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.

Yes. He tends to hoover, do washing and clean kitchen. I do bathrooms, bedrooms, dusting and general tidying. Dishes about 50/50.

My DH and DF are both excellent around the house.

Growing up my DM was often ill, so DF would do a week at work then jobs around the house, cleaning, fetching, carrying, shopping etc.

DH and FIL are very good at cleaning, ironing, bleaching the sink etc, tidying, taking out bins, and wiping down surfaces etc. He’s also better at sorting out toys and identifying better storage etc options in the house. It fills me with horror that so many men don’t do this and I’m determined we’ll set DS a good example, though actually I’m ironically an untidy slob so he won’t get the good example from me.

I do most of the cooking, food shopping, life admin and “mental load” stuff and more for supporting DC with homework etc, so it balances out. We now have a cleaner for the bigger jobs but DH is still better around the house and has a v responsible, full time job to boot. I also work 4 days a week.

My exH said he didn't see things that needed doing, such as a full laundry basket. He'd make a great show of going to the shops then asked what we needed. He used to make himself toast at 7pm if I hadn't started cooking dinner yet and then maintain he hadn't realised the time. He looked astonished once when I asked when the last time he'd wiped down a worktop in the kitchen and admitted he couldn't ever remember doing so.

Then when we split up he proudly told me he'd spent his day cleaning his windows in his new flat and proudly added "Inside AND out" then looked completely nonplussed when I asked when was the last time he'd cleaned the windows when he'd lived with me.

These are some of the reasons why he's an ex husband. Hopefully his new girlfriend doesn't put up with this shit.

By far the best way IMO is everyone have designated jobs. I wfh and DH has a physical job out of the home with longer hours so I do more but feel it works fairly.

DH looks after our bedroom & bathroom (cleaning/hoovering/bedding), bins, cars and DIY. DC do their own rooms and take turns for the family bathroom and I do all the down stairs rooms & washing. I cook 3 days in the week, DC one each and DH tends to cook at the weekend or if we’re entertaining.

DH & Dc1 are collectors (not quite in hoarder territory but probably would be given half the chance!) but DS2 and I are minimalists so will regularly clear surfaces and our home is always pretty tidy looking - still a bit cluttered for my liking but this is the compromise we’ve reached. I’ll bin or recycle anything broken and once (or twice if I can get away with it!) a year will give everyone a bag to fill with charity shop stuff - books they’ve read, clothes that don’t fit or stuff they've acquired with no use or ornament.

And I have been known to just bin stuff if it’s tut they’ve acquired with no obvious use and it’s been sat around for too long. They very rarely miss it

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.

Tbf, you knew who he was when you first started seeing him.

But, yes, my partner does equal housework amd cooking to me, if not more.

But then his place was immaculate when we met. I wouldn't have dated him if he'd been different in this respect.

You'll be surprised how much there is can go wrong with both.

Whether minor to major.

But fortunately he'll do other things around the house and garden on a regular basis to keep him occupied until such times.

My husband does pretty much all the cleaning. And the laundry. And a good proportion of the shopping.

I do most of the cooking and I clean the bathroom and loos - that’s his blind spot.

He always has though, so although he’s the SAHP and I’m going to work that’s not why the split is the way it is. He has a way lower for surface murk than I do and has always chucked the hoover around and dusted, even before he got made redundant.

Men are no different from women in their ability to clean the home and have high standards. Unfortunately some are lazy and women let them get away with it.
Thankfully DH is a fully functioning adult and can run the home as well as I can although we have always had a cleaner.

I don’t have a husband but yes dp does at least half of the cleaning and all of the cooking. Why wouldn’t he?

