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.

Ex used to do big performative cleans eg deep clean kitchen every now and then while grumpily mentioning “nobody cleans in this house”. Totally overlooking the fact that I loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up his toast crumbs from where he made it on the worktop every single day and also was the only peon who cleaned the bathroom. Ever. He also did around 50% of cooking.

current DP still has his own house so not really responsible for cleaning mine. But he doesn’t clean his either. To be fair he does have crazy work hours but never seems to have time to clean. It’s ok because I don’t have to clean his house.

Mine does the majority of the cooking, which is a nice change since the start of our relationship. He mows the lawn, occasionally changes sheets, washes up (eventually) but seems genuinely blind to the floors needing a clean or cobwebs hanging off the ceiling or furniture desperately needing a dust. He does, however, deal with all finances, researches investments, sorts mortgages, does the vast majority of dog walks, sorts out car tax/repairs so that I can have his car and he’ll walk everywhere. He’ll occasionally clear the kitchen table dumping ground and make it sparkle.

I just get on with cleaning, otherwise the bathroom/kitchen would never see a product.

Of course. Dh does both cooking and cleaning.

Imho he tidies better than he cleans. He doesn't clean to my standards but then I've seen his parents house so I know why 👀

I don’t have a DH
DS lives with me - he dusts, vacuums and does bathrooms, sorts recycling and rubbish
I do kitchen and gardening
We each do our own laundry and ironing, bed changing and cleaning of bedrooms
I only clean guest room when I have guests
If there are 2 adults I don’t understand why people just don’t split the tasks according to their other responsibilities eg working hours or child care

Not really very much, he will do vacuuming if asked and he does do stuff like empty the dishwasher and cleaning pots and pans that can't go in the dishwasher. He'll move wet laundry to the tumble dryer if he notices it's done, once he noticed that the final spin hadn't worked so he took the washing machine apart, diagnosed the problem and fixed it (when I got back in the washing machine was repaired and the dried items folded in a pile).

He also does a LOT of cooking as he's a lot better than I am, plus all sorts of DIY jobs. I do the vast majority of household tasks and the garden because I don't have a job and he does - at one point he was working full time and running his own business. He also pulled his weight with parenting, no matter how long his working day had been.

I am so not complaining that he doesn't dust.

Yes, he does all the cooking, empties the bins and will do some laundry. He likes to be tidy, but