Ever won a cleaning stand off?

[idontcarewhatanyonesaysithinkyourealright]

Hi All,

I just want to discuss something I see on here often. I did end up leaving a husband who would not share the household tasks. Best decision ever, the constant anxiety of wondering what mess his very presence has left and how long it will take from my day to rectify, that’s all gone and life is a million times better. It's a complete lack of respect to make mess for someone else to clean and a relationship where this is a tenet is already functionally over.

My question is, I oftentimes see the advice ‘just don’t do it’ with a view to him one day going ‘oh look this all still needs doing, I can't live like this’ and does it all himself?

Can I ask, has that ever happened?
Also, has anyone ever actually done this?

The thing I always think about this advice is if I could live in such mess I wouldn't be this frustrated.
If you give such advice do you think the days to weeks of trying to function in the mess would even be bearable? I can't see how, and the clean up afterwards would be astronomical.
So, has anyone ever attempted and won a cleaning standoff?

It took me 4 hours to clean and tidy my already pretty clean and tidy home the other day. If I had ever left my husband to it I would have literally had to move house after such an attempt.

Agree with you OP I simply can’t function in a very messy environment. Often my husband just does not see the mess. So ignoring it is just going to compound the mess more and more and get me down -thee is no stand off, there is no winning. It’s just me cleaning

Wwll....not quite with cleaning side of things....but I'd always ask my tween age girls for their school uniform ASAP on a Fri so I could get it washed dried ironed etc for a Monday

This went on for quite some time to no avail. I might as well have asked a brick wall.

So.......I bit the bullet. Come the Monday morning girls asked me....where is my uniform? I told them ....the dirty laundry basket. They gurned n moaned, had to go in in a dirty uniform. Guess what....it never happened again lol

Years ago I took the advice on a thread to not clean and let them get on with it.
You know what happened? They eventually cleaned but very poorly and only one section that they needed to use. They would leave it for weeks before doing something about it.
Now I don't see it as competition, I see it like brushing your teeth and washing your face. I see it as something 'I bless' my home and family with. I see it as: I want to live in a nice home and I don't want to break up and go off live on my own so I just accept it. It takes more energy and anger to dwell on it and feel so victimised rather than just do it. Life is not fair and they do other things for me that I don't do so it works itself out.

I agree with DH not seeing the mess, some people really don't. We'd argue that he's not doing it well but to him he was doing it good enough that was his standards. This is his personality and how his brain perceives things.. BUT he does all gardening, DIY and car stuff. It's unrealistic to expect 5050 in EVERY single thing. I think we should work together to bridge the gaps and be a team where we accept our strengths and patch up each other's blind spots or weaknesses. When I stopped feeling so angry about it it was like a weight was lifted. Suck it up and clean a kitchen for half an hour better than for a whole week feel angry and resentful about it.

Kind of. I spotted ironing entirely. DH then had the choice to iron his own clothes or go to work in unironed shirts. But it wasn't really a "stand off" because I told him point blank I wasn't going to do it, now or ever.

Everything else has been resovled through (1) communication and (2) hiring a cleaner.

Oh and I let the clean washing build up when it's DH's turn. We have a ultilty room so it can just pile up till he gets fed up of having to search through the giant pile for his socks and just folds and puts it away. It helps that I am not a neat freek though and as long as I can shut the door on it I don't really care.

I couldn’t do this. If someone has completely different standards to you even if they eventually do it it’s never going to be done properly.

I think, many years ago, the suggestion was made here on a thread that was about a husband that did fuck all, but also minimised how much the OP did. It's then trotted out and applied to all threads about lazy men.

I have no idea if that was the origin of course, but that's the only scenario where it makes sense. By stopping, you show how much you actually do. But if you're living with someone who doesn't notice or care whether stuff is done or not, then that approach can't work.

Out of interest, how tidy is your ex's home now OP? Does he live in squalor, or does he have a cleaner

I always see this and it’s terrible advice. I’ve had it happen to me - so from the other side:

My husband and I have a pretty even share of chores but bins are his job. I did the (annoying) thing of leaving a loo roll on the side of the bathroom bin thinking I’d take it for recycling / bins are his job, but he was thinking that bins are his job to take them out the front and that bringing loo rolls down is something that either of us could do. So I didn’t move it, he thought it was lazy and waited for me to crack.

id say the little pile of loo rolls grew for weeks if not months. I genuinely didn’t “see” them anymore so mentally I’d checked out. Instead, he was becoming more irritated by this but instead of talking to me about it just quietly stewed.

id advise talking to him like a grown up because the only person that this will remotely affect will be you

Never had a stand off as such but we do share a lot of tasks fairly well. We don’t mix tasks if that makes sense but that’s partly because we’d do them differently. For example our approach to cleaning is different so I do that but he does other tasks I can’t stand like ironing and gardening.

sharing tasks is a tricky one because if one person has a higher standard than the other can they expect the other to do the task to their standard? Not sure to be honest.

