AIBU housekeeping a a full time job!

[Bibbitybobbityboo86]

I work part time- 3 days a week and every other weekend.

I try to keep my house as tidy and clean as possible. I feel like I’m drowning in it.

My husband doesn’t do a lot - that’s a whole other thread!
My daughter is messy but keep reminding myself that toys and glitter won’t be forever and I’ll miss it once it’s gone.

My mum commented on my dust. She told
Me when she was my age it would have been shameful to have a dusty home and a dirty doorstep 😳- I handed her the duster!

Thinking about my mum who is in her 70s- she didn’t have to work. She got engaged and the next day handed her notice in at the factory she worked at. She was going to married therefore didn’t have to work. She didn’t have kids for another 8 years after being married. She and her friends all kept perfect homes because that’s all they had to do (or certainly in my mums case)

Do woman have it harder now? Most of us have to work part or full time. Keep perfect homes, look somewhat presentable.

Social media has also set unrealistic expectations

How do you stay on top of everything?

A robotic vaccum. This has 3 benefits:

1. It vacuums while you are all out, so one less job.
2. Running it daily means less general dust in the house, so less to settle on surfaces
3. It sucks up things left in it's path. Have a strict, 'if the vaccum gets it, you lose it' rule and before long everyone stops leaving so much stuff lying about

If you're feeling extra fancy, you can also get robotic mops.

I don't think housework/looking after kids is a full time job - although a cleaner 2.5 hours a week really helps! But you have to keep it tidy so they get on with cleaning (rather than tidying). I had twins, now 20 yo. I have always worked FT (main wage earner) . The key is to declutter as much as possible and always have a place for everything and put everything away.

If your working 8 days a fortnight, then that’s 0.8 or 80% of a standard full time job, and your husband is deluded to think you can carry the entire burden on one more day “free” per week than he has.

Does he clean and tidy in the weekends that you work?

I work full time and am also studying for a degree. I have teens who I do a fair bit with.

However I do not keep a perfect house. I don’t even pretend to try. I do enough so that we are not living in squalor, as does DH and I cook from scratch the majority of the time. But I’m not a 1950s house wife and won’t live up to the expectations of one.

Read about the working class ethic - cleanliness was very important and an identifier in the post-war era. Jobs like washing the fronts of houses were important roles. But life has changed now.

I sympathise i work 3 days a week and every other weekend. It's relentless washing, uniforms, games after school activities, dusting washing floors windows changing beds skirting boards, bathrooms toilets. Ironing. It's a very full on job. Like you i get very little help from DH. But i probably do have high standards which aren't achievable at times.

Oh that's without shopping bills Admin calenders bdays etc to keep on top of

Sounds like your husband doesn’t do his 50% or slightly less as you work less than full time. You are not born into this planet to be a servant to a man.

Bibbitybobbityboo you're not going wrong. It's about priorities and choosing what yours are - everyone in the world has the same number of hours in the day and only you can decide how you want to spend them.

If someone wants to spend 4 hours a day cleaning and doesn't need to work fair play to them. If someone wants to focus more on their career or having quality time with family and pay a cleaner or housekeeper or whatever then fair play to them too. Nobody else can tell you what your balance should be though.

For me it's somewhere in the middle, I work part time and keep on top of things by doing a bit each day but I refuse to miss out on a lot of family time because I'm cleaning. So one day I'll clean down the bathroom while toddler is having his bath, another day I'll do the kitchen while kids are at the table drawing. Deep clean mop etc once every week or so for 2-3 hours but sometimes gets skipped if we're very busy. Will probably get a cleaner if work gets any busier than it currently is.

Ironing I absolutely hate with a passion so I currently do it in front of the tv and I'm only allowed to watch my favourite programme when I'm ironing. But will probably start paying someone to do it soon.

Life's too short, try to find whatever balance feels right to you, and use some of your income to outsource bits that'll improve your quality of life if you can.

My husband doesn’t do a lot - that’s a whole other thread!

No, that's the thread.

I'd recommend doing the organised mum method, as a single parent who works full time it's changed my life, my house has never been so clean and I can enjoy my evenings and weekends

Get some decent storage, invest time periodically to sort through stuff like toys etc and other than that hoover, clean bathroom and kitchen etc regularly and then an occasionally deep clean. Washing I just put everything in together and it's never been an issue, I have a laundry basket the same size as the washing machine drum so when it's full I just pop it in. A dishwasher helps a tonne as well- probably spend an hour at the weekend and 30 or so mins an evening and it's clean and tidy.

Would you rather we went back to a time when a woman was expected to give up work just because she got married and the only thing she was expected to aspire to was an immaculate home?
Although I am quite surprised that your mum is only in her seventies and did this; my mum is late eighties and carried on working until she had my brother two years after marriage.

