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?

I work part time, husband full time. He says similar and I agree except he also loads dishwasher, sorts some washing etc. My problem is part time means I feel I should have loads more time than I have. I find the switch to doing things at home to be hard to get motivated for. Someone upthread commented how it’s possible to keep a tidy home and work yet they have a cleaner for 6 hours a week!

Of course it is harder these days, most women work 2 full times jobs, one outside of the home and one in it. It is ridiculous that women are run ragged trying to do it all.

Unless we want to be a slave to the hoover, you have to drop your standards ! Your DH needs training.Most women, whether they have a job outside the home still have on in it .Top tips for me 1) Hoover once or twice per week(even better DH job!) 2 ) Polish while on the phone or suchlike .3) Clean bath when you have got out of it Once a week)On a Sunday say )4) Mop floor when on way out somewhere.5)Do no ironing .Complete waste of time ,most material goes through Tumble Drier and comes out crease free.6)Do not forget to accompany all of above with copious amounts of Coffee/Tea /Biscuits .And that most essential of partners ,to HW of any sort A Sit Down!

You need to differentiate between tidying and cleaning.

Tidying up after yourself is everyone's responsibility and it should be done every day in the moment - e.g washing up after dinner, wiping the side down after you make a sandwich, taking your teddies back up to your room at bedtime, putting the cushion you dropped on the floor back on the sofa, scrubbing the loo bowl clean after using it, putting your socks in the wash basket, wiping your facial hair from the sink after shaving or rinsing the bath after use. That's keeping a tidy home. Tidying away the mess you make in the moment and that's everyone's responsibility, including your daughter.

Cleaning is not tidying. Cleaning is more or less a weekly/bi-weekly event. It's dusting, it's changing the beds, mopping floors, polishing, scrubbing baths, clearing limescale off taps, wiping down kitchen cupboards etc. So I say you should do the 'cleaning' on your day off.

Everyone should be tidying up after themselves daily.

I think alot of people who say cleaning isn't a full time job are the type of people who live with relatively responsible people who do tidy up after themselves. If you're constantly tidying up after someone and translating that to be cleaning in your head, I can see how it feels like 'cleaning' is a full time job.

Differentiate between the two terms and you'll have an easier time explaining to your husband what he's responsible for and that is the mess he makes as he goes about his day. It's not cleaning, you do the cleaning, he just clears away his own mess.

Does that help and make sense?

Yanbu
But, even though DH works longer hours than you, he doesn’t need to leave mess everywhere!

I work 8:30-3:30 and literally do EVERYTHING in the house, except diy jobs.

It’s actually one of the reasons I decided to want children - I was already running around after one man-child, so I might as well have some of my own!

Yanbu I was just thinking this. It's constant but it makes it worse that people are messy.

If everyone tidied up after themselves then the cleaning wouldn't take so long.

My biggest problem is that my family are very messy.

@Kinko

You need to differentiate between tidying and cleaning.

Tidying up after yourself is everyone's responsibility and it should be done every day in the moment - e.g washing up after dinner, wiping the side down after you make a sandwich, taking your teddies back up to your room at bedtime, putting the cushion you dropped on the floor back on the sofa, scrubbing the loo bowl clean after using it, putting your socks in the wash basket, wiping your facial hair from the sink after shaving or rinsing the bath after use. That's keeping a tidy home. Tidying away the mess you make in the moment and that's everyone's responsibility, including your daughter.

Cleaning is not tidying. Cleaning is more or less a weekly/bi-weekly event. It's dusting, it's changing the beds, mopping floors, polishing, scrubbing baths, clearing limescale off taps, wiping down kitchen cupboards etc. So I say you should do the 'cleaning' on your day off.

Everyone should be tidying up after themselves daily.

I think alot of people who say cleaning isn't a full time job are the type of people who live with relatively responsible people who do tidy up after themselves. If you're constantly tidying up after someone and translating that to be cleaning in your head, I can see how it feels like 'cleaning' is a full time job.

Differentiate between the two terms and you'll have an easier time explaining to your husband what he's responsible for and that is the mess he makes as he goes about his day. It's not cleaning, you do the cleaning, he just clears away his own mess.

Does that help and make sense?

THIS!

@Kinko says it very well.

Also, if everyone in the household is doing their fair share of tidying up after themselves (as described by Kinko) then there’s not as much resentment and feeling that tasks are never ending.

Adults who leave shit behind (both metaphorically and literally) are selfish and disrespectful.

Are you going to do something about your husband not tidying up after himself @Bibbitybobbityboo86?

@PiesNotGuys

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!

Possibly your parents were born in 1950, making them 71-72, married in their 20s, had children in their 30s. The OPs mother could have been born in 1945 and married young, so it was early 1960s, which was quite different times to late 1970s. Just a thought to why things were so different, although as I've previously said my own mum didn't stop work when she married in 1962. At that time only my dad's income was taken into account for mortgage calculations though, so married women not working was obviously common.

As to mobile phones, not many people had them before 1990, and it was very late 90s before even 50% of people had them, and internet in homes only really started happening after 1995, so perhaps your parents were very early adopters if they had them before they were 40.

@Kinko

You need to differentiate between tidying and cleaning.

Tidying up after yourself is everyone's responsibility and it should be done every day in the moment - e.g washing up after dinner, wiping the side down after you make a sandwich, taking your teddies back up to your room at bedtime, putting the cushion you dropped on the floor back on the sofa, scrubbing the loo bowl clean after using it, putting your socks in the wash basket, wiping your facial hair from the sink after shaving or rinsing the bath after use. That's keeping a tidy home. Tidying away the mess you make in the moment and that's everyone's responsibility, including your daughter.

