To think there’s more to it than getting a cleaner?!

[Rainallnight]

And, can you let me know if I’ve forgotten anything in the list below of all the various things you need to do to look after DC?

I’m an accidental SAHM, one DC at school, one home with me. I need to get back to work and broached with DP that we’d need to find a way to divvy up various jobs if I was working full time. Their response was that they could do a bit more laundry, and that we’re getting the cleaner back.

So I’ve made this list of things I do to make clear all of the things I do, so they can see exactly what needs to be shared between us.

To be clear, DP does sometimes pick up some of below, like evening tidy up, dinners at weekends, helping to clear up after dinner and does bath time every night. But I wanted to write down the totality of it all.

Have I forgotten anything?!

One DC has a chronic medical condition.

Wash dry put away kids clothes
Wash dry put away adults clothes
Buy new kids clothes
Take out and get pass on old clothes and shoes

Cook dinners
Set table, give kids drinks
Clean up after dinner
Meal plan
Online grocery shop
Do breakfast
Clean up after breakfast
Clean up after lunch

Dress kids
Bring pyjamas back upstairs for the nighttime

Tidy at the end of the day

Take bins/recycling out
Put bins out on bin day

Drop kids to school
Pick up kids from school
Stay home from school if sick/school closed etc

Do reading homework
Fill in reading notebook, give books back weekly
Pack water every day
Take out any wet/dirty spare clothes from school bag
Refill school bag with spare clothes
Sign and return permissions forms to school

Make and go to Doctor appointments
Order and collect kids’ medicine

Get kids to drink water

Bath kids
Wash kids hair Saturdays
Do DD hair every day hair

Book and take them to hair cuts
Book and take them to dentists

Find and book hobbies/classes
Find and book summer camps

Sort and pass on old toys

Sort play dates
Buy and wrap birthday presents and cards for other kids

You've listed booking the hobby classes but also

• taking them to and from the classes (and wait if required),
• arranging any things that need to be brought to the classes (rinsing out the swimsuit/packing the swim bag, finding the misc item to bring in to brownies, sewing the badges on the uniform, sourcing the correct performance costume, spot cleaning the mud off the sports kit, etc).
• supervising any practice of hobbies at home (musical instruments/feeding the cat for a cub badge etc).

What about holidays - planning, booking, packing etc?

What about festivals - who buys and supervises writing the class xmas cards/thank-you letters, making/buying gifts from the children, wrapping, decorating, baking etc etc? Birthday gifts from the kids to family and their friends? RSVP for/remembering/taking to parties?

I’m surprised people are being so dismissive of the OP’s detailed list. It needs to be detailed in order to get the point across, otherwise the bloke will do some of the big things and OP is still running around like a headless chicken doing the bits and bobs that actually really add up. She’s already explained why the water drinking is an issue and actually a very important one.

OP I think you’ll have to be prepared to let some things fall forgotten if necessary in order to make this clear. When you go back to work, if you have agreed with DP that he does school admin for example, if you’re aware of something he’s forgotten or not bothered to do, you need to be prepared to let it get forgotten. If you slip into the role of reminding him to do his half, then he won’t be doing his half. The mental load is as big as the physical one sometimes. Good luck!

You are trying to put any little thing, so might as well add it!
I mean Sign and return permissions forms to school confused
Seriously?

Yes, this is a task that parents need to do. Do you actually think it’s fine for all these micro tasks to fall to the mum even if she also works full time? If not then what exactly is the problem of including them in a comprehensive list of family tasks? Yes it’s a small job but it’s a tiny part of something so much bigger. The fact that posters like you miss that so spectacularly (or don’t care) is thoroughly depressing. And I say that as a working parent, not a SAHM trying to justify not working. The mental load is real and it’s death by a thousand paper cuts if one person is perpetually remembering to sign and return the bloody permission slips on time.

If not then what exactly is the problem of including them in a comprehensive list of family tasks?

the problem is that it makes a ridiculous list.

That's not how you share the "mental load". You might as well add "having a pee" and "putting the kettle on".

Obviously one parent need to take control of the school admin, sharing is just doubling the work as no one knows what the other has done or not.

But that should go to the parent who "empty the bags, refill school bag with clothes" - and I am assuming the OP's kids are really little.
It's ONE job, not 300.

You might as well split making pack lunch into:
dry lunch box
cut bread
cut salad
cut chicken
make sandwich
cut grapes
put grapes in box
add yogurt
take pack out of freezer
put in lunch box
fill water bottle
put water bottle in lunch box

I could go on...