Mine works from home so does the morning and drop off, puts more washes on and cooks dinner while I do pick up on way home. We have a cleaner now but before this I'd say it was fairly equal. He hates things being unclean and would spend a long time cleaning to do it to a high standard. Whereas I'm more of a person who needs things tidy, so in that respect we work well. I think it really depends on your working situations/commute, childcare and how much they do of other things. Eg mine does the garden whereas I do the food shopping list and general life admin. If he does all cooking but no cleaning that sounds sort of fair? Aside from you taking the childcare bulk

Mine does all of the cooking. I can cook but don’t enjoy it. He’s much better at it than I am and enjoys it. I do most of the cleaning, but if sees something that needs doing he will do it. It’s a pretty even split.

That’s unfortunate, we have an issue with our cars/white goods about once a year, if that!

My dh does all the cleaning. I do all the cooking.

Yeah, we aim for 50/50 and I'd say it balances out nicely, we both work f/t now, but he happily helped a lot when I was a SAHM and he was the sole earner. He's neat and tidy by nature, and has always been very proactive and competent - hugely attractive qualities :)

Yes, quite a bit. He has always done at least half of the cooking, but in recent years he has started cooking nearly every night. He washes up, hoovers, does most of the supermarket shopping. Though TBF I don't think he has ever cleaned a bathroom in his life. I take care of that, as well as cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry. We share other chores. I would say we're quite compatible in our levels of tidiness, fortunately, i.e. we both like to keep things neat and tidy as well as clean. We both work full time.

How have you allowed it to happen that you do 100% of the childcare and 90% of the housework, when you work nearly as many hours as your husband? That's quite shocking.

He does now. We lived apart for most of our married life. He retired and we moved in together, while I was still working full-time, and I was clear that I wasn’t doing housework or cooking. I did most of the gardening, and all the house-related admin, and we generally shopped together.

Now we are both retired, and we more or less share. He cooks more than I do, does more of the heavy work in the garden, I do a bit more cleaning, he does bins and cleans cars… it works well enough.

Yes we do pretty much 50% 50%, I’d have to keep a record throughout the week to know the exact split. Also depends what we’ve got on. Currently DH is freelancing and I work out of the house full time so DH does more in the mornings and evenings ie cooking dinner, dishwasher, putting a load of laundry on etc and I do more on the weekends. I couldn’t live with someone like your DH.

I don’t think cooking is a fair split if the other person is doing all laundry, housework, childcare and I assume life admin/shopping etc.

Both retired. DH does all the cooking, meal prep, and washing up, and keeps the kitchen tidy. Vacuuming and grass cutting, and he used to decorate and do DIY. I shop, do laundry, and financial and admin stuff. Occasional ironing, and I quite like cleaning the bathroom! If I need help moving and carrying anything he does it. Whoever remembers takes the bins out.

We’ve split chores and do what we dislike least.

My dh is cleaner than me. He does most of the house work and cooking. I do most of the stuff with kids

No, DH does v little cleaning. He does load and unload the dishwasher.
He doesn't hoard stuff and will regularly clear out clothes, books etc that he doesn't want to go to the charity shop.

Will generally only hoover if his parent is coming to visit.
Does do his own laundry. This is a long standing agreement that I'm very glad was put in place.
Will do gardening / hedge cutting.

Married 40 years, cleaning mainly down to me whilst we were both working.
All changed once we'd both retired, husband dies majority of the cleaning which suits us both!

No, he doesn't clean really. The most he will do is hoover and stack/empty the dishwasher cleaning-wise! However, he does the lawn mowing, we share the cooking, puts on clean bed sheets. He works FT, where as I'm PT (since having a child) so I feel like things are pretty equal really. I expect to pick up more housework since I'm PT.

My husband does loads

of he sees a job he does it same as me

the only stuff we tend to have as our jobs are:

him....bins, grass cutting, ironing school uniforms
me.....meal planning, online grocery shopping

everything else we share and I don't have to ask. He's a good un.

my ex was useless round the house and it caused so much resentment.

My H dies the bare minimum. He does no cleaning, cooking, laundry, limited childcare. He's a way do it now when he can do it later person. It's a source of great resentment for me. It wasn't really an issue when we got together. He held down 3 jobs so I never really expected him ti do more because his days were very full. He now has a 9 -5 so no excuse.