Is this split of household tasks fair?

[Foolsonparade]

My fiancé and I both work full time. We have set jobs that we both do that are seen as “our” tasks. So I cook and clean the kitchen and DP does everything else.

I ended up getting a bit fed up of doing the cooking every single night (on the rare occasion that I won’t be back late, he will cook) and then cleaning the kitchen. So I asked if we could split this instead of it being just one persons task. He argued that those are my only two jobs whereas he does literally everything else. I just feel like “everything else” is not as big of a task as cooking and washing the pots.

We don’t have any children, he will clean all other rooms of the house and hoover and do the laundry and clean litter trays. I work hybrid so work from home 2 days a week. This set up has worked nicely tbh because we both know what we are expected to do and just get on with it and are in a routine with it. But would I be unreasonable to think we should take the cooking in turns?

If you both work the same hours in similarly demanding jobs then share everything.......

Share all food shopping, cooking , washing up, cleaning the kitchen & bathroom, dusting, hoovering, emptying bins, putting out the rubbish, changing bed inen, washing, drying and folding clothes.etc.

Or split the cooking & chores so you each do what you enjoy.

Or employ a cleaner & split the meal planning, food shopping & cooking. Or do it together.

Sounds like you have a great deal if your only room is the kitchen.

Our kitchen arrangement is generally I will do the cooking and kitchen cleaning during the week as I'm home first, and he does it at weekends. He's actually really good at cooking and he enjoys it. The cleaning less so but he does wash up and antibac the surfaces. The bathroom on the other hand....I don't think he's ever once scrubbed the bath or put bleach down the loo.

You’d think. I don’t do any of the cooking but I certainly don’t let my bloke get away with not doing anything else.

@Poiuytrewqa Sometimes the meat takes longer, so it makes more sense to get it started first. I’ve also heard that something about keeping meat cutting boards separate from veggie cutting boards, but I don’t do that (I spray hand-washed dishes down with a rubbing alcohol and vinegar solution anyway; I figure if it’s not clean enough to cut food you’ll eat raw on, it’s not clean enough to use for meat again, either. )

It most definitely takes longer than “seconds” to chop meat and vegetables. It takes longer than “seconds” to even wash your veggies and get them on the cutting board, let alone cut them. Have you never peeled and diced an onion before? Sliced chicken real thin for velveting?

😂😂 An onion?? Chop it in half, top it, slice it, bottom it. It honestly does not take longer than ten seconds. If you think slicing chicken is a hugely time consuming job, fair enough. I wouldn’t oven cook thinly sliced chicken though.

When the meat takes longer hold the veg back. When the potatoes take longer hold the meat and veg back.

This isn’t difficult stuff.

So even though you work from home twice a week he still cleans the litter trays? Does that mean when your cat uses it, you just leave it in there for him to clean up because that’s ‘his’ chore to do?!!?

I’m enjoying the diversion into cookery practises. Onion, when you go halves are you cutting end to end or through the fat bit?

Also interested in the idea of cutting the top off before the slicing.

You have to wash and peel it first (unless you eat the peel??). There’s a lot more cuts if you want a finer dice vs a rough, clumsy chop. (Compare the slices/chop for fajitas or kabobs vs pico de Gallo) Even if you do a rough chop, it takes longer than ten seconds. And no, you wouldn’t bake or roast thinly sliced chicken; that gets fried or seared in a pan. The oven would dry it out and make it rubbery.

I do not understand why there are people like you intentionally minimizing the amount of work done to make even a simple meal. It doesn’t seem like those who acknowledge how much time and effort these things actually take are the ones being the martyrs here.

The point of starting the meat first (aka, chopping, seasoning it, and getting it into whatever appliance you’re cooking with) when it takes longer than the veggies is so that you can get the whole meal done faster (all the components done at the same time) rather than making the veggies first and then waiting for the meat to finish cooking. Plus then everything is more likely to be hot, and not either cold or overcooked from being kept hot while waiting for other components to finish.

Here we have Gordon Ramsey chopping an onion. It takes him, a professional highly qualified chef over one minute to do half the onion and that doesn’t include peeling it. So, no, @Poiuytrewqait doesn’t take seconds.
you’ve been all over this thread smugly lording it up that you’re so much faster at cooking than everyone else, when all it is is that you eat really bland food.

Oh. My link to Gordon chopping an onion didn’t work.

attempt two…

Oh it did. Thought that was an advert. 😂

Do week about. You cook one week and he cleans, he cooks the next week and you clean.

Breaks up the monotony.

Frozen onion is great!

In terms of tasks, the OP has a sweet deal, but I can see how cooking the food every night and cleaning it up could get wearing. My late DH did most of the food shopping, all the cooking (always from scratch but leftovers used mid-week) because he liked it: thinking of recipes, and crucially he found it relaxing.

I now do this too and enjoy the prep, but then I only have myself to please.
I won't go into the rest of my and DH's sharing, but it was equitable. We both worked full-time in demanding jobs.

OP, if you want to share the cooking then you're going to have to take on some of what your OH is doing.

End to end! Never through the fat bit. Then lay it flat side down and cut off the bottom, leaving the top which holds the onion together. Then slice it from bottom to top, so the slices are still held together, and then if you want to dice it, then remove the top.

