AIBU to be pissed off by the sheer level of laziness in my home

[Akiddleydiveytoo]

OK, full disclosure, I can be guilty of being a little bit lazy at times but fucking hell - my family can turn it into an Olympic sport 🤬. Here are some examples (for context, I live with my DH and our 2 DDs (13 & 16)).

1. DD1s (only) chore is to empty and load the dishwasher which she has to be nagged and nagged to do Every. Single. Day. As a result my kitchen is ALWAYS full of dirty dishes. Occasionally I will get fed up and do them myself (as I'm sick of seeing dirty dishes everywhere and I actually need to free up some workspace to prepare dinner) but I know that by doing that, all I'm teaching her is that if she leaves it long enough I'll do it.

1. Similarly, DD2s (only) chore is to empty the bins and take the recycling out. Again, despite repeated nagging this gets put off and put off until we're playing bin Jenga and we have empty tins and bottles etc all over the kitchen.

1. Nothing ever gets put directly into the bin. Last night we had a rare MaccyDs and DH plated all of our food out and just left the empty food wrappers on the kitchen worktop - less that 2ft from the bin!

1. Both DDs pull everything out of their wardrobes when deciding what to wear and just dump them on the floor. When I ask them to tidy up their rooms they just scoop up all of their (unworn, washed and ironed) clothes off the floor and put them back in the dirty laundry basket so they don't have to hang them back up again.

1. DH is completely incapable off lifting the lid on our laundry bin to put his dirty clothes in and just leaves them sitting on the top which means that when I have to put my dirty clothes in there I either have to put his in there as well or just lift up the lid and let his clothes just fall on the floor (which I've started doing more and more often but it doesn't make a difference - they just stay on the floor for a week).

1. All our clean towels and bedclothes get stored in our airing cupboard where most of the shelves are above my head beyond my reach. I keep a little step ladder in there so I can put stuff on the higher shelves but this often goes walkabout. In these cases, I usually leave the clean towels/bedclothes on our bed until I locate the ladder to put them away. DH will go to bed early and, instead of putting the stuff away (as he's over a foot taller than me and can reach the shelves easily) will just move the stuff over to my side of the bed and go to bed. He does this with anything that might be left on the bed during the day (he always goes to bed first) e.g. it was DD2s birthday the other week and she opened her presents on our bed and left most of them there all day (as we went out for the day). Sure enough, when I went to bed they were all neatly moved over to my side of the bed and DH was snoring away on his side.

1. Our spare room is in desperate need of decorating. We haven't painted it once since we moved in 13 years ago. We bought new wardrobes for the room a couple of years ago so said to DH we need to paint the walls before putting the wardrobes up. I go to work for the day and come home to find DH has painted the wall BUT only the patch that will be covered by the wardrobes - the painting literally stops halfway down the wall. DH said he just wanted to get the wardrobes up and that he'd finish the painting at a later date - that was 2 years ago!

I could go on and on but i won't. I really am despairing, honestly. The sheer level of laziness is really starting to piss me off. I'm generally a pretty laid back, easy going sort but years of this shit and constantly living in a messy, dirty (as I can't get to any surfaces to actually clean them) house has turned my into a whinging, nagging harridan which I hate.

So make me feel better - tell me your stories of lazy fuckery.

Agree fully & yes, about H too.

I'm not any great help with that one! But his treatment of OP is really disrespectful and hurtful - a whole other and more significant issue than the DC (who are being lazy teens essentially).

Shit like this really pisses me off about being in a couple and you have a usually fucking lazy man who needs training. Get the fucker told. You have a him problem.

HE needs to step up and set an example.

Or get your own pad and leave them too it.

But his treatment of OP is really disrespectful and hurtful - a whole other and more significant issue than the DC (who are being lazy teens essentially).

Quite. Unless this is addressed there will be no change.

The only one of note here (live with adult ds and dd only) and the one that gets dd and I moaning is ds and the new toilet roll. He never ever puts a new one on the holder just puts it on the cistern instead. If the stash I keep in the bathroom runs out he steals the one from the downstairs loo and puts it on the cistern, instead of going into the room next to the downstairs loo where my loo rolls are kept and topping up the bathroom stash. Drives me potty.