Just stop doing it for a few days OP.

Let DH see its not fairies that do it all.

You could for maximum impact tell him that's what you're paying the cleaner for when he's asking why dinner wasn't cooked?

motherloaded the reason for splitting up the tasks into each detailed little bit is because the spouse of a long term SAHP often hasn’t a clue what things like “school admin” actually entail.

I agree that if both parents were used to and understood all tasks, then yes you could divvy stuff up just by writing high level titles like “school admin”.

But the fact that the DP here says it’s just a case of getting the cleaner back, suggests he hasn’t a clue. That’s why the OP is writing a detailed list.

because the spouse of a long term SAHP often hasn’t a clue what things like “school admin” actually entail.

That's bollocks. If you are able to hold a job and be a functioning adult, of course you know what having kids and kids at school entail!
It's just laziness.

But on the other hand, despite some people pretending that the school admin is a full time job, , it really is not either!

Find and book hobbies/classes
Find and book summer camps

even if you are a SAH parent, don't you people TALK?

Since when being at work means a parent is not interested, let alone involved, in kids hobbies and activities? That's what I find shocking.

Even fathers who are away for weeks and months are more-or-less up to date with their kids activities.

That's bollocks. If you are able to hold a job and be a functioning adult, of course you know what having kids and kids at school entail!
It's just laziness.

I’m not saying they can’t do it. I’m saying that if your wife has always been the one who checks the bag for permission slips, you probably wouldn’t think of this as a thing that needs to be done. It wouldn’t occur to you to go check your kids’ schoolbags every evening.

Once they know it needs to be done, of course they can do it. The OP’s list is educating her DH in what needs to be done.

And no it’s not a full time job. OP isn’t saying it is. She’s saying there is more than just cleaning that will need outsourcing or divvying up.

@motherloaded

Find and book hobbies/classes Find and book summer camps

even if you are a SAH parent, don't you people TALK?

Since when being at work means a parent is not interested, let alone involved, in kids hobbies and activities? That's what I find shocking.

Even fathers who are away for weeks and months are more-or-less up to date with their kids activities.

motherloaded again, the DH probably knows what activities his kids do, but has never done the job of re booking for the next term, or finding a gymnastics class/piano teacher because Dc2 wants to start gymnastics/piano, or buying the ongoing kit for these activities, or working out a time slot for each activity that fits with other commitments.

Again, once it is spelled out that these things need doing, I’m sure the DH can play his part but at present he clearly doesn’t recognise these jobs exist.

There is a huge gap between being aware of something and being responsible for it.

If you don’t get it, great for you, clearly you have a happy and equal division of both the labour and the mental load. But many families don’t especially those where one partner has not been working.

DIY
Decorating
Gardening/mowing the lawn/going to the tip
Car-putting petrol/oil in, cleansing, tyre check, maintenance/service etc

This might not work for everyone but dh & i both work full time and we focus on one child each for baths / homework/ clubs / life admin.

Then I do uniforms & breakfast and dh does lunches and school run

We each do bath and bed for a child.

I sort out / pay for clubs, dh takes them

We don't stick to this 100% but it helps spread out work load fairly

I can see both arguments here but I have rarely been angrier than when my dh went full time at home while I went from pt to ft, and said he thought an hour a day should get it all done. I felt he thought what I did was pointless plus he didn't even notice a lot of it.

Op I would think in terms of a job description, so -

1. Maintain family physical health (water drinking and records, nutrition and meal planning, shopping, cooking, planning and liaison with health providers including dr dentist optician and other specialists)
2. Maintain family diary (calendar, daily check on letters from school, social arrangements, holiday childcare)
3. Maintain family relationships (supporting child friendships, phone calls, supporting other friends with/without children and family)
4. Promote education (school liaison, reading, teacher liaison, educational activities)
5. Maintain clean house and/or garden
6. Maintain and clean family clothing

Etc etc

So for example, DP gets the kids dressed in the living room every morning and each and every day just leaves the pyjamas there. They need to go back up for that night!

I think things like this are just a difference in expectations. Parent A is getting the kids dressed and out the door to school and rushing off to work. Perhaps Parent A thinks it's not unreasonable for PJs to be left where they are until later. Is it that huge a deal if the PJs are just grabbed from wherever they are on the way up to bed? Parent B may think it is a big deal, but Parent A may not.

Agree with others that it's easier to just divvy up jobs, a bit like most people do with bills. So DH can take one or two after school activities a week to be responsible for in their entirety, like kit, bookings, arranging lifts. He does dentists, you sort optician and shoes.

