To think a family meeting every morning isn’t unreasonable?

[Rendezvousinthelounge]

DP doesn’t ever tell me his plans, unless they’re quite big (aka I need to look after our daughter, or he’s going away overnight etc). Every morning he just gets up and goes about his day without telling me what’s happening, so there’s been a lot of ‘You’re doing X? Well I was about to do Y’ and a lot of household tasks not being completed because ‘I didn’t know I needed to do that today, I did X instead’.

It sounds minor but it’s become really irritating. There’s never a loose plan for the day, so it descends into chaos with everything done is an inconvenient order, if at all. The day seems to ‘run away with us’ while he just potters about doing… well, I’m not really sure what.

AIBU to want, each morning, for us to touch base for all of 1 minute to discuss what’s happening that day? Who is walking the dog, anything that needs to be done round the house and who will do it, if DD is going somewhere who is taking her and when, that kind of thing? He’s acting like I’m the house Fuhrer. I just want the day to run smoothly with everything done that needs to be!

I would love this type of thing but in the evening. My wife would have disagreed lol

Just go out more. Early. Without comment for a long time and let him feel the inconvenience

of course, that's the way men tend to operate, they spin and maneuver so that they always have the upper hand, get everything on their terms etc, you just need to recognise this and beat his game, whatever he does do it back to him.
Make sure he always gets lumbered with the shitty end of the stick, dont play fair, they never do

Totally get it OP. My DH in fairness does sound a bit more open to hour old stuff than yours but there is still an element of I sort everything.
What I do is whilst we are having a coffee first thing at weekends (or if we don’t have time for that / when kids were younger I would just stop him and make him look and listen to me) would be to lay out all the tasks of the day quickly. I would say so today x y and z needs to be done. Which of those do you want to do? Or I would say I need to to x and z so can you please do y.
That way all the important jobs got done. But going from your example he might have said if I take the dog for a walk then I can stop at this shop and get the dog food and other supermarket bits. He wouldn’t however have known that dog food needed buying or what shopping bits we needed, I would have to tell him to get it.
If I am ill or out of action or away, then the kids generally just stay in and have pizza or he goes to McDonald’s. Nothing fun gets organised unless I organise it. It’s a bit annoying because every single outing and booking is suggested and booked by me. He does pay for it though as had a really well paid job that is long hours but supports us all. So swings and roundabouts.
I just think so many men just don’t think. And they are just happy mooching around at home rather than actually having fun or new experiences.
i think you should just make sure he listens to you for 1 min each weekend morning about what tasks need to be done. And then you share the tasks out so you are both happy.

It's not unreasonable to want to check in with one another. If he's resistant, I'd find a time/place and make a habit of cornering him there. While he's dressing after a shower, while he has breakfast, etc. He may not like it, but it's a reasonable expectation. If he doesn't want to do it first thing in the morning, before he's had a chance to wake up, you could start doing it in the evening, for the next day.

No solution will be perfect, but if you keep after it, he should eventually accept that this is how things are, now, unless he has a better suggestion for ensuring things get done and are divided fairly.

^^ This is how we do it and a brief "have you remembered x" on the morning of the event

If he won't sit down and talk then I think you need to have a really big demarcation of jobs. SO if you cook you do the food order and the top up shops as well, he washes up; you do all the laundry and ironing and he does all the cleaning and tidying. (So a fair allocation of the shit jobs between you.) Tell him that you will take DD and the dog for a long walk every Saturday and will do the top up shops enroute. Whilst you are out you expect him to do all the cleaning (and do it properly). Hos mother his problem - everything to do with his family is his job and you do yours. Then no more discussions. If he doesn't do his side of the bargain you stop doing yours - ie no more clean shirts and dinner is cooked for you and DD.

does all the bins because I refuse to do it

Ah no, not another one of these men who "does the bins" (what the fuck does that mean anyway) and then thinks he's done his share of the housework.

I don't understand how he can avoid a couple of minutes chat - DP, you need to take DD to MIL today because I'm doing x,y and z.
Then if he doesn't do it and she's still hanging around in her pyjamas watching CBeebies when MIL shows up to find out what's going on, it's his problem, not yours.

Yanbu

I have a similar issue with my dh. Not so much with avoiding tasks but with time management and ‘we can do that later’ unless we sit down each weekend and work out what we need to do and when we can do it.

@Rendezvousinthelounge - I’ve spent a lot of time this year lessening my metal load. My DH was already fine with doing housework unprompted but everything else was on me. Here is some of the things I’ve done:

-Google shared calendar, took me a few hours to set up but now everything is in there birthdays/activities/appts/bin schedule
-Ordered Gousto - appreciate may not be in everyone’s budget but we pay £38 a week for 4 dinners for 2 people that feeds 2 adults and a 2yr old. Supermarket shop is much simpler and we each take turns to cook and get nice meals as it’s all easily laid out for dyslexic DH to follow.
-Booked an activity for DH to take DS to every week. There is no who is going to take him? DH is taking him whilst I change the beds and do some other bits and listen to the radio in an otherwise silent house.
-We each have an evening a week to do whatever we want to. I have a social club I go to, DH normally games on his
-take it in turns to do the bedtime routine. Whoever isn’t doing bedtime cleans up toys/kitchen whilst the other does bedtime.
-got a smart meter, none of this have you remembered to read the meters etc (it was an odd bone of contention for us!)
-some set chores. I never hoover, DH never cleans the bathroom. Everything else we just do as needed.

These were all agreed together so no dictating or anything. It allows life to run a lot more smoothly and it’s not all on me to arrange.

*mental! I am not at the point of having to sell all the metal, just yet.

If, after 6 years, he isn't pulling his weight then either:

• he accepts that you are the organiser and he does the tasks allocated (which can include all the tedious tasks)
• or he pulls his weight, actively starts doing his share of the organising and planning and you share the tedious tasks.

If he doesn't like you holding a morning meeting the answer is really simple - he can get off his arse and remember you are his partner, not his mother.

@C8H10N4O2 I agree. I think maybe OP is really asking in some way how to broach this with DH?
Just tell him how you feel over a cuppa and say how you'd like things to change.
If/when he gets defensive have a couple of examples ready them leave it a few days. Set up that calendar in the mean time.

We have a joint Google diary. It was the only way forward!!

Some communication yes, calling it a family meeting and demanding it every morning? No. Have a comms book set out somewhere realistic and write stuff in there.

After discussing what needed to be done and getting nowhere, I found it helpful to have a list of jobs stuck on the fridge. It started out as a joint list, but deteriorated into a To Do list just for him which DP seemed to find easier than me telling asking him to do things, though it didn't necessarily mean that things got done that day/weekend/month. But he seemed to cope better with it being one step removed from what he thought of as me giving orders. Though on reflection It is helpful to list what you are going to do so he can see you are also busy doing stuff.

In our house we call this breakfast.

Sounds like he does his fair share of tasks when you write it down like this.

If he cab’t organise his time well and has no respect for others’ time, then the least he can do is recognise his own limitations and concede that he maybe needs a family meeting to get on the same page! I can’t help but think he might view things differently if it was him picking up the slack. My OH is exactly the same btw; muggins here carries the mental load.

Why not get a weekly calendar chalkboard? Every Sunday night you both fill in the weeks activities…I had a husband that commuted to London every day, 3 kids under 3, an au pair and lots of kids activities….as time went on and kids were teens, I also worked full time and the kids had endless activities….if it didn’t go on the board…it didn’t happen. Who wants to know on the day their husband staying over and you have to deal with everything…? Get him organised.

I hear you. And I know you didn’t actually mean “Meeting”. We have a shared Electronic Diary our Phones. I put everything in.
“Jim to take Cat to Vet”
”Jim to grab Potatoes & Paracetamol on the way home.”
Men are lazy & selfish. It’s in their genes.
((BabyDriversMummy ducks for cover!)) 😆

You say you don't mean a formal meeting, then you are literally asking AIBU to want my husband to talk to me for 1 minute a day. Just think about that. This should just be a given in a healthy marriage in my honest opinion.

Rather than Mornings it would be nice to have the conversation over dinner each evening

And maybe a chat on a Sunday about what the week looks like

Get a whiteboard and black marker. Each of you write down what you’re doing each day.
DON’T:
lose the marker pen
forget to always write the date at the side of each piece of information

My husband and I share a calendar app on our phones. Easy peasy.