Just to find the positives - as a family you plate up a McDonalds.

That is very civilised - you are not total slobs.

Every morning before I go to work I do the same thing.
Put all of the dds hair stuff, make up bits and breakfast stuff away.
It's so annoying but OK back before them so I hate coming home to it.
I am now gathering it up and hiding it all. It will be a few days before neither of them have a brush or any products and I'm going to put it somewhere really inconvenient like the garden shed to annoy them..
Luckily dh does loads so can't complain about him.

@EarringsandLipstick

Yeah I dont get what you mean by setting habits for life or why you're so convinced rewards (or lack of) dont work or why it matters that lazy wee shites of kids are resentful that they don't get rewarded for being lazy.

Lazy kids who do nothing won't be converted by the op setting habits for life either, whatever that means

Ooh this makes me seethe. That ‘What’s for tea’ phrase hobestly makes me want to commit murder.

Also ‘we’ve got no bread’ and ‘there’s no toilet roll’ also make me want to kill. Do these people not have legs to go to the shops?!🤬 Like I’m the fucking provider of bread and toilet roll.As well as tea😡

He's not malicious, he's just thoughtless.

No thought, consideration or respect for you - what a catch. You really think his good qualities outweigh that? He's treating you with contempt.

I agree, @PlacidPenelope . The husband is most definitely the problem. The whole items on the bed as well as the other selfish, disrespectful acts underline that.

@Akiddleydiveytoo I also really relate to what you say. Things have been very uneven and frustrating in my household at times over the years. Still have my moments of irritation but things are generally more tolerable. Kitchen bin here generally emptied by adults but outside bin and recycling taken to roadside by the kids, at supper that night they are reminded. We all take turns at washing up and emptying dishwasher. Everyone is expected to help with loading it after meals are finished. People expected to hoover and dust own rooms with reminders if they are looking dirty.
Washing was a big issue we have a laundry basket in each room and gather up to wash darks etc together. With my eldest I used to put his clean folded washing in a basket in his room ready to be put away. He often took days to get around to the job by which time it was a crumpled heap. He was told next time you do that I will stop doing your washing and I did. Younger boy has been told if it’s in the basket it’ll get washed. I don’t go looking for the school jumpers etc that he has left in his study area or on the back of a kitchen chair!
However like you my biggest challenge is/was my husband. When I was on maternity leave each time it was expected I would do everything and look after a baby. Now he has taken early retirement and is at home all day and is clearly not relishing doing more. I wanted to get a cleaner when we moved here but he did not so I think it’s fair he does more cleaning 🤷‍♀️
These are life skills as well as cooking a few meals and managing budget and food shopping. Need to cover these things to help them prepare for uni/college/independent living.
I think the biggest easiest win for you would be to make everyone responsible for their own laundry. A lesson on what the labels mean, how your machine works and about separating by colour and leave them to it.

I just stopped putting stuff away for them and now the house is a mess and they don't like it - but I cba to run myself ragged while they all leave mess behind them.

Stop doing anything for any of them. Seriously.

Stop doing their washing. Just get your stuff out of the basket and do yours. If they do eventually get off their backsides and put a load on, don’t complete the job. If they abandon it in the machine, pull it out and leave it wet on the floor.

Stop cooking them dinner. Tell them you’ll cook for them again when they start respecting the work that does into it.

No joking here, I was a lazy teen in some ways - I hated washing up (still do but obviously I’m now an adult). My dad collected every plate / cup that I left lying around and just piled them into my room. If I left them anywhere else, they would be back in my room. Make her room stink till she learns how quick and simple loading a dishwasher is.

Likewise the rubbish - hasn’t emptied it? Take it all up to her room. All the bins, leave them in there. If she just brings them downstairs, put them back in.

DH - stop cooking and washing for him and play him at his own game. Don’t cook for him, don’t do his washing, throw his dirty clothes onto his side of the bed.

