The mental load

[Bbqnights]

Has anyone actually successfully managed anywhere near an even split with their partner when it comes to the mental load? Or am I destined to a lifetime of being the one who has to remember and organise absolutely everything?

My DH isn't completely useless. He cooks, washes up, gets up with the kids, etc... but it just never crosses his mind to book dentist appointments, doctors, buy new clothes, organise swimming lessons, get the boiler serviced, renew insurances, etc etc etc. Everything falls to me.

Any tips or suggestions?

Allocate each of you specific tasks. Get him to put more household/family stuff in his calendar and set notifications.

I sympathise.

I think it can work if you each have your own set of tasks/responsibilities. My husband and I, in my opinion, have managed to split the mental load for our household pretty well!

Mine is:

• My personal stuff (dentist/doctors etc)
• Our daughters stuff (doctors/clothes in right size for season/her feeds/activities/toys/her classes/swimming)
• I also do the organising for Christmas, birthdays, holidays etc because I love and enjoy that kind of stuff!

My husband’s is basically everything else

• Home/car/life insurance etc
• His personal stuff (dentist/doctors etc)
• Utility stuff
• Tv package/wifi stuff
• MOT/Service/Road Tax
• Boiler stuff

We share things like meal planning for the week & our dog’s things so insurance/nail clipping/vets.

This works well for us because it means we both have our own “stuff” to sort out and we are both happy with the split (he has his spreadsheet with all his bits on and actually enjoys looking for the better deals etc!).

Of course. My husband does loads, we have a very equal split of mental load tasks.

So you're doing nearly everything then?

I think play to people's strengths, if you are carrying more mental load get him to do more of the things he is good at to balance it out.

No, I’m doing absolutely nothing for our house whatsoever😂

I do my stuff & baby stuff, he does his stuff & all the house stuff, plus everything for both of our cars.

He does car and house insurance, everything to do with fuel bills, food planning, shopping and cooking, birthday/Christmas presents for family (both sides), general maintenance, e.g. booking annual boiler service

I do booking DC activities/clubs, their medical appointments, presents for any parties they are invited to.

We both do homework, planning holidays.

I think it's a fair split although on that list he maybe does more than me.

Yes mine does loads of the mental load. I could die tomorrow and I don't think he'd miss a beat with anything.
Even in his grief 😂

It certainly took a mindset shift when we first was married and had our first child. There was certain things he just never had to manage before. His parents are very traditional 🤢 father never changed a nappy kind of 'traditional'

Just took conversations and splitting all the jobs/admin and some natural consequences of forgetting things.
It did help he had a deep desire not to be like his family. He finds it really embarrassing all the weaponised incompetence.

Ultimately, if they just don't respect you as a person/woman and see things as 'your' job I'm not sure anything will change that but themselves. It doesn't help when so much of society validates that opinion. My partner regularly pulls men up at work for being put out dinner wasn't on the table for them. Yuck

Yes, we have a genuinely equal mental load.

It sounds like day to day you share some of the load, with kids and cooking etc? How is it with housework, laundry etc?
I'd split the other stuff out by what makes sense eg my DH can't drive due to a medical reason so it makes sense for me to do dentist appointments for DC because it would take him far longer to get them there on the bus. Get him to set a bunch of calendar reminders for things like insurance, boiler, and make it clear that you have are taking these things off your list. So it's on him.
You say it never crosses his mind, but I assume he's a competent adult who managed to do things like get car insurance before he met you? So it crossed his mind then, until he had someone to offload it to.

We have a big general split in our house

Me: Myself

• The children to include health, clothing, school, social etc (it's a big department!)
• Online admin like insurance etc

DH: Himself

• The house, all maintenance, and the lions share of things like the dishwasher, cleaning floors etc, about a 70/30 split him up me
• Food, planning, shopping and 90% of cooking
• Cars, in their entirety although I do insurance
• Pets, health, about 80% of walking and 50/50 feeding

It works pretty well!

So he's doing 7-10 tasks a year and you're doing all the daily mental load.

Mine isn't equal but it's definitely a better split than this

My DH isn't completely useless. He cooks, washes up, gets up with the kids, etc... but it just never crosses his mind to book dentist appointments, doctors, buy new clothes, organise swimming lessons, get the boiler serviced, renew insurances, etc etc etc. Everything falls to me.

Has he ever had to do any of those things? Do you just do everything and simmer with resentment?

Why don't you have a chat about the chores that need doing and split responsibilities?

No and it drives me nuts.

My DH is not selfish but his mental load would have you think otherwise.

We’re having an extension built currently and all of the heavy lifting in terms of organising stuff with the builders, choosing what radiators/doors/bathroom we have, has fallen to me, but you bet your bottom dollar he’s remembered to make sure there’s a plug on the wall for the Tv, and looked into new TVs and broadband providers to make sure our new extension is covered.

