DH miserable due to family daily routine. AIBU for sticking with it?

[legworker]

My lovely DH is in a grump. Our current family routine means that we (DH, me, 2x tween-teen DDs) are eating our evening meals separately three times a week. DH is upset that he "comes home to a house which is dirty and cold, no-one is home and the washing-up is not done so he can't make his tea." He has also commented that I am pushing him out of family life with this routine and my inflexibility.

Some facts:
DH works M-F 9-5 office job based a ten minute drive away. However he is usually not home until after 6pm.

I work from home Mon-Thu 8-4. I used to work M-F 9-3 when DDs were younger to fit around school hours. When DDs were very young (and I was in a previous role) I worked three days a week term-time only.

We are both qualified professionals, albeit in different fields, and have always had around the same FTE salary, although my take-home pay has been less in the years when I was more part-time.

DDs do a lot of sport. Three times a week, the kids and I eat at around 5pm. We all leave the house around 6pm and are home again by 9pm. The kids can't get themselves to training due to where DH and I have chosen to live, so I drive them there and back. In the 2 hours or so that they are training, I do the supermarket shop (twice a week), do my own sport with a club (twice a week), and go for a run with a friend (once a week). We have had this routine for the last 12 months, since younger DD moved to the same training schedule as older DD. Prior to this, I would drop older DD, return home for about 30 minutes (when I would see DH if he was home), drop younger DD and then do the supermarket shop (twice a week)/run with a friend (once a week) before returning home with both kids at 9pm.

DH plays one of his sports in a club on one of our 5pm tea evenings. His training session runs from 7-9pm and he arrives home after us that night. He sometimes has matches (home and away) on other nights of the week too, but not that frequently.

We have an old, large house that is hard to get/keep warm.

Some more objective viewpoints:
I do 99.99% of the food shopping, preparation of evening meals and clearing up. I also generally make breakfast (as we have the kind of breakfasts where it is more efficient to do it once for everyone, rather than a 'help yourself to cereal and toast' kind of breakfast) and am usually up 30 mins-1h before DH to fit in household chores before work.

I have always cooked meals for all the family and we have always tried to eat together. When the kids were very little, we would have tea relatively late (after 6pm ish) compared to friends so that we could all eat together. The other four days of the week, we eat later than 5pm so that we can all eat together as a family. On the three days of the week when DDs and I leave at 6pm, I leave DH's meal in the pan(s) to warm up, or he might have to quickly cook something slightly different to go with what has already been made due to dietary requirements/preferences across the family (e.g. he might have to cook some gluten-free noodles to add to the stir-fried meat and veg that we have already made, and eaten our share of, with wheat noodles). As time is tight, I don't generally have time to ensure every kitchen item is washed and put away before leaving the house at 6pm, but I do try to ensure that the kitchen is tidy enough to be functional. Some less-often used items that don't go through the dishwasher may sit next to the kitchen sink for a few days before being washed up by hand. Dishwasher is put on at least daily by me.

I do most of the other general housework (cleaning, laundry, putting bins out, looking after the animals) and life admin (utilities etc, school admin, sport admin for kids).

DH is very handy practically and does a lot of things that are outside my skill set. He does a lot of car, bike and house maintenance/improvements that most people would pay for. He mows the (very large) lawn in the warmer months, washes the cars and, periodically, the outsides of the windows. He does most of the heavy gardening. He does occasionally run the hoover round or wash up.

DDs make their own packed lunches, sort their own food for lunch if they are at home (weekend, holidays), get themselves to school and back, and keep their own bedrooms clean(ish!). They are both mature and independent (they keep on top of homework, take the right things to school on the right days, get their kit together for training and events and sort it out afterwards, put their dirty laundry in their laundry bin and collect and put away their clean laundry). On a quiet day at home, they may help with jobs around the house.

So, AIBU for making tea at 5pm three nights a week to accommodate our DDs' hobbies, and then using their training time to do the supermarket shop and do my own exercise?

And, more kindly, what do you think we (individually or as a family) could change to make my DH less miserable?

(Sporadic poster here; have namechanged for this.)

how short are you that this is an effort? I'm 5ft in thick socks and I've never struggled with maneuvering bin bags in/out of bins

Although now you mention floor level tasks I do seem to be the only one to notice dirty skirting boards

I’m scraping 5’3. It’s not a major effort but takes some force (perhaps we overstuff our bin, quite likely). It’s just easier for DH.

I mean I’ve never thought of my height as in any way impacting taking out the rubbish.