Cleaning is not tidying. Cleaning is more or less a weekly/bi-weekly event. It's dusting, it's changing the beds, mopping floors, polishing, scrubbing baths, clearing limescale off taps, wiping down kitchen cupboards etc. So I say you should do the 'cleaning' on your day off.

Everyone should be tidying up after themselves daily.

I think alot of people who say cleaning isn't a full time job are the type of people who live with relatively responsible people who do tidy up after themselves. If you're constantly tidying up after someone and translating that to be cleaning in your head, I can see how it feels like 'cleaning' is a full time job.

Differentiate between the two terms and you'll have an easier time explaining to your husband what he's responsible for and that is the mess he makes as he goes about his day. It's not cleaning, you do the cleaning, he just clears away his own mess.

Does that help and make sense?

Excellently put. Also your husband working during the day FT doesn't excuse him from the evening jobs when you'd both be home from 'work' if you were both FT. Fair enough you do the cleaning during the day - hoover, dust, laundry beds, bathrooms but like PP says the tidying up, urging away, dishes, wiping kitchen, putting away bags/shoes/jackets laundry in baskets, toys and papers away - that's everyone's job!

Love this- I’m definitely going to have a chat with my husband.

It’s tricky as my husband pays the mortgage and bills and I’m very grateful for this, I don’t want to moan too much, he’ll think I’m being disrespectful

My mum was born 1945. She said that once you were married woman weren’t expected to work-they could if they wanted to.
She obviously didn’t want too!!

Our situation is my partner leaves for work at 5.30 am gets back around 1530 I work 8-2 Monday to Friday. I have a 14 yo and a 12 yo at home when everyone gets home I get all uniforms and chuck it all in the wash that's the washing sorted unless I am changing beds too . Before I go to work the beds are made. We wash up after every meal and I make sure anything cups glasses ect from night before get washed and wipe all the sides down. The house generally stays quite clean and tidy because I make sure we clean as we go on a Friday I may polish the living room , wipe down bathroom give everywhere a good hoover. I thing I have a good work life balance and do the bulk of housework because my partner does the longer hours but... he's not lazy by any means and is tidy too so that helps. I think the key is keeping on top of it and then one day a week tackle a few bigger jobs. I usually iron all our uniforms for the full week in one go as well so it saves time during the week x

I was born in 1945,Everyone I knew around my age worked even with 2 jobs certainly didn’t give up work.We all were professionally qualified married in our mid 20s had children late 20 s and carried on working.Housework was shared.Think.your mother had a different lifestyle to many others.My mother born 1920, worked in central London,commuting 2 hours a day when we were young children,we had a cleaner but we had to help in the house.Your husband is just lazy.

We have a cleaner and a robo vacuum, and DH does at least half of all the household chores. That is the only way we can stay on top of it. We both work full time.

It helps that my standards are quite "relaxed"

My mother always finds something to comment on when she comes over. I just ignore her.

We more or less stay on top of things because we do it together.

I couldn't live with a partner who thought it was my job to keep the house clean and who didn't pull his weight.

Your problem is accepting being treated as the housekeeper, maid, cook, nanny.

@Miller2021

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

It's not - this is the reason you're doing so much. It's his house too.

This

‘Disrespectful’ to want to share domestic work and parenting?!

He became a parent too and his earnings are facilitated by your unpaid work, at direct cost to your earnings.

I sympathise. I am retired. I spend all day Monday cleaning and by Thursday it's a pigsty again. It's endless. I think I've become fussier now that I'm home all the time to look at it.

I wish he’d just pick up after himself and not make my job harder

I don’t know where I’m going wrong

By letting your 'DH' sit on his arse while you run around like a blue-arsed fly! Sort it out.

Stop picking up after him. Any dirty laundry; just put in a pile by his side of the bed etc.

I’m 57. My parents in the late 1970s had a washing machine and timber drier and dishwasher. My mum who would be 80 now worked part time in a school, played golf and did some tidying up. Our house was clean and tidy. Some of the posts on here sound like the 1920s.

I have a friend who is meticulous. She works full time, goes to the gym three times a week, and at one time had two teenagers and a partner living with her who did the minimal. You could have eaten off her floors. But she was the type of person who couldn't go to sleep if one of the dogs toys was left on the floor instead of his basket. They all
Shared one bathroom and not a single speck of toothpaste anywhere.
I couldn't live like that - I found her house soulless with as much personality as a middle of the road chain hotel.
At the very least give yourself a break - you are not a 50s housewife but a working mother. Your husband needs to pull his weight - not help you, but take responsibility that he contributes to the mess so should share in the cleaning of it. Maybe set aside Saturday morning for you to do it together. And perhaps get a cleaner if you can afford it - even if just every other week.

I work full time (plus Saturday overtime at the moment) and my friends started cleaning for me in the last few months which has been a god send. The rest of the time I spent some time before work cleaning and then washing most days. The cleaning helps me hugely

Do you live in a mansion? I'd say no housekeeping is not a full time job. I can't believe you spent a whole day cleaning. WTF are you doing? Maybe that was"just" the West Wing.

I live in a spacious 4 bed semi so modest house. My cleaner gets the place clean in 2.5 hours. I have to stay on top of tidying and laundry plus wiping in kitchen and bathroom so it stays nice between weekly cleans. Laundry just slots in withmy life but I only have 2 dc. I recognise it builds up more with more dc.

Suggest you go back to work, get a cleaner and put dc into holiday clubs. You'd be better off and less tired as you'd just do your day job rather than spending a whole day cleaning.

A couple of times a year I do big deep clean jobs but not every week.

It could easily be a full time job if you wanted it to be and had high standards.

Clean and tidy means very different things to different people.

@Iputthetrampintrampoline

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.

Blimey, If I could afford to retire at 50, the last thing I'd want to do is become a housewife.