DH does 95% of the cooking and the food shopping, but who do you think sends him ideas for meals that the DC will like, and who remembers to remind him to defrost the frozen meat for said meals? Yes he would come up with his own meal ideas if I didn’t send him any, but it would either be the same thing week on week, or end up complicated where the DC won’t eat what he’s made us so they end up having fish fingers or nuggets every other day. And he’d end up having to buy extra meat last minute on the day because he hasn’t defrosted anything in time.

He does get up early with the DC every day that he’s not gone to the office or the gym at the crack of dawn, and I’ve recently delegated DC1’s repeat prescriptions to him which has been a slight load off. I suppose he sorts out the majority of the utilities, but there’s not much to sort out? And you get reminders in the post so hardly a “mental” load.

That was cathartic!

So basically you are doing way more 😂😂😂. Almost all of his admin tasks come up once a year at most lol.

I'd expect you to be sorting your own medical/dental stuff why is that on the list??

I know! They are probably on autorenew!

We have I’d say a 80/20 in our household. Dh does 80 %of the housework and admin etc I do the rest

Neither of us work due to dc with SEN / medical and because I do more of the night care he does the majority of the day to day things

Physical load, is quite evenly split, my husband does all cooking & we share cleaning & looking after our child.
Mental load he's not great at and I haven't had much luck improving it.

Though he did pick up a letter I'd opened and left on the counter about my road tax and paid it for me, sooo baby steps lol
I do ask him to organise some stuff for the house/cars.
Would love to have a better split but I think partly I might be a bit of a control freak about it; like I ask him to sort the MOTs for our cars, then I can't help texting to check he's done it, which he normally has but I can't cross it off my list until I know he's done it.

Yeah we are pretty even here.

Dentist we all go together and book the next appointment after we finish that check up - no mental load at all!

Doctors - I do mine, he does his and child

Pets - food and litter is set up on monthly delivery, no mental load (he cleans litter)

Finance - I do the mortgage and notify about any new deals on interest rates for savings. No real mental load as it happens once every 5yrs! Again utilities are once a year or every 18m so no real mental load there.

Holidays - we plan together

Nursery - we both receive notifications, husband packs a bag for the whole week, I drop off, he picks up

Clothes - we do our own, tend to do an online shop for child in bulk

Christmas/birthdays - I do my family, he does his, both do child (we buy a stash of cards so the only mental load for birthdays is a calendar reminder and whoever is walking by the post box)

Food/household - online shop, household goods on repeat order. I cook, he washes up

We have a cleaner once a week so neither of us clean. Both do laundry, probably him more than me (even though I mostly wfh!).

I don’t really feel like we have a lot of ‘mental load’ things. Most things we set a reminder, or it’s on repeat order, or it’s something that comes around once a year.

This is a massively depressing read for me; I do nearly all the mental load and the physical side too 🫠🫠 I often do the typical “man jobs” as well, like putting the bins in / out, mowing the grass etc. He does do all the tip runs and sorts House / car insurance, but like others have said, this is an annual thing, often on auto renew

We split everything between us, so whoever has more time when something needs to be done will do it.

Put stuff in a shared calendar clearly indicating who is going to do which task on which date. Just as you would at work. There’s no point just expecting each of you to remember what has to be done and then getting frustrated when it doesn’t get done. If you did that at work, you’d be (sensibly) told to liaise with your colleague and get stuff in diaries.

I don’t think I even have a mental load, which I suppose means things must be pretty equal - but as much as anything I don’t really think of stuff that has to be done once a year / every three years like taking my car for an MOT or remortgaging the house as a particularly heavy load.

DH sorts the utility bills
DC dentist appointments
MOT and service for the car.
I do everything else. Even car insurance, it wouldn't occur to him to look for a better deal so I do it.
I make sure DS has school uniform and shoes in the right size.
Arrange doctor and optician appointments for the kids
Attend endless meetings with various professionals about DS and chase up review dates
He would claim responsibility for DDs kickboxing class. Fair enough he takes her but I pay for the lessons, insurance and uniform.
I do Christmas and birthday stuff but I don't mind that.
I do meal planning and shopping.

Anything that can be automated is automated in this household.

But yeah, I'd say an even split.

We make reference lists for tasks that we can check, so tasks don't belong to one person or another per se.

We also have a strict rule of "who does it, decides it" - i.e. no correcting for how something "should" be done.

He's much much better at remembering family birthdays than I am. I'm much better at blasting through tasks, he's better when attention to detail is needed. So we decide what approach is needed, and let that person take the lead.

Big pile of laundry? Me. Small pile that needs handling delicately? Him.