Does your husband do any cleaning?

[Sunflowers13]

Interested to know this, as amongst my friends and family it seems quite normal for the husbands to do no cleaning/housework. Maybe a minimal amount of cooking.

I’ve been with dh for 20 years and I knew that he was not a clean and tidy person when we met but we got on in most ways so…

We keep coming back to the same old arguments.

Dh (imo) is a hoarder, very messy and not vey clean. He’s clean with his personal hygiene, but when he had his own house he never cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed the stairs, dusted, changed his bedding.

He has made great efforts to not be so messy and to try and stop hoarding. He’s also good at DIY and cooking. I do most of the housework/cleaning. He will stick the dishwasher on, put a wash load on (usually forgets to hang it out). That sort of thing.

Sometimes, I want to do a biggish job, like sort out our bedroom like a deep clean/declutter. And I’ll say can we do such and such today. This isn’t like every week it’s once in a while. Dh gets really annoyed (but he denies this) and he starts saying that it isn’t a good time, or that I need to pick my moments, or there’s no point because it will just get messy again. Or he starts passively aggressively banging around.

Usually in the end he will apologise and help, but it’s the same old shit every time.

I feel like unless I just do everything housework wise forever more we are just going to keep repeating the same old arguments.

For info we both work, me slightly less hours, but I am responsible for 100% of childcare around my work, I do all the evening clubs with the dc. 90% of housework.

Dh does most of the cooking because I’ve pretty much handed it over to him as it’s the only thing I feel I can rely on him to do. He does DIY as and when.

How old are your children?

Nope. He does all the cooking and the ironing tho

No my dh doesn't pull his weight. We both work full time and have young dc. Not only does he not help out but he is incredibly sloppy and leaves a mess everywhere he goes. He then has the audacity to say that the house is untidy. He thinks we should get a cleaner but I don't feel comfortable having someone come to the house to clean.

but when he had his own house he never cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed the stairs, dusted, changed his bedding.

and you had sex with him in that house? 🤢

He does the washing up every night and cleans down all the sides/hob, vacuums the whole house every week, does the bins and maintains the garden. I do the washing after an incident with a expensive silk dress. I'm at home significantly more than he is so do more of the day to day cleaning, tidying as well as bathrooms and sorting out the kids things.

I'd like it if he he put his clean clothes away straight away rather than in 3-5 business days but we can't win them all.

When he was alive, he did some yes. Usually do the scrubbing parts, basic cooking , rubbish out, but I always had to tidy after him. Kitchen used but never cleaned, clothes taken in from washing line but thrown in bed, shopping bought but left on floor, toilet cleaned but not sink, bathtub or any floors. Lol. He was who he was.

My DH and I do half of the cleaning each.

He does all the floors. Every day he hoovers the carpets and mops the kitchen and bathroom.

He does almost all of the washing up.

He makes breakfast every day. He takes out all the bins. He cleans the car and does all of the gardening.

I do all the washing. I do the evening cooking. I do the shopping online and we both put it away when it's delivered.

We change the bed together.

I clean the bathroom daily and dust and polish everywhere once a week.

I couldn't live with someone who took me for granted and I couldn't live with a hoarder, either.

When the children were small, we did half of the childcare each. We also shared the night wakings, although I breastfed all of our children. He did the nappies and I did the feeds.

We both took time off work for childcare.

I didn’t realise he was a hoarder until a few years after we’d moved in together.

He had a 3 bed house to himself the a garage so I hadn’t really realised. He moved in with me and we had to decide what to keep and get rid of.

It was only a few years later when we bought our first house together that I realised he’d hoarded an absolute load of junk in my shed, loft and anywhere else he could find.

I mean absolute junk, broken kettles and toasters, old sandwich toasters, empty cardboard boxes (dozens of them). Old paperwork, bags of old clothes and much more.

He has in fairness tried to change as he knows how much it upsets me. I’ve threatened divorce over the hoarding.

But he slips back to old ways.

