To not feel able to cook in my kitchen because it’s dirty

[WoIsMe]

My DH did the kitchen yesterday after dinner and this is what I find when I go to make my own breakfast and my kids’ lunches. I don’t feel that I can prepare food without cleaning up the kitchen first but I have to get my kids to school and get to a meeting at 9 a.m. while my DH has already gone out to work.

So, AIBU for feeling that I can’t cook in this kitchen without having to clean it first?

It’s hardly “dirty” so just crack on. As others have said, in the time it took to photograph & post, you might as well have got on with a clear up.

If you iron his shirts or do other supportive tasks for him and you feel that bad, just do a half arsed job next time. I doubt he’ll notice but if he does, you’ll have an opener for discussion. (How about only cleaning one half of the car??) 😜

Your husband is just on the defensive. If he normally wipes the surfaces then you're shooting yourself in the foot by stirring this up into criticism and argument. Just let it drop and normal service will be resumed. Make a big song and dance about it and you'll likely find it left unwiped more often.

I think a spray and wipe would be fine. If dropping the grapes in the sink is abhorrent, find some way of not dropping them in the sink.

That food in the sink makes me feel a bit 🤢 but the rest is just crumbs - I would wipe it all down, would take less that a minute.

Give it a quick wipe it will be fine. Ours is usually worse as however often I clean I always seek to come down to a mess courtesy of teenagers! I've sort if given up as long as I've got a hygienic surface to prepare food on. It gets cleaned every night before I go to bed.. surfaces wiped down, sink cleaned, floor swept, hob wiped amd large chopping board scrubbed.. It takes 10 to 15 minites at most then the mess fairies come in the night! I agree it's frustrating but it's not the end of the world.

As an aside, I do like your table cloth

I think YANBU - your DH clearly didn't clean it last night after making tea, and just assumed you'd sort it this morning before making breakfast / lunch for everyone.

If it's just a few seconds to clean as people keep saying, why didn't her DH do it properly last night? Surely her time is worth just as much even if it is only "a few seconds" - which to me it isn't - needs to empty and clean the sink, clean down the hob and sides. It's a 5-10 minute job depending how thorough you're being, but surely out of basic respect her DH could have cleaned up last night after himself and not just left it to OP to sort in the morning rush?

I don't like cooking in a dirty kitchen either OP, crumbs make my skin crawl. It is precious and probably a bit silly though, but it's my fucking kitchen and if I want to be able to see my face in every surface that's my prerogative.

To be fair though I also don't expect my husband to uphold my ridiculous standard of cleanliness - it's my neuroses so it's my job to clean the kitchen.

The answer to "what if I dropped food on the work surface/sink?" is the same as "what if I dropped food on the floor?"

I'm asking whether I'm unreasonable to feel that I need to clean up before preparing food

It depends what you mean by clean up. I agree YANBU to think it needs a quick wipe down on the sides before prepping food. I always wipe ours down before making food even if it looks clean cause we have 2 cats and they sometimes go on the side without me knowing. But we are talking literally 2 minutes, as in if you set a timer for 2 minutes I genuinely think you'd have it hygienically clean in that time. If you think it needs anymore than that then I feel YABU. Take the grapes for example, put them in a bowl and rinse them using that rather than holding them in your hands and risking dropping them in the sink.

As an aside if your DH supposedly cleaned it last night and it hasn't been used since then I'd also be annoyed at that and mention it.

If the crumbs would just take a minute to wipe down, why couldn’t DH do it? Why is it OP’s job to finish his task before starting her own?

Sorry but you are being deliberately overdramatic here OP - especially given that your sink looks like it could do with a proper clean anyway. That sink for me is unacceptable. Do you buy bleach at all?

Not every post on Mumsnet has to be a huge drama! I'm literally asking for my own satisfaction over a minor disagreement with my DH on food hygiene. I doubt I'll even mention it to him again because I'm working from home today and he's in the office so by the time he gets home this evening it will be clean. It looks like most people on this thread are saying they would clean up before preparing food and some wouldn't mind and would just crack on.

Lots of dramatic posts like this one these days. I would have texted him and said " Could you please leave the kitchen clean? thanks". He would have replied " Oops, sorry. Won't happen again". We would have all gone on with our day.

I never cook without cleaning the kitchen first. Not a deep.clean, but a wipe over of surfaces hob, sink etc. Don't see the issue.

OCD?

Do you buy bleach at all?

😂

I have actually refused to cook at all, no discussion, if my DH doesn't clean up properly after himself.

Your sink ... mine is often like that and far worse. It is the one thing that makes me gag - having to deal with slimy yucky stuff that's been stewing in the plug hole all day. I have considered saving the slime in a jar and then serving him a weeks accumulation of it with the words 'I assumed that since you didn't dispose of it, you were just saving it for later...?'

Yes, it could take you a few mins, half an hour, a day (insert time) to clean up after him, but why should you? It's not about how long it takes: it's about basic respect.

This

No-one's saying it's OP's job, he didn't do it for whatever reason and has now gone to work, OP can either wipe it up, give him a bollocking later and crack on with the food, or leave it and wait for him to come home to clean it up as it's too dirty to prepare food now.

I know what I'd do

You couldn't use the kitchen because you had 9am meetings and with the state of the kitchen.....seriously? A 5 second wipe down makes that usable, I dont see how 5 seconds impacts your morning! You don't make the food in the sink surely? So that bit is irrelevant to this post.

My husband doesn't dare leave one crumb let alone all of those! 😁

But no, that isn't clean. I'd have quickly cleaned it before making lunches (when you say cooking, do you mean cooking or making a packed lunch?)

Also, I have a great little shark hoover, just for crumbs. So handy and fast! They're worth a look at. Mine lives next to the toaster!

I would probably have automatically have given the surfaces a quick wipe over before preparing food on them, but it's really not a big deal.

On the off -chance that I didn't wipe first, and had a particularly wriggly sandwich and I couldn't stop it falling onto the crumby surface, I'd just brush the crumbs off and carry on. Similarly with particularly bouncy grapes that bounced out of my hands and into the sink, I'd just pick them up and give them another quick rinse.

This would be a total non issue in our house, and not worthy of a mention tbh.

I agree. In isolation this isn’t a hill I’d die on, but something tells me there’s something more to this

I'm intrigued by your use of the words 'cook' and 'cooking', @WoIsMe. Cooking means using the hob or oven, surely? Cooking on an uncleaned hob does makes it more difficult to clean next time. But thats not true of making sandwiches and packing lunchboxes. I'd have wiped up thoroughly after I'd got the job done, because I know I'd have made crumbs.

My DH leaves the kitchen like this after making his food and it drives me nuts. However, a quick wipe with a cloth / antibac spray and it's fine. I do see where you're coming from though - I have to have the house relatively spotless otherwise it flares up my anxiety. Just ask him to wipe down the sides after cooking.

I’d be fuming. This is the kind of stuff I hate dealing with…he does a job and you come back to find it not actually done and you have to do it yourself