We each take one kids clothes and hair cuts on, I do DD, he does DS.

Cleaning up after dinner doesn't need to be its own category, whoever cooks can do also sort washing up and put away.

For washing, we do ad hoc, but to start with you can get used to doing one load every other day, that includes putting the washing away from the day before so the clothes horse is clear and ready for the new load.

@anothercovidxmas

Agree with pp that this seems like a list to argue over the detail on. How about splitting it into daily/weekly/monthly/and hoc to be more useful for a discussion? We split the items on each list in half and occasionally swap them around so we don't die of boredom

Agreed.

‘Refill loo roll’ is now a task that needs to be scheduled and allocated to someone? Ffs.

I’m surprised at some of the responses, whilst ‘signing and returning forms to the school’ seems like a meh job it adds to the mental load of family life. If that burden is only on one person the other will have significantly less brain fog.

Everything should be separated equally, preferably into jobs you like/dislike. Keeping on top of life admin is a job in itself.

I think youve done a great job Op, we did something even more broken down. I hate bringing the bins back in on bin day, I love the pleasure of taking them all out and seeing a nice empty space so I do the take out and DP brings them in. Another example is clothes, ‘laundry’ is an umbrella term for: gathering from various baskets, sorting, loading wm, loading td/line, folding into piles, putting piles away. I hate folding but I enjoy putting them away so DP folds and I put away, and we carry on like that with every single job in the house.

Do what ever works for you, but do not take on more ‘because it’s just easier if you do it’ I’m sure you have enough children

I did exactly this as well, OP. The more granular the better. It really helped DH to see how much of the mental load he was leaving to me, and he's taken on a lot more. Some things he's completely autonomous with, but sometimes I'm still the 'manager' that has to remind him to do them. We're working on it.

Permission slips may not seem like a big deal, but what if no-one does it? The point is that OP shouldn't be the default safety net for every single task - it's mentally exhausting and very unfair.

Honestly, I just think this list is ridiculous. My ExDH and I manage to share a lot of this and we don't need to a) list it, b) tell each other what to do and we don't even live together. To have to do this when you live with someone is mental. Also, I'd say that when you both work a lot of these lines don't seem as important as they do when you are at home. Pj's on the sofa would drive me mad if I was at home but if I left at 7am and got home at 6pm then it really doesn't matter

@sammylady37

‘Refill loo roll’ is now a task that needs to be scheduled and allocated to someone? Ffs.

To be fair, it's a specific task I gave our cleaner. She tops up the spares by each toilet on every visit, as well as adding spare soap, spray or moisturiser if they're low and swap the towels for fresh ones. She texts me if toilet roll or soap or shampoo are low in the cupboard as well as cleaning products and I put them in the online basket so they're there for the next order whenever that is. I've no idea what goes on with the cloths, gloves, bin bags, vacuum bags nor mop stuff; she and DH have discussed those but I don't use them so I don't get involved. This is the only way mental load can be avoided - that area is not my responsibility, so I don't engage with it at all (well, when DH puts something in the online shopping basket then technically I suppose I get it, but without thought).

This is a perfect example of mental load. Obviously signing the form is not a big task. It’s the remembering to check the bag every day to see if there is a form.
Yes, I came on to say this. Those saying the OP is 'ridiculous' are being unfair.
This list looks to me like all the kind of thing one parent just does while the other is blissfully unaware of it even needing to be done.
This is so clearly illustrated by the DP saying it'll be solved as they can 'do a bit more laundry' and by 'getting the cleaner back.'

The happiest couple I know - with the fairest split of responsibilities - do EXACTLY this. They made a detailed list of ALL the jobs that need doing and split them. And they don't pick up for each other if one person doesn't do their job. They swap sometimes to help each other out but they don't pick up the slack if one isn't pulling their weight. They also review it regularly (once or twice a year I think). Itworks well and I think its a great idea

That's how we split things up.

I do school.
DH does clubs and hobbies.

We don't micro-manage or chase or double-check everything. Obviously, we help, it's not a war, and I update DH calendar with sports day, he updates mine with competitions.

But you have to accept that not everything is done YOUR way, if it's the other's responsibility, they deal with it how they see fit.

I do love the idea of splitting the kids but wouldn't work for us practically.

I agree @DeathStare that it is the solution to a happy life but I think that presenting a long list of tasks, some of which take less than a minute, is the catalyst for more of an argument. Both people have to be on board and I think some of the examples are personal preference of how it should be done not what needs to be done. It's better to foster working together and not having a 'my job/your job' mentality.