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'm hearing you, although I disagree it's a ft job. However I think in previous generations they possibly had more to do so needed more time (no washing machine/dishwasher etc)
I work ft and my DH works longer than ft (he's self employed) and he does hardly anything around the house although he cooks a few times a week.
Nearly everyone I know (working, retired and SAHP) has a cleaner. But for me the tidying is more of a chore than cleaning and I'm sure it would be me who had to tidy before the cleaner came anyway so I eould still feel under pressure.

@Bibbitybobbityboo86

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

So you work 8 days out of every 14 and your husband 10? 2 of your "spare" days you use as carer to your mother. Leaving you with exactly the same amount of spare time as your husband?

If he pays the bills and the mortgage, where does "your" money go? Why is it disrespectful to ask for more personal effort?

Have a chat but also take a cold hard look at your lifestyle. How could you both together do it more efficiently. Generally I find that people are more respectful when they have to deal with the consequences. I notice for example that my MIL will leave my hob filthy if she cooks a meal for my children, Hers will be pristine after cooking a large meal for 5/6.

I’m with you op. It takes forever. Probably because I get so bored I put it off. But really yes, I clean 2 hours a day, a d cook, tidy for another 2 hours. There’s still loads I could do and that doesn’t include gardening diy.

I agree it’s not a full time job but when I was a SAHM it I could certainly fill the school days with household tasks, groceries, shopping, gardening, caring for parents etc.

Now that I work full-time I find you have to be stick to a pretty rigid schedule to keep the house looking good. Every morning beds are made, dirty clothing put away. Laundry every 2-3 days. Dishes and counters done after every meal. Floors swept and hoovered every 2 days and washed weekly. Bathrooms weekly, one per day. Bigger jobs on the weekends - sheets, cupboard organization, lawn cutting etc. I get the kids to do dusting, windows & mirrors etc. It never gets wildly dirty unless we’ve had a party or something. We do pay for someone to do the pool but that’s it. My husband and me share the tasks but I do more cooking. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty decent

Its not a full time job- i think back in the 60s with less equipment/cleaning stuff it was harder- I can remember how long it took my mum to do the washing in the 70s with a twin tub and having to peg out (she also ironed a lot more than i do)
I'm slightly baffled at someone spending a whole day cleaning and it being a tip- but then my DP spent hours pointedly cleaning and all he achieved was hoovering half the house (no bathrooms/dusting/kitchens etc)- i can't work out if he is slow or i have crap standards.
i do think that if you are working part-time then you should be doing the cleaning but that doesn't give your husband license to be a slob

My house is clean, like regularly get told by other people how tidy it is. DH and I both work full time, have an excellent fortnightly cleaner. Two toddlers in the house full time with nanny. We don’t have a lot of stuff though, I think that makes it easier to keep it looking clean. Also new house and I think older houses not recently done up inherently feel messier because things get banged up/walls marked etc. I spend 10 minutes tidying after DC go to bed, nanny leaves house as she found it, DH spends 20-30 minutes doing the washing up/tidying kitchen every night.

I think itsfair that the person working pt takes on the mental load. Its not fair that the ft person adds to that load. Its not fair that the ft does nothing.

Id recommend reading the organised mum method. If nothing else it will give you a structure.

I thik a massive difference between us and your mums generation is the amount of stuff we have. Which takes longer to tidy up and fills space.

I don’t understand why working just a tiny bit less (you really are almost frill time) means you do 100% of everything else.

Surely it should be divided 60-40 or whatever your working equivalent would be?

A cleaner can do so much in an hour or better still two. even every fortnight.

@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 do think it must be harder. I've said to DH repeatedly throughout our marriage that society judges women far more harshly than it does men. The house isn't spotless....its a mark on a woman's character, The family don't have freshly prepared healthy meals....again a mark on a woman's character. Kids are unclean/misbehaved...always mums fault. Hard up....Well whats she doing?

It feels like now were expected to work full time, do all the organising, childcare and housework, plus make sure that we're providing 50% of household costs.

No one would ever think of saying to DH, oh the dust! Why isn't it done?

Easier when it's the only thing to do, but still feels impossible with a family, especially when No one else clears up after themselves!

Personally off work at the moment, I cannot keep up with the dog slobber or the constant requirement of tidying where everyone just dumps their stuff and leave it!

I think a lot of the problem is that there is too many other things going on, other interests, other distractions these days rather than it being harder.
I am in my sixties. Worked full time despite having two children. Husband worked away from home Mon - Fri.
I had no microwaves/ tumble drier/disposable nappies/takeaways/much convenience foods. But I managed to keep a clean house, wash two sets of terry nappies ( at one point), and cook everything from scratch.
I was no where near family, so had a childminder and did everything when I came in from work.
BUT there was no Internet and social media to while away the hours. There were only 3, and then 4 TV channels, so no box sets to get through. Children were taken to the park or played with others in ours/their gardens - whole days were not taken up going to soft play/theme parks etc.,

Changing times, but not harder🙂

No, I don’t think it’s “harder” now. Victoria Wood made an interesting programme where she compared housekeeping now to housekeeping in the 30s/40s (I think it was). Her angle was the physicality of it. It was much, much physically harder then. (In a time when people other than the wealthy didn’t have the aids that most have now, hoovers, washing machines, electric irons, fridges, supermarkets, etc.)

