Every bloody week it's the same

[countrygirl99]

I have a system for planning my weekly shop. It's been the same for years. There is a notepad in the kitchen and during the weeks if you notice a store cupboard item or toiletries etc are getting low you are supposed to write it on the pad. Friday I plan the meals for the week. I go through each meal and make sure we have the ingredients in the cupboard or on the shopping list then add anything else that is on the notepad. That way we should have everything we need. Every bloody week I'll be working my way through the meal plan checking the ingredients and DH will randomly ask for his shower gel or marmite or whatever meaning I loose my train of thought. I've taken to refusing to put it on the shopping lit unless he has written it on the notepad to try and train him. Apparently it is totally unreasonable to expect him to remember to use the system but not unreasonable for him to disrupt my train of thought.

YABU - bless, he's a man it's too complicated for his simple mind.
YANBU - make him go without if he doesn't floor hge system.

Because I have been telling him.tbat for decades and he still does it. It doesn't work.

This is the definition of insanity, isn't it? Keeping on doing the same thing but expecting different results.

^ that's what I was thinking. Why does the OP not learn her husband isn't interested in being trained in this "system"?

I couldn't be arsed sticking to your system- sorry.

Fuck the system

Systems are in place to make things better, not worse….

Just rethink this “system”

It sounds really spiteful to not add something that he may literally have just finished that morning hence not writing it down.

YANBU - if this is the system that works for your family, minimises mental load spent thinking about it and makes life easier for YOU, the one who is doing the shopping, then yes he needs to stick to it unless he plans to do it all and do it right!

I love a good list

We have a similar system but on our phones. If he doesn't put it on the list he doesn't get it. He knows he is responsible for his own personal hygiene.
All these people saying it's controlling have some deep internalised misogyny they need to work through. You're not his maid. Ffs.

Sounds hard work.
I hate when things are so regimented.

I don't want to live in an institution I want to live in my home.
So controlling makes me shiver.

I'm with you OP - with us (shopping in person only) we take turns mostly, and if it's not on the list, it doesn't go in the trolley.

I would be fine if he waited until the end. It's the randomly telling me stuff when I'm in the middle of checking whether we have the ingredients for a particular meal that gets my goat.

I can't work out why the checking process is so complicated that you can't interrupt it for 10 seconds to write something like shampoo on the list. Surely if you're cooking every day you already have a very good idea what ingredients you've got without having to go through a complex checking process every week?

Going by your replies to other posters you sound horrible.

You suggest it happens every week. Yet before starting, you don't ask your DH if there is anything he would like?

If my husband behaved like you with your precious list that you can only add to at certain times I would be on here telling everyone what a twat he is.

I'm with you, OP.
If DH ever goes out to do shopping, which he occasionally does, he only ever gets what HE wants and HE needs and huffs if I happen to mention that we also need milk or bananas or something.

There is a list on our fridge too, which is useful for when ingredients run out and he does occasionally remember to use it - but not always.

Sometimes I will ask him if he needs something when I go to the shop, but other times I won't because y'know, there's a list and he's not incapable of going himself!

What I won't put up with is getting back with the shopping and him saying "oh, did you get ME MY whatever-it-is" - well no, I didn't, because you didn't write it down, did you, and if you knew you were out of it, you could have gone and got it yourself just as easily.

A vagina is not compulsory to be able to do household shopping.

... that's one of the reasons why DH comes shopping with me!

YANBU

It's never about the list. It's about you asking him, week after week, to not make a task harder for you. And week after week, he ignores all those requests and makes it harder for you. It's only a little thing, but it affirms that he has the right to ignore your requests and make a little thing just a tiny bit harder.

I once read that much angst in marriage is caused by the constant disappointment in who your spouse is rather than who you would like them to be. The expectation that this time, it will be different. Why not just add his suggestion to the list?

i have said yabu not because he is a man bless him
but because you are inflexible

I could have written your post! I have the same system and my befriend does the same. The only difference is that I ask him at the end when I am ordering. He will often ask if we have some random thing without having written it down and just expects me to remember.
I just tell him to get it himself, I think you should do the same.

He is not a child. If he doesn't add it to the list or text you in the shop or enroute, it doesn't get bought. I think it's perfectly reasonable that the person doing the job, does it how it works best for them. If DH can do it better, why isn't he?

Why not online shop and then your DH can add whatever he wants to the online trolley, this is what we do and it works. Surely actually going shopping is adding to the ‘mother’s load’. We add things to the Alexa shopping list as we go. I agree with you, a system is a good idea and v effective but everyone has to be on board

This level of being uptight is off the scale.

@Tyredofallthis1

YANBU

It's never about the list. It's about you asking him, week after week, to not make a task harder for you. And week after week, he ignores all those requests and makes it harder for you. It's only a little thing, but it affirms that he has the right to ignore your requests and make a little thing just a tiny bit harder.

Exactly this! It doesn't matter if you personally think OP's meal planning system is a great idea or a military regime, it's a task she has decided is important and worth spending her time doing. It could be any task, but the key is that it's something she wants to do. And rather than respect that and leave her alone to do it and pick up pen and paper and write down "shower gel" himself, DH has decided his time is more important and her time is something that can be interrupted so she can write "shower gel" down for him instead of him doing it himself.

I have a similar system, I just say “does anyone need anything else adding to the list before I do the shopping?” I really don’t get the issue.

You sound far too rigid OP, if my DH spoke about me the way you do about your DH I'd be thinking WTF.

Maybe he interrupts you on purpose because he finds it funny when you explode?