I have just retired at 50 and I am now just a housewife! I swear I cannot get my head around the fact I did this and worked too.Make no wonder i was knackered! It is lovely now though to not have to rush to do things in my own time but do them properly to suit me. I do feel so much better in myself and everyone else in the house seems to like me less stressed .I genuinely feel like i am living now and not just existing and doing things half heartedly and just enough to get bywhich I did for a long time.

There's a lot of labour saving devices now. I remember laundry day when I was a kid was a whole day of feeding the twin tub.

Dishwashers and washing machines plus's much better hoovers save loads of time.

I work full time with 2 kids. We pay a cleaner for 4 hours a week. So without her but with 2 extra days a week I'd be laughing.

We both work FT but have a cleaner 2x a week and yup low standards

Decluttering had also helped for us - less stuff, less mess.

i love a clean house but with working full time and a busy weekend stuff does get on top of me and it stresses me out. However a cleaner every two weeks helps. Would be lost with out her. My standards are less than my mothers i grew up having to do a big clean nearly every weekend and even worse if we were going anywhere. My mother is like you i can see her sometimes looking and she is wanting to say something but knows not too. You were right to hand her the cloth. But i am sorry i agree with others your husband should be doing a bit more. There are two adults' living in the house and up to two of you to keep it clean. In between the cleaner we both clean things in the house, all be it now i do the hoovering as he hates it, but he will clean the bathroom and the kitchen . He also picks up his clothing and put it in the basket ( my rule is if its not in the basket its not going to be washed) I dont pick them up . Same goes for the dishes etc. He needs to learn you wil not tidy up after him

Your problem is your H.

Given his apparent sexist attitudes would seek full time work and for him to share the parenting and domestic work.

I’m not sure I’m reading this right.

My parents would be in their 70s. They got married in the 1970s, had kids in the 1980s, they had a mortgage, two cars, a washing machine, central heating, phone line, oven, hob, freezer, fridge, hoover, lawnmower, shopping deliveries. Why wouldn’t they?! Nobody gave up work, they couldn’t afford could to - it was all power suits and 1980s shoulder pads. My mother outearned my father. The kids went to nursery and childminders. We had two PCs and games consoles in the house growing up, my parents had mobile phones before they were 40 and the internet at home not long after.

We aren’t talking about the 1920s!

I don't think it's unreasonable for you to do the bulk of it if you're at home 2 days a week, but agree with others - that doesn't mean he gets to just expect you to constantly tidy up after him or that he doesn't have to do some - eg cooking/tidying up after dinner etc.

I have a cleaner once a fortnight and it helps a lot as it makes it a lot easier for us to stay on top of things the rest of the time. DH also does his share (I work full time, he works part time but in a very physical job and then does all the weekly childcare).

I've just spent an hour this morning moving stuff off the floor in kids rooms and setting the robot vacuum so that between the vacuum and my broom the bedrooms, bathroom, both landings, stairs, banisters are all swept/vacuumed and cleaned as needed (dog was ill overnight so did a fairly deep clean in case we'd missed any splatter etc in our cleaning up this morning). Also done a quick wipe down of the kitchen but not a proper full clean. vcvx DH has most of tomorrow off so will clean the bathrooms and change the bedding. We do at least one load of washing a day and DH does all the sorting and putting away a couple of times a week.

If you can afford it, consider getting a cleaning service to come in as a once off or perhaps two weeks in a row. It's properly cleaned in one go it really does help to keep on top of it.

It’s stressful but it’s not a full time job unless you live in a very big house.
I’m a lazy arse but I think 2hrs a day every day would keep my house pretty pristine.

So it sounds like you work about 80% and DH full time.

How much childcare, cooking and laundry does he do if you're spending a whole day cleaning so are up to the same amount of effort as him?

But you shouldn't be going from 'fully cleaned on a Wednesday' to 'shithole' on a Friday unless you're literally throwing dirt and rubbish all over the place. It really shouldn't take a full day to clean a house that is fully cleaned every week.

It's not a full time job nowadays because we all have washing machines, dishwashers, hoovers etc etc

It was a full time job in the days where you had a twin tub and a mangle, a manual carpet sweeper and everything was done by hand - I remember my mum using the twin tub and keeping us away from the mangle and this was the 1970s!

These days it's a breeze.

I'm sure my great grandma thought my mum had it made tbh. She was of the generation where you scrubbed your step every morning and anyone who had a dirty step was judged. Hard.

@pitterpatterrain

We both work FT but have a cleaner 2x a week and yup low standards

Decluttering had also helped for us - less stuff, less mess.

Cleaner twice a week and you have low standards!?