Same. We overstuff our bin and it takes a bit of effort getting it out, but not enough so that it would make me decide it’s a ‘man’s job’.

How many MN's contributors would be up in arms if a man said something was a woman's job ! Quite a few. If you do think something is a mans job then don't be cross if conversely a man holds the view that some tasks are a woman's.

Of course it is a nonsense. Apart from breastfeeding which men cannot do.
Arguably there are tasks women might prefer to do. And men might prefer to do. I have a sister who would hate it if her husband started cooking. She enjoys it. And it isn't a chore for her. But she leaves the clearing up to him.

If it's that much effort pulling a bin liner out, get a smaller bin?

How big is your bin? Are you not a fully grown adult? I'm assuming here that you don't have a disability

Oh good god.

I’m not saying I can’t do the bins. Of course I can. I’m saying it’s easier for DH due to size and strength. Just like lifting something heavy would be, or getting something down from a high shelf. So if he’s around, I’ll ask him to do it (while I do a different job). If he isn’t, I’ll do it myself. I’m not sure why it’s so controversial.

Because most kitchen bins are of a size that wouldn't be so heavy that an average adult would even bat an eyelid. There are plenty of jobs I'd ask my husband to do because he's taller or whatever but it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask him to do the bin because it was so heavy. Nor do the bed actually.

Well I’m really thinking about this now 😆

Maybe it’s because we have a built in bin and the whole inner plastic unit has to be lifted up and out in order to change it? Beds - our mattresses are 30cm thick and weigh a ton, I do find it hard to lift the corner to get the sheet over it. I have seen how easy DH finds it so it seems sensible to get him to. Maybe I’m just pathetic and lazy 🤷‍♀️

To be fair my comments were aimed more at a poster above who said something like ‘I absolutely would not be doing the bins if there was a man in the house’ which is just… odd. It’s fine to have preferences over chores (my DH does the vast majority of the cooking for example as he enjoys it), but to be so absolutely against putting the bins out on the basis of sex seems a bit weird to me!

probably because the woman already picked up all the trash, put it in the bin, separated out the recyclables, washed and crushed them, took the bags out of the bins, put the bags next to the door and the least a man can do is carry the bag on the way out. And why do men put them at the curb on garbage day? Because most men would rather be doing that then watching the kids and doing whatever cleaning that the woman is doing in the moment that he is spending less than 5 minutes taking out the trash.

Well that explains in then. I’m not married to a useless man child who doesn’t do his fair share of chores so it doesn’t bother me whether he does the bins or not (such as the majority of the cooking).

Fwiw on bin emptying -

Since I left my husband I no longer have a Brabantia tall thin bin which I thought I liked but was a total pita in hindsight. The full bin bag was so unwieldy, the liners were £££, it was awkward to clean. The lid was temperamental.

Now I have a cheap Addis which takes any old bin bag, its shorter and fatter so easier to clean and the lid doesn't need tlc it just works. And its made from recycled plastic.

Honestly its the future.

@ShowsLikeThese
I couldn't have put it better myself. A real right moany maloney.

The way people talk about "doing the bins" you'd assume it involves diving headfirst into weeks of rotting garbage to separate it into piles of recyling/waste with your mouth rather than tying the bin bag( /s if you separate waste) closed and carrying it to the outside bin/s.

I know I had a minor rant upthread on this topic upthread on the 'he pulls his weight, he does the bins, the cars and all the DIY' that features so much on MN.

100% agree with the post I quoted. I live on my own. I separate recycling from landfill waste. I put them in their respective bins. On bin day I wheel the bin out and wheel it back in when it's empty. I deserve several awards now that I think about it. 🥇

As for the cars, it's seldom specified what exactly the great MAN does with them. And 'all the DIY' is most likely fuck all as well, unless you're renovating from top to bottom. In which case you most likely are employing someone to do just that.

All in all, nothing that compares to the daily grind of cleaning, cooking, washing, taking care of children and so on.

Totally agree. He's not a child, he's a grown adult.

As for the cars, it's seldom specified what exactly the great MAN does with them

I wonder too. The only thing you can do with my car is to add windshield washer fluid - I just did it after a year of driving, took a few minutes. The rest of the engine is covered in big 'Do not touch, professional service only!!" signs.
Will try to convince husband that if I 'do' his car as well, he could do all cooking, cleaning, laundry, mental load, ferrying kids around etc etc, sounds fair!

@legworker what did you decide to do?

OP hasn’t posted since 17th Feb…….