You're completely correct about give and take. But the situation I'm describing is not one where it's mutually agreed and fair. I totally agree even if one person is doing all the cleaning and one all the earning, for example, that's fine as long as there's mutual respect for each other's roles

What I'm referring to is the all too familiar situation where one partner is refusing to have a basic respect of their own home or partner and leaving mess for them multiple times throughout every day.

I'm assuming in your relationship your husband actually cleans up after himself? It's not the same if so.

I thought every couple did this really yes. I don't actually mind being solely responsible for cleaning and tidying, I think that works great.

I'm talking about someone who will go into a kitchen and leave havoc, every single time, meaning at least one hour out of the cleaner's day, with the assumption they are the other person's cleaner, rather than the person who does most of the cleaning in the house. I'm happy to be the latter, but unless you're paying me I am not the former.

To be fair no my husband rarely cleans after himself but he works over 70 hours a week and I'm a SAHM to older children.

Every man I've ever lived with. I'm very strong willed and come from a country where society doesn't excuse men as being lazy/filthy.

There's probably a reason none of my relationships with English men worked out 🤔😂

Please tell me of this society so I may consider joining.

I’d happily just chuck all his stuff in a bag. Or never wash anything of his, I can ignore a washing pile in the laundry! He does wash most of the pots, he used to do it terribly. So I’d just chuck them back in the sink- if he got mad I’d draw a finger through the grease and say you have washed it when it’s clean. Sometimes things just went straight back into the sink 2-3 days in a row, much easier than stewing over it or yelling! I did leave bills unpaid when we first moved in together then explained to him too many of these overdue notices and we won’t be a good credit risk to buy a house, you need to share this. (But I was assuming we would be shoo ins for a mortgage when it really came to it.)

Nope never worked for me. I left him

From my experience of living in shared houses, I can tell you the only thing to do is keep the bits/things you need for yourself clean. If you clean up after other people, they will continue to leave mess because some people are just happy to live like pigs.

It took me 4 hours to clean and tidy my already pretty clean and tidy home the other day

Why on earth did you do that? It sounds utterly ridiculous.

I think ideally the trick is to refuse to do just the stuff that solely affects the person concerned - which principally means not doing their washing and ironing; and in an extreme case also not cooking for them.

Very minor things. DH has a yoghurt every morning and a dessert every evening. He washes out the plastic pots and leaves them to dry on the drainer. Sometimes I'll throw them in the recycling bin, sometimes I'll leave them to see how many build up before he throws them away. I make little towers out of them on the draining board to see how high I can get them. I think the highest amount was about 10!

Never said anything to him about it, but they do eventually disappear!

I am generally not the tidiest myself, so it doesn't bother me as much as it might others.

I'm in a year-ish long stand off.

About a year ago I asked DH if he wanted to be solely responsible for cleaning the kitchen and dishes OR doing all the laundry (two children in cloth nappies at the time). He immediately chose kitchen.

He stacks and empties the dishwasher exactly once a day - that's it. He often needs to be asked to do it. The worktop is always covered in dirty dishes. Never cleaned. It's disgusting.

Drives me insane.

People often say "oh but he does the bins/ lawn / DIY" but those are weekly or less tasks. It's not the same as the never ending cycle of laundry, cleaning, cooking, shopping etc. I'm a SP so don't have to deal with this with another adult but I am trying to stand firm with my young teens about basic consideration and picking up after themselves. It doesn't always work but with the holidays coming up I plan to instigate some new routines and see what happens

I find when you live with someone you have the hope someone else will pick up the slack. What really happens is you get annoyed at the other person when they do not! I have a pretty immaculate home when I live alone because I know nobody else is going to do the things that need doing. I don't think I will ever live with someone full time again as I like things a certain way and although DH is a clean man he doesn't see things like the bathroom or dusting or anything that is not hoovering/ironing/shopping. We now live apart but are still together and my ironing pile has drastically dropped and our relationship is blooming when you remove the things that cause tension! He always did a good chunk of tidying but cleaning is very different.

He isn't cleaning the kitchen then, so I'd stop doing his laundry until he started wiping surfaces doing dishes without needing prompted and cleaning the floor as the very bare minimum.

Same here, long-term relationship, used to live together now live apart, I was constantly furious when we lived together now I'm a different person, it's far too easy for one person to dominate when you live together. Now I'm able to indulge my own hobbies and interest tailor everything to my own personal needs.
I remember once feeling grateful about how he manfully carried the all heavy shopping out of the car and then I realized that most of that shopping was going to be cooked by me but eaten by him, he spends three times what I do on food!