I think I’ve discovered why I’m single 😂😂

As a person with adhd I cause a lot of my own problems and having adhd kids doesn’t help.

I’ve found workarounds that help a lot. Might be useful to share?

One thing is removing lids - I would never have worked this out by myself but removing lids (and other barriers) massively increase the chances of things getting where they’re supposed to go.

I have a brain that’s already moved on to other things, and if I have to open cupboard/pull out box/take off lid/put item in/close box/put back on shelf/close door, there is a high chance that sequence won’t be completed or I’ll drop the item on a nearby surface without realising. It’s not deliberate.

By changing how my house is organised, I have a much tidied house. You mentioned the laundry basket op, try taking the lid away for a while and see if it makes a difference.

My dd now has a west again hamper alongside the dirty laundry hamper, mostly for the clothes she can’t be bothered rehanging. It keeps them out of the laundry cycle so while it isn’t ideal, it’s workable.

My ds, has added issues, and instead of a wardrobe has clothes organised by categories on open shelves - folded in a variation of Marie Kondo do they can be seen and identified, but not fall apart. It’s been very successful for him.

Getting started (task initiation) is a huge challenge, and getting motivated to try and motivate hard to motivate kids … well I’d be better off attempting the Olympics. So I don’t have chores for them - and I definitely don’t assign chores that slow me down if they’re not done.

What I do instead is encourage them to come and chat with me when I’m cleaning/cooking/doing laundry and I give them things to carry, or veg to chop, etc. They join in but in a companionable, helping way, where I don’t have to be the overseer. After a few months of this, they are seeing what needs doing and pitching in with me.

I’m hoping that by shifting away from chores like this, they’ll learn the social value of house work. And my plan is to transition to them cooking a couple of meals a week and taking care of their own laundry and bedrooms.

I try and find natural transitions in the day for everyone to pitch in with cleaning - after meals is an obvious one. And we do a house reset, which means putting stuff away. The only rule is no piles - pick something up and put it all the way away and come back and pick something else up. (You can grab an armful of things that belong upstairs but you cannot make a pile to forget about for 6 months)

I would absolutely leave the McDonald’s bags on the counter instead of in the bin - and my poor dh would be as perplexed as you op. Part of the reason for having a daily reset is that I remember to come back and clear these things up - I get blind to this sort of thing otherwise. It gives us a way, to tackle these problems before they become rows.

I really feel for you Op. I’m hyper aware how irritating my ways can be for my naturally tidy and organised dh. So finding ways to navigate our differences and mitigate the issues is a high priority for me. I absolutely don’t want to make work for him. But I suspect that gender plays a part in that - adhd women tend to work even harder at this. And men, who for whatever reason aren’t naturally tidy, aren’t affected either by shame or awareness of the labour imbalance because of the advantages of their social conditioning.

So I guess I’m saying that while arse kicking is entirely necessary and justified, it might also be worthwhile to look at workarounds too.

I do agree with this. We're replying re the kids because it's a more familiar problem, but OP is dealing with a massive amount of disrespect from her husband. The moving all the linen onto her side of the bed and going to sleep is just awful.

Getting teens to empty the DW, do bins etc is a common issue and OP I think you probably can deal with that separately to your husband. But the whole question of what the hell do you do to address it with DH is much thornier. I would tackle it from a respect angle I think.

It would be interesting to see what your husband thinks of the teens not pulling their weight. Is he just not bothered because it's your problem?

Have you told your DDs that they are misogynistic arseholes who are buying into the patriarchy by expecting you, the person with the oldest vagina in the room to be responsible for all the housework?

I find the kids don't like me saying "just because I have the oldest vagina here, doesn't mean this job is mine" (especially in front of their friends!).

Get them onside, by asking them how they will feel growing up, potentially marrying a man who thinks their role as a woman is to pick up and clean up after them; would they feel that is fair? Would they be willing to work AND be solely responsible for all the housework? If not, why do they think you should be?

They're of an age where you can speak to them like adults and where they can also tell your H he's a misogynistic arsehole for treating you like a servant.

