Is your DH the same? Guest prep

[Leothebear]

Every single time we are prepping the house for guests, here the things my DH thinks are absolutely essential and starts to do tirelessly:

Clean the toilet? NO
Prep the food? NO
Dust? Hell NO

Clean the kitchen drawer no one will open? HERE WE ARE
Reorganize the file cabinet? SURE THING
Vacuum the garage? YES YES YES

Is my DH the only one? And Why???

Due to this we don't have guests. I can't hack it.

Im clearly having a sense of humour bypass because i don’t find it amusing or cute in the slightest. It’s manipulative, passive aggressive and selfish.

They are doing their personal tasks instead of the shared household tasks. Eg cleaning their car or shed, having a shower, cutting nails, going for a haircut, sorting their CD collection or hanging up their own clothes.

So that way their partners have to do all the household jobs AND all thgeir own personal jobs. So about 90% of the work.

Or they are doing busy work, choosing easy clean jobs like tidying the cutlery drawer instead of vacuuming or cleaning the loo.

Or they are doing jobs that actually create more mess for you, like taking everything out of the attic / cupboard / shed where its been for two years and leaving all over the floor at the front door / garden to go to the recycling. So that will be when YOU take it.

That one is to punish you for having the cheek to ask them to contribute in the first place.

Then if you challenge them , they can pout and say “ but you’ve been saying for the last two years that we need to clean out that cupboard “. So that makes it your fault and they are the poor little confused and misunderstood lambkin who was just trying to help.

Can anyone get a penis pass?
does one actually need a penis to get a pass?
I think I need one of these.

Dh uses the Royal 'we' when talking about tidying drawers etc.

I just nod and say yes

Drawers are still a bombsite

😂😂😂😂😂

This made me laugh. Mine usually goes out, returning about 30 minutes after the guests arrive.

XH used to be like this.

Then we had Words. So he started asking what he should do, and a conversation would go:

Me: Can you hoover through the downstairs please
Him: All of it?
Me: Yes please
Him: Even the kitchen?
Me: Yes please
Him: Where's the hoover?
Me: Same place as always
Him: Where's that?
Me: Cupboard in the kitchen
Him: Which cupboard?
Me(frantically tidying/cooking/cleaning): The small one on the left
Him: Shall I start here? (gesturing to the exact spot I'm cleaning/tidying)
Me: Maybe somewhere else?
Him: Where then?
Me, losing plot: LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE
Him, huffing: I'M JUST TRYING TO DO WHAT YOU TOLD ME THERE'S NO NEED TO GET STROPPY.

DP, on the other hand... his answer to everything is 'Done it!'. Any cleaning, tidying, prep- he can magically see it all on his own and gets it done, without any input from me. Tis a revelation.

I’ve found my people. My DH isn’t prioritising doing his own shit over the house prep, he just has no fucking clue what priorities should actually be. So he’ll dust shelves in the lounge when NOBODY EVER is going to see if they’re dusty or not, rather than wipe the kitchen worktops. And he’s actually really great at housework, high standards and doesn’t dodge any of the jobs he just seems incapable of seeing that the visible areas need sorting first.

Dh always starts by cleaning the inside of the microwave. Baffles me!

I clean the loo and the bathroom. He does literally EVERYTHING ELSE. Dusting, hoovering, tidying, the kitchen, the laundry, shopping...everything.

I haven't 'trained him', I didn't make him like this, actually, his tolerance for surface murk is waaaay lower than mine - I'm essentially a scum queen. But he's an adult who recognises that we are a partnership and he puts in more of the housework where I do most of the cooking and I'm currently the wage earner.

Reading this thread it seems that is lucky. I'm really sorry about that, you should all have this.

