, it's not about your sil not having time, depression is crippling. Even if she does have the time, it's being able to do it, depression makes you feel like you just can't. It's hard to explain. Having had depression myself, I would help someone by cleaning their house in a heartbeat, and believe me I have enough on my plate of my own really, but it would probably do her the world of good.

@supoort

The things us, it's not about your sil not having time, depression is crippling. Even if she does have the time, it's being able to do it, depression makes you feel like you just can't. It's hard to explain. Having had depression myself, I would help someone by cleaning their house in a heartbeat, and believe me I have enough on my plate of my own really, but it would probably do her the world of good.

She has a fully functioning capable adult who is married or her and shares the household with her who could do the cleaning.

They get every Saturday half day child free. In which they could keep on top of housework.

If you read OP’s update, she had her brothers come children after her parents had them overnight. So her brother had twenty four hours child free in which they could have feasibly blitzed the house themselves. Or the brother could have.

Instead he chose to go and get drunk and had a hangover when OP bought his dc back home.

OP ended up cleaning the house anyway and missed out on spending time with her own family and putting her dc to bed because she was racing around like a blue arsed fly being house elf for her feckless waste of skin lazy piss taker of a brother.

And sil has. . . wait for it. . . drum roll. . . A HUSBAND. . . who could clean their bloody house, instead of going out on the lash, in a very luxurious 24 hour child-free period (enabled by OP among others). . .but he didn't, did he.

I've had depression too. So has DH. And with kids. We've both been the ones who had to pick up the other's load, and carry on, as best we can, without outside help, because there was no outside help. What OP's brother is being offered in terms of help, real help, in terms of childcare, is beyond price, and it's being shat on from a great height.

@supoort depression is soul destroying, I have also been there and the no motivation/can't face it is hard, however all the advice is the same about doing something. Getting out of bed, having a shower and getting dressed, go for a short walk, get some exercise because they do make you feel better once you have done it. It's the getting there that needs to be overcome.

The fact she has an arse of a husband is not helping any of the situation.

If I were the OP I would help by assisting tackling a room at a time with help from them both.

I truly hope that OP is going to deploy the oxygen mask philosophy. You have to make sure you can survive yourself, before trying to help others.

OP has very young children, she is also doing for her parents in terms of shopping and cleaning, she is working full time, and her husband has pretty much reached the end of his, her giving, tether. Most probably driven by concern for her, and for his family.

If I were OP, at this point, I'd be saying to my brother that it's time he grew the fuck up and sorted his own family shit out, rather than expecting his Mummy, Daddy, and sister, to sort it out for him (or help him evade his familial responsibilities).

I would go and help but he would have to do the cleaning also

OP you're wrong to question this go clean the house. 😂
Just joking I've been following the thread.
I hope today is a better day for your family.
I'd be livid at Dbro.

Thank you for the rational people’s responses it really is appreciated.
What this thread has taught me is I need to work more on my self confidence and saying no. I was set with my decision to say no to cleaning and my reasons not to were valid. But because random people on the internet told me i was being unreasonable and selfish I still ended up caving and cleaning anyway.
For the people worrying that my husband is at the end of his tether? He was pissed off with my brother for taking advantage of both of us. And he was kissed off that our 5 year old was a nightmare going to bed because I had promised her a story and that girl knows how to milk a situation when she wants to. I was appreciative that he took my nephews out and that he did bedtime but I hardly think he’s going to keel over with exhaustion over it.
We went out for a family meal for tea which made up for not spending the day together yesterday. So all good here.

Sometimes we need to reach the limit it toughens you up making it easier to say no.
Next weekend make family plans include some time for you.
Practice No's in the mirror so it comes out automatically when you are put on the spot.

Next time, make it abundantly clear what sort of help you will offer, and what you won't.

You have helped clean, its now up to them to keep it clean.

Don't make blanket offers to offer 'whatever help you need' in future.

I think you need to take responsibility for your own choices and not place the blame for your actions on other people. You opted to clean your brothers house. No body made you. Your brother or the posters here. Personally I wouldn’t have cleaned for him. I would have given him childfree time so he could clean his own house

@MsEllany here fucking here

So are you going to challenge your brother about this? Tell your brother he needs to do an hour each day of housework to support your sil.

Blimey, just caught up with this again. Why did you listen to the idiots on here who only came to find fault with your offer?

You are already doing more than enough looking after your own family, cleaning for your Dad and working full time.

Next time just say firmly that you and perhaps your parents are prepared to take care of the children to enable him to support his wife properly. It is to enable him to do things like clean his own house, not to enable him to go out and get pissed so that he is useless afterwards. Tell him that bluntly.

Work on your boundaries. You aren't his unpaid skivvy. He wanted you to come and clean so that he did not have to take any responsibility and could be a lazy arse. Don't let that happen again, and don't let some of the twats on here push you into doing it either.

What a prize twat he is.