I work PT, with 3 young DC. It certainly feels to me that if you include the organising side as well as the actual physical labour, housekeeping would take up quite a bit of the week. As well as dust I'm not even vaguely on top of, I've got clothes, toys and books they've outgrown and I need to sort and I can't even start to work out when I'll get time to do it. We are also putting temporarily patching and putting off various household repairs / overdue replacements, because of a lack of time to organise them and I see as being part of housekeeping.

We both work full time, no kids at home. We have a cleaner once a week, a window cleaner and a man who does the fuck off big hedge twice a year.

No gardener as I like gardening.

It’s not a big house. I’d rather work full time and pay someone to do those jobs than part time and do it myself. Husband and I do fair shares. And have lower standards.

OP get your husband to do a fair share.

@Ratched

I think a lot of the problem is that there is too many other things going on, other interests, other distractions these days rather than it being harder. I am in my sixties. Worked full time despite having two children. Husband worked away from home Mon - Fri. I had no microwaves/ tumble drier/disposable nappies/takeaways/much convenience foods. But I managed to keep a clean house, wash two sets of terry nappies ( at one point), and cook everything from scratch. I was no where near family, so had a childminder and did everything when I came in from work. BUT there was no Internet and social media to while away the hours. There were only 3, and then 4 TV channels, so no box sets to get through. Children were taken to the park or played with others in ours/their gardens - whole days were not taken up going to soft play/theme parks etc.,

Changing times, but not harder🙂

I just about to say the same thing about no Internet /TV channels etc.

My mum would have been in her 70s and had to work full time yet kept a beautiful pristine house.

It's harder these days as there are too many distractions.. Without mumsnet right this second I would have been getting ready for work and giving the kitchen a tidy up instead of sitting on the sofa with a second morning cup of tea then no doubt have to rush to get myself and the kids ready for the day.
Let's face it, cleaning is boring, it's such a chore.

@BearOfEasttown

Housekeeping is not a full time job. Once your kids are at school, being a SAHM is a blessed life. (Unless your have a SN child.) But if you are a working mum, then that is a much harder life. I think women had it MUCH easier 50+ years ago. Weren't expected to go out to work, had huge family support (usually,) and the family were supported by the man's wage alone.

Laughing at this.

We were a family of 7, bedding went to a laundry but everything else was washed by hand.
Imagine cooking for seven every day, no freezer, no ready meals.
And shopping for seven, carrying everything on the bus or walking, only milk & bread were delivered.

I think it’s much harder now women work on top of kids and running the house. Sometimes I book annual leave to clean the house as it makes me miserable when there’s mess everywhere and I feel like I can’t keep up with it.

I think it seems harder and more time consuming now because many people have far bigger houses than our parents/grandparents, and far more 'stuff'. Kids seem to need ferrying about to clubs or to play with friends, people 'go out' far more, so time previous generations would have spent at home pottering about the house is now spent at soft play, standing on the sidelines at kids sport, meeting people for lunch or days out at attractions.

My grandparents lived most of their lives in a tiny 2 up, 2 down terrace. DMum and DDad lived in bedsits/one bedroomed flats for the first 10 years of their marriage and then in small 3 bed semis. We didn't have loads of toys (in fact I've just chucked the box we used to keep our toys in when we were kids and it's a cube of about 18 inches - not enough toys to make a mess!).

We didn't have wardrobes full of clothes so washing was done when things got dirty, not a load every day. Both DM and DGM worked full time until they had kids - DM went back part time before we were school age, then full time, and DGM always had plenty of small jobs (cleaning, waitressing, washing up etc) on the go. Their houses were both immaculate - DGM used to dust twice a day, because they had a coal fire and everything got dusty.

But, we were expected to help from quite an early age - tidying toys, putting our clean clothes away when we were very young, progressing to washing and drying dishes, running the hoover round as we got older.

I work full time and my house is fine. My mum, on the other hand, wouldn't work and really can't relate to my life. She relied on my dad, they're celebrating 50 years married this year. Funny what people celebrate. My work allowed me to walk away from an unhappy relationship whereas she's stuck because she wouldn't work. The payoff for her is financial security, for her decision to live in a very unsatisfactory relationship.

I'm a single working parent and manage to do housework. I honestly find it bizarre that people think it's so difficult. How long does it take to hoover and dust? Takes me about an hour to do my whole house once a week.

SAHM-ing with a baby is harder than a full time job.

SAHM-ing with a toddler is roughly the equivalent of a reasonably demanding part time job.

SAHM-ing with school aged kids is roughly the equivalent of a very light part time job, getting lighter the older the kids get.

I work 36ish hour a week at Min wage 5 days a week
Dp works 7 till 6 6 days a week for £40k a year
He pays rent, food, council tax,internet
I pay water and gas/electricity

We both live here we both clean. I couldn’t live with a man who saw me as being worth less than him in the home.
His job is very physical but even after a full day he will still come home and do his bit because he’s not a bastard.

And because he understands the labour involved in keeping house he doesn’t care if it’s not perfect sometimes and neither do I

It’s harder if you work but no it’s not a full time job these days. We have gadgets and tech to help us do it that previous generations didn’t have.

I was gobsmacked at how easy it was to keep the house tidy after i got rid of the ex. However, I now have teens who like to bake in the middle of the night, so...

I remember when both my DDs were young. I was working full time, out of the house from 7am to 6:30pm (including nursery runs) and my husband was pretty useless at contributing to the childcare or housework. I struggled to keep on top of it evenings and weekends. My mum came round one day and had the cheek to run her finger along the top of a picture frame and of course, she found dust. I can't recall if she said anything, but just the action and the look she gave was enough and I was fuming.