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.

Yeah, sort of. He will happily do the dishes and antibac the kitchen unprompted and do a good job of it. He tidies up - he's a bit of a minimalist so he's tidier than me. He cooks (better than me 100%), does the bins, tends the garden, washes the cars. His weakness - the bathroom. I can't recall him ever cleaning the bathroom. Not sure what it is about cleaning the bathroom that some men just totally shirk off responsibility.

He does the regular big jobs (hoovering, dusting, bathrooms) while I do more of the cleaning up as I go along: clearing and wiping the kitchen counters, tidying up and putting things away.

I’m so ungrateful!

Mine does 99% of the childcare, has done for the last 10 years, does the laundry, loads and unloads the dishwasher. 50:50 cooking. Food shop most of the time. All the house and car maintenance.
He is a bit of a hoarder, piles stuff up, leaves stuff lying round.

Doesnt do any other cleaning.

We both wfh, I do a lot of travel with work, I’m not home a lot.
So it fucks me off to come home to a mess. Crap everywhere. Really pisses me off.

But the kids are sorted, clean clothes, fed, at all their hobbies and after school activities on time and enthusiastically supported. No piles pf washing or washing up.

We have a good system, I just wish he would tidy up after himself and the kids more.

Yes. Much more than me. We have just stopped having a cleaner, as we're now both retired. Pretty regularly he will get the vacuum cleaner out, and he also cleans the bathroom. I never ask him - he just does it.

Everything else is a bit hit and miss. I clean very rarely and very badly because it's just such a tedious activity. But I am going to pay for pro cleaners to come in and have a blitz now and again. Life's too short to stress about cleaning.

You do 1% of the childcare? Don’t you miss being a bit more involved?

Before he died, we did half each housework, I did the food shop and cooking, he did the garden and DIY, we did our own laundry.

Tbh about the only thing he "sees" that I don't is cobwebs. So sometimes he cleans (removes) them. He does almost no other cleaning. This is not the bar to aim at!

He will (kind of) clean up after cooking.

Has to be asked to do anything else (cleaning wise). He does other stuff.
The kids help with the cleaning.

when I met dh I ran a nursery from home. He never helped with washing/cleaning as he said it was partially due to my work so my responsibility. I accepted this but when I gave up the job he still didn’t want to do it!!
we have had a lot of rows over the years. He said it was the tone I used when I ask 🙄 so I wrote it down , but he didn’t like lists. Basically all bullshit excuses.

over the years he has gradually improved, plus I now work less than him. He does bins, garden, diy, cooks 3x a week, kids bath/bed, changes bedding and hoovers. Puts a couple washes on and empties dishwasher couple time a week.
I’ve had to accept he does it when he’s ready not when I’m ready.

Yes he does
in fact I’ve never hoovered our house but Dh does it but then I don’t think he’s ever deep cleaned the toilet 🤣
we split most things 50/50!

DH came completely house trained, thank you In laws...I know he would be able to run a household sufficiently if I wasn't around.

Due to our work schedules, I do most of the cleaning and washing as well as shopping and cooking. DH strips and remakes beds, deal with bins and does the ironing as his set jobs. On top of that he deals with finances too.

My husband does pretty much all the cleaning. I keep meaning to do some as I feel bad but he's already done it. He cleans whenever he has a spare few mins - work lunch break, before breakfast etc.

Yeah he’s great. He’s very tidy and organised without being anal, and never moans about the things I do. Does about 20% of the cooking because his commute is brutal though only 2x a week. Does much more of the shopping, a good 50% of the gardening we do, much more than 50% of the cleaning we do, I’d say about 80%. But we have a cleaner and gardeners and thank goodness for it. I’m working ten hour days a lot of the time at the moment and the fact that the house is basically clean and pleasant to be in and when we go in the garden it’s not neglected and we can enjoy it makes life so much better. I’m also a recovering messy person and having a cleaner keeps that within bounds.

Prople are who they are. You take the good side and try to manage the things you dislike. Hoarding is hard to deal with for sure.

My DH does all the cleaning! I do the shopping & cooking, and most of the washing but he does everything else.

I do most of the cleaning but get paid part-time for my job (4 days) while his job is full time. We’ve had cleaners in the past, but it ended up being more work than it was worth; I’d also have to work more than the cleaner’s hours to pay for the cleaner.

DH helps with bins, cleans the cars, and will hoover and mop the kitchen floor while I do other cleaning if we expect visitors. We share cooking and cleaning up after. He’ll help me unload the dishwasher, but rarely does it unprompted.

We’re lucky enough to have a room he uses as his study-all his stuff/ mess goes in there and I can shut the door. I would struggle to cope with a hoarder- clutter everywhere makes cleaning so much more work.

Of course he does. We both work full time, we both live in the house, obviously he cleans it.

My dh does more cooking and cleaning than me most of the time. My first husband used to leave it all up to me, I swore I’d never be in a elationship with a man who thought it was acceptable to be like this.

Dh does most of the cleaning and half the cooking. I do washing, ironing and admin. Suits us! He loves cleaning and is shit hot at it. I have very little interest

My DH doesn't do cleaning....and I don't give it a second thought as he does so much more.

We'd been together nearly 10 years before we married and back then we discussed and both knew, as we put it he didn't make cakes or do ironing/cleaning and I didn't fix white goods or cars.

The one thing he does do religiously though is clean the shower straight after using it.

But barring hospital stays/recovering from operations on my side we've stuck by that and got on fine.
Of course he'll wipe the draining board round or mess he makes while going about his day, but not a good radio on full clean.

It's never bothered me having to do a good declutter.

Sorting clothes, even when DC were at home was always me clearing out wardrobes and hanging on a portable clothes rail....then they put back what they wanted and I charity shopped/or binned what was left on the rail.

Obviously, why wouldn’t he? We both work so we both split all the mental load and chores 50:50, we don’t both do the same things (I prefer laundry, he prefers dishes), but collectively it’s shared down the middle. Anyone who doesn’t demand equality in a relationship is a mug, sorry.

I hear you OP, but I wonder if a little more is going on here. Some people find deep cleaning and tidying really hard. You’ve said your DH is a hoarder and not very clean. I suspect the idea of a deep clean and declutter makes him feel really stressed (maybe out of control, or overwhelmed?) but he doesn’t know how to communicate that. He still has to help, but I wonder if there’s a way you can help him feel more comfortable with it. Perhaps you can put a recurring date in the diary for your deep cleans so he knows they are coming, thus removing the element of surprise, while also ensuring they do HAVE to get done?

How often do your white good and cars need fixing?! Not as often as your house needs cleaning, I’d wager.

Yes we share it all equally as I married an adult and wouldn’t put up with any misogynistic shit.

My husband is mid 60s, we’ve been married for 36 yrs and he does 80% of the cleaning . I do toilets / laundry ( no ironing) and cooking he does more or less everything else . He also does all the gardening , I just supervise, and all of the DIY .

ExDP didn't do any cleaning or tidying and indeed often used to sabotage what I had cleaned. For example if I scrubbed the kitchen floor, he would decide it was a great time to walk into the kitchen wearing muddy boots. He was also incredibly untidy and if I announced to the family that I wanted to Hoover the lounge and requested everyone remove their possessions, he would ignore me. It was part of his narcissistic abusive behaviour.

DH does clean / pretty 50-50 at the moment

in the early days we had demonstrations of acceptable standards ( dust the skirting boards even if he doesn’t see the dirt)

we do tend to switch rooms/ jobs every week as we do tend to work / see things differently so everything happens at least every other week