Helping around the house

[katieb83]

AIBU - my partner has 2 teens, 18 & 15. His 15 yo son has £30 mobile bill paid for him every month, & £30 Xbox subscription paid every 3 months, so basically £40 pm spent on him, on top of all the usual. His 18 yo daughter had years of her phone being paid for also, but now pays her own bill since working. We both work full-time and have 3 other children between us - 9, 7 and 4. Life is busy! I’m really starting to resent the teens not having jobs around the house. I’ve suggested countless times that they should either at least do the dishwasher between them in the week, and then we crack on with cleaning the house from top to bottom at weekends, OR they should be designated jobs at the weekend such as cleaning the bathroom or dusting the living room. My partner just seems to disagree - he halfheartedly nods along when I say this, and then never asks them to do anything and when they do the very odd thing, all we get is moaning. Is this just me?! Other people I speak to say that their teenagers are expected to help. I was also expected to help at their age. I guess it doesn’t help that they’ve been getting this “free money” and have never been asked to “earn” their phone bills etc before…..

I don't understand why people have ridiculously high monthly contracts for their phones. Surely it's cheaper to buy a phone outright & get a cheap plan elsewhere? I currently pay £10 p/m which includes 30gb data, free calls & free surfing on social media.
But yes, your DSC are lazy fekkers & your DH is enabling them. Do they live with you permanently? I'd stop doing stuff for them - laundry, car rides for activities etc until they pull their weight.

You’re definitely right - in fact all your kids should be doing something, even the younger ones can do some jobs

They do live with us permanently, yes. His son does spend some nights at his mums but is predominantly at ours, and his daughter stays at her mums on occasion, but not very often at all.
In fairness to his daughter, she will sometimes cook tea for us all and that’s much appreciated, but it’s almost as if that buys her credit for the rest of the week if you like, and she doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a multitude of things to be done on a daily and weekly basis!

This is dense thinking.

Yes it's cheaper to buy a phone outright than get a contracted phone but most people can't afford to hand over a thousand pounds in one go for a phone without a contract. Nice of you to look down on those in payment plans though.

Just make up a task list for each person in the house, stick it up somewhere central and ask them to tick off the jobs they've done. Make it age/time appropriate and tbh I'd get them involved and ask them what tasks they'd prefer to do eg if dsd likes to cook put that on her list. I wouldn't argue the money aspect unless you really need to enforce, I'd just put it down to we all live here, we are all responsible for making it a nice comfortable place to be in so we need to help each other out. Their reward is a clean, tidy, comfy home and parents who have more time to spend with them.

I don't know how families function without everyone pitching in. Our children always helped and we didn't need to pay them either. How did your children get to the ages they are without chores?

Because most people can't afford the one-off payment for a phone, but they can afford a monthly payment plan?

It's not rocket science!

They should be helping, as should the 9 and 7 year olds.

Draw up a list of daily and weekly chores and let them pick which ones.

Keeping house for 7 people is a mammoth undertaking- who does most of it now? I'm guessing not your DH or he wouldn't be so ambivalent about them doing their share.

If your husband can afford to pay for various things for his children (which I do think is fair enough before they are earning), he can probably afford to pay a cleaner once a week. That would make a heck of a difference.

They should do the dishwasher, it won't kill them.

In fairness to my OH, he has been doing more than me just lately, although we are very short-staffed at work and I’ve been putting in extra there. I’ve just got to the point where the weekend comes and I’m expected to just roll up my sleeves and crack on with him, whilst DSD sleeps on the sofa if she’s not at work (she has a retail job but it’s not full-time and the days vary) and DSS sits on his Xbox all day, and it’s getting me down, when they’ve barely contributed anything at all to the household all week.
I feel better that it’s not just me - I get so tired of feeling like I’m making unreasonable diva-like demands.

I considered a cleaner because there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day lately, but then it’s a lot of money to spend when I said that there’s enough of us live here that we could box everything off in no time if we all pitched in.

My kids were trained from an early age to do stuff in the house and both are self-sustaining young adults.

By early teens they could do washing, dishwasher (DS nickname is 'dishwasher boy 😂😂😂), tidying and hoovering rooms.

We all pitch in.

How else are they going to know how to take care of themselves when they leave home?

One plea: this is not 'helping out' as this implies its someone else's job; it's doing your share. Everyone has a share and everyone should contribute.

Your DH is nuts.

Keyansir
Who pays thousands for a mobile phone?! I certainly don't! People clearly have more money than sense to fork out £30 p/m on a phone 💁🏼