Dh does the garden and deep cleans the bathroom, polishes inside the windows, which aren't weekly jobs but take more time. He also does (almost) all the ironing, takes out the bins, and hoovers as a way to clear his head (wfh). He's very tidy, but doesn't pick up after anyone else (dc and dog are just mess on legs...) or put away dc's washing. I do the more every day stuff to keep everything ticking over - the washing, food shop, bathroom, food shop, and the lion's share of the childcare and cooking. I think we've got a fairly good balance. He does more now than when I was working pt and he was ft. If he hadn't pulled his weight before marriage/dcs that would have been a bit of a deal breaker tbh.

Yeah. The kitchen is his domain so he does all the shopping, cooking and cleaning of it. He also does a 1.5 hour clean of the house on a Saturday morning while I take the kids to their swimming lesson.

woah…. He managed to hoard all of that in a small house without you noticing for 3 years!

Does he buy this stuff? Or is it that it breaks and then he keeps? If the latter…. Buy better because that’s an obscene breakage counter

Not much but then nor do I. Cleaning is for bores.

Very little.

he will take washing down and put it on with out being asked , bring clean washing up and put the milk bottles out .

if asked he will happily take out bins , defrost freezers and other bits . Tip runs and hang out washing

for context I work 25 hours and he works 60 . Kids are fairly grown up so don’t need looking after as such.

in his defence? He never has commented on any house work or lack of it in 20 years- ie he doesn’t come home and say why isn’t the washing up done ect .

I think it’s only fair I do the majority of it , however I do wish he would do things like take rubbish out to the bin (he has to walk past both rubbish and bin to get out of the house to work!) without being asked , but it’s easy to wind myself up over it and that not great.

honestly I think if he had lived by himself for a while in his younger days he would have had to tidy up after himself, rather then going straight from mummy’s to living together.

it would be nice to magically open my draws and find clean clothing there ! Or get in from work and find tea cooked ( again tbf on the rare occasion he’s at home when I’m at work , I’ll have a cup of tea waiting and then he’ll suggest having tea out - don’t want to risk cooking 🤪)

My ExH did absolutely nothing, I think he just assumed the cleaning fairy did it all (me). He’s an ex for many other awful reasons but the icing on the revenge cake is he now lives in absolute squalor! So overwhelmed by mess and too embarrassed to let a cleaner in to do it ☺️ #zero fucks given (side note: teens now refuse to stay there) win /win!

And you mumsnet instead 😆

Yes, husband does 90% of the cleaning and cooking, he is completely able to run the house and children without me if needs be. I work full time and he works minimal hours so does most of the at home work.

He is who he is. When he's not home, declutter few bits and bobs. I throw every day few things. You will be surprised how less clutter will be after few weeks

I do 100% of the cooking and cleaning.
DH earns 100% of the money.

Works well for us and we're both happy.

Loads. He is much more tidy than me and takes the initiative to do laundry, load dishwasher etc. And gardening. I've learnt to be tidy over the years or he probably would have left me.

Less than me, but he cooks more.

I got him a Shark vacuum with headlights and gadgets which he loves, and he dusts the high up places my vertically challenged self can't reach. Happy with that tbh!

He cleans more than me, I cook more than him probably a 70/30 spilt on each. Sometimes we go a bit mad in the head and do a blast cleaning and tidying or batch cooking session together but we’re only that organised (motivated) maybe two or three times a year. Cleaning wise he bloody loves hoovering, I prefer doing the laundry.

Dh will clean on his days off whilst I’m at work and vice versa. We both do laundry. Both iron, but I prefer to iron as I do it better than dh!
Dh does the vast majority of the cooking as he is an excellent cook. I do the majority of the gardening as I enjoy it. Dh will do whatever I ask him to in the garden though, mainly diy work such as drilling into walls so I can hang things etc.
I probably clean the bathroom more ( or more thoroughly.)

Yes, probably more than me all in. That said he does need a 🥇 and podium as always heralds it as a major life achievement… he tried the ‘I did the X for you’ line just the once though… gosh just minding too when we first met he also said once how great it was that he met a woman to do all his washing and ironing… told him that was fantastic news 🗞️… she can do mine as well! Leave that all to him…he had a Mother and that’s not me.

Left to his own devices he does a superficial dust and vacuum fairly often. He does all the cooking and we both keep the kitchen clean, although it’s me that does the deep clean of it once a month or so.

One thing I reckon he would never do is change the bedding. He helps me with it under duress.