I had no idea anyone would cut an onion any other way.

I don’t usually wait a few seconds for a good shot of the onion rocking, then spend another few talking to the camera to describe what I’m doing, with more time demonstrating it in slow motion. I just cut the onion.

It really does not take long to prepare a quick meal, despite the protests that cutting an onion is a longwinded process.

If OP’s DH was insisting on very intrinsic and time intensive meals then she wouldn’t be unreasonable, but to claim that making a meal for two people in some sort of overwhelming mental and physical exercise is just ridiculous. Many of us who live alone manage to both cook meals and clean the house. Cooking a meal can be done very quickly with minimal washing up.

It’s also a bit weird that you think that all of the wonderful flavours we have in vegetables (the mushrooms, onions, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, leeks, sweetcorn, peas, carrots, swedes, turnip, parsnips, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peppers, butternut squash, sweet potato, celeriac, pumpkin, aubergine, courgette, asparagus, shallots), seasoning (paprika, chilli, garlic, onion salt, basil, sage, oregano, honey, lemon, soy, ginger, turmeric etc), and meats (roast chicken, ham, beef, salmon, sardines, mackerel, lemon sole, sausage, kippers) are all ‘bland’.

If you don’t eat meals mainly around meat, vegetables, carbs and seasoning, what do you eat? What are these flavoursome meals that don’t involve them?

I would not be happy with that split. Cooking and cleaning the kitchen is daily. The rest is not. If I have to cook everyday I am only cooking for myself.I would split the chores a little more (plus I loathe cooking.)

It’s not “a long winded process” to cut an onion but it takes over 6x longer than you’re claiming, and that’s only one step of meal preparation. Most people seem to be wanting more elaborate meals than what you’re content with, as well. If every night I chucked a piece of meat and some veggies on a sheet pan and drenched it in olive oil, and served that to my husband, he’d be asking to go to restaurants or get carry out most nights.

Similarly, if I only spent a short time cleaning our house such that it was barely habitable, or didn’t fold/hang the laundry after washing it, but rather leaving it in baskets to get rifled through and wrinkled…he would be very unhappy with that as well.

Each partner has to do their share at a satisfactory level, and if that means different, well-cooked, high effort meals every night, then yes, that’s very time and effort intensive, and it’s reasonable to want a break from it sometimes (though OP ought to replace it with some of her DH’s chores.)

Not sure why you’ve made up the extremely overly dramatic ‘drenched’ in olive oil.

I assume you and your husband never have Sunday roasts.

Have a look at some traybake recipes. It might give you inspiration as to quick ways to cook.

Sorry, it does not take a minute to chop up a singular vegetable.

What do you usually eat for your evening meal?

Dinners can still be structured around meats, carbs, and veggies without baking/roasting them from frozen every night. People like a variety of cultural dishes and means of cooking. Try stir fries, ravioli, gumbo, fritters, frittata, tacos, risotto, cassoulet, casseroles curry, hot pot, fondue, pies…hell, you might even try grilling something! There’s a whole world of food to explore right from your kitchen, if you’re willing.

Where have you got ‘from frozen’ from? 😂 From the frozen carrot batons?

Not that there’s anything wrong with freezing food.

Stir fries, tacos and frittatas take a similar amount of time as tray bakes - literally minutes. Frittatas are chopping up veg, cracking eggs and shoving it in the oven. Tacos are chopping up veg, and shoving some meat in the oven. Stir fries are chopping some veg and meat and shoving them in a pan for a few minutes. They are piss easy. They are not anywhere near as time consuming as doing everything else in the house.

If a person wants to do pies from scratch or casseroles, or chain themselves to a hob to endlessly stir a risotto then that’s up to them, but it’s a choice and not one that needs to be made, and it would be daft to make it every day.

Well you mentioned olive oil like three times lol. (Try using an acid, like citrus juice or a little balsamic vinegar instead of some of the oil; it tenderizes the meat and brightens up the flavor, while also helping to keep it moist.)

We might do a pot roast (pressure cooked with stewed potatoes and veggies), a ropa vieja (made in the Dutch oven, veggies cooked in, served over rice) a roasted pork loin (served with sauerkraut, pierogies, sautéed onions, roasted red bell peppers, and honey apple fries) or a good old fashioned steak reverse-seared in the cast iron pan and then brought to temp in the oven (DH usually likes creamy mashed potatoes with those, and roasted bell peppers. I usually make myself grilled asparagus with a little lemon, garlic and Parmesan)

For quicker bites, we might opt for a chili, taco salad or Mediterranean style bowls, sandwiches from leftovers or from a store bought rotisserie chicken, or pasta dishes…I can’t get the veggies the way he likes them in typical tray bake recipes, and he won’t eat dark meat, cheese, or seafood. But he’ll sometimes just have me fix him half a pound of seasoned ground beef for dinner, if he gets home super late from work. (I think I would puke if I ate just that!)

I have also mentioned lemon juice and a range of other seasonings.

Most of the things you mention (pot roast, ropa vieja, roasted pork loin, roast vegetables, honey apple fries) are just foods which are very quickly prepped and thrown in the oven. Adding sauerkraut, frying a steak and sautéing onion all take under five minutes. There is nothing time consuming or much different to what I have been saying.

Except the mash. If I have mash I buy it pre-prepared.