Your DDs can't expect to go out in the world and expect women to be treated as equals if they treat their own mother like a slave. In this instance THEY are the cause of misogyny in your household as they are both condoning their father's behaviour rather than calling it out.

Ask them to question their father more on why he believes women should be responsible for all housework. Have dinner time discussions about it; ask them all to demonstrate their lack of misogyny by cleaning up the fucking house instead of leaving it all to you.

So I actually would not give putting away the dishes as a chore. We do have that in my family (my dh's idea) and it's a pain because it's a foundation chore. If the clean dishes aren't put away, then dirty dishes can't be put into the dishwashwer, which means you can't wipe down the counters or scrub the sink etcetera. It has a massive domino effect. They need to do things at the top of the work pyramid, not things at the bottom.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Pick chores for teens that make your life easier when they’re done most of the time, not chores that make life harder if they’re not completed daily.

Honestly I think I've explained my approach pretty well - others seem to get it.

You're free to disagree of course but I can't keep repeating myself because you don't get it!

Regarding habits for life, surely it's self-explanatory? It's about working together to create a new dynamic & I've explained why consequences alone won't work for a problem on this scale.

If you still don't get it I suggest you stop @ me & we'll leave it there!

Pick chores for teens that make your life easier when they’re done most of the time, not chores that make life harder if they’re not completed daily.

I agree.

However I find that with daily chores, they also work, once you can get them ingrained of course! In other words my DC will unload a dishwasher / sweep the floor / dry dishes because they are there every day & it's nearly unconscious at this point.

They still also have to do bedsheets / ironing / garden jobs too.

So much also depends on the type of kids you have. Mine were stubborn with a capital FU. Eldest son, aged about six, asked to clear his Stikklebrix off the carpet, outright refused. So I told him I'd throw them away if he didn't tidy them up. He didn't, so I did, right in the bin.

He calmly told me that now I'd have to replace them, so it was only my money I was wasting.

How I didn't brain the little fucker there and then I don't know. Part of the problem is, when you have no money, you can't withhold treats, pocket money and outings, and this was all in the days before mobile phones and wi fi!

Yes, the children see the OP being treated with contempt by their father so they do the same.

I think back to my childhood no way would I have got away with treating my mother with such utter disrespect (1) because my father didn't and (2) because he would never have stood for it and the same with my husband and children. It would never have even entered my head to treat my mother with such disdain and nor has it ever entered my children's head to treat me like that.

This from the opening post:

DH will go to bed early and, instead of putting the stuff away (as he's over a foot taller than me and can reach the shelves easily) will just move the stuff over to my side of the bed and go to bed. He does this with anything that might be left on the bed during the day (he always goes to bed first) e.g. it was DD2s birthday the other week and she opened her presents on our bed and left most of them there all day (as we went out for the day). Sure enough, when I went to bed they were all neatly moved over to my side of the bed and DH was snoring away on his side.

That is not thoughtless, that has required a lot of thought to do and the thought is I'm too important to put this stuff away, me getting into bed and going to sleep is what I want to do so I'll shove it over there so my wife cannot get into bed until she has dealt with it, that's what she's there for. It's so selfish and imo spiteful, it wouldn't have taken him any more effort or time to have put the stuff away than it did to pile it on his wife's side of the bed, he does that because he thinks so little of his wife.

I know. That stuff on her side of the bed. What an arsehole.

And the Op doesn't think it's malicious and he has lots of good qualities

It is a nasty thing to do and he hasn't just done it once he does it all the time.

If I were the OP I'd be out of there and leave them all to fester in their own crap.

Good post @PlacidPenelope it's very sad really.

The only hope might be her H behaving badly but obliviously? That if she really had it out with him he might improve (clutching at straws)

I don't see how he can be oblivious @EarringsandLipstick there is a thought process going on there to move things onto her side of the bed and it's not a nice one. Same as with leaving the wrappers for the McD's on the side instead of putting them in the bin or painting half a wall or putting his dirty clothes on top of the laundry basket instead of in it, it's not laziness it is calculated.