Asked DH to set the table when we had guests over in the summer. Looked out of the window and there he was in the garden talking to someone about dandelions 🤦‍♀️

Gosh, this started out as a cathartic read but as I get further in I’m just getting more and more wound up. Why do they have to be so shit? I sent dh a couple of snippets to show him that I’m not the only one getting annoyed by this stuff, but he has somehow managed to turn it around and feels his behaviour is justified. Presumably a ‘man thing’.

why is it funny-they do it on puporse to out of doing the menial things that nee to be done and end up doing what they wanted to do

Before we moved house, or sold it, my husband put up all the tool brackets in the garage that I’d bought to attach the garden tools to the interior of the garage wall.
Of all the things to do! I made him take them all down, when we were packing.
He also painted the shed we were leaving them, which was slightly more understandable.
He also put up shelves in the utility room, and painted them, for the new people. I never got the use of them, and they weren’t needed to make it look better.

Mind would change the glass in a window if I suggested doing something like cleaning the house on the inside. We’ve just replaced the windows so now he’s stuffed. 🤣

Half an hour before guests arrive while I am racing around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly I can almost guarantee DH will be raking leaves in the only part of the garden we can't see from the house or attending to an essential but non-urgent errand such as collecting a prescription, filling the car up or renewing his season ticket.

FFS. It needs to stop, doesn't it.

Oh my god - I thought it was only my DH who did this absolutely piss annoying thing!

i do wonder if it’s a control thing. As in ‘i know what you need me to do and therefore I’m going to just do my own thing that I’ve chosen to do and which you haven’t told me to do’!

I think dh genuinely thinks he’s doing something amazing when he cleans a drawer or organises his vinyl. He knows I have no patience for it when there are bigger jobs that need doing, but I’m the unreasonable one.

Depends on the guests. If it's my side of the family/friends I take the lead in getting things ready, if it's his family/friends and he fucks around doing pointless tasks instead of helpful ones, they'll arrive to the house in whatever state it's in. I'm not going to make the effort for them if he can't be arsed to!

My guy just can't seem to see what needs doing, ever. If I have to be his 'mother' and tell him what to do eg vacuum hall, empty the dishwasher, put away the laundry etc he says things like, 'Where's the vacuum cleaner?, Where does this bowl go' etc etc. Then I lose my shit that I have been holding onto with gritted teeth and start shouting things like, 'Up my bum where it always goes' or 'In the dog's bed' or 'Where it's been for the past 15 years'. It always ends with me asking him where he's been living for the past 15 years and mentally plotting his demise and he is truly baffled by my anger. Always.

We don't but only because it would upset the toads that live in it...

This resonated greatly with me!

His family descended recently and we made a list the night before of everything we needed to do. Running around like maniacs the morning they arrived trying to prep a load of food for lunch I found him tidying the conservatory, a room we never use as it's a dumping ground and is too cold to have the door open to so there was a 0% chance it would be seen by guests and wasn't on the list of things to do! I said that perhaps it would be better if he focused on vacuuming as he was in the middle of that before the call of the glass room took over.

Mine defrosted the freezer a hour before guests, water all over the kitchen floor.

He's also a mower of grass, fixer of jobs that have been done for years, and won't just "sit" when people are over.

how can you all bring yourself to shag these useless, lazy toddlers?

this was one fucking tragic read

I used to do all of this shit as a cunty teenager. Didn’t want to ‘help mum’ do any of the shitwork so would take myself upstairs to ‘organise my DVDs’ or sort out clothes for charity. Because I didn’t want to do any of the hard stuff, didn’t want her to moan at me and wanted to appear productive

and you’re procreating with these men???

My husband is a gem. I love prep with him.

My exH was much like the men mentioned here.

He once decided to replace a blown bulb in the overhead extractor, minutes before guests arrived and the bulb shattered sprinkling glass into our meal.

He'd never vacuumed, but was very vocal when he felt it needed doing. Same for laundry.

His idea of cleaning a toilet was to pee hard on his stains, I am not joking.

He'd use a towel until it stood up on its own (we had separate bathrooms).

He didn't ever lay a table or clear a plate. He would sit and wait for me to tidy the house in preparation for guests.

It's so different now. My husband always apologises for getting in my way as we tidy and clean. He does the shopping, always makes guests a drink and makes them feel at ease.

I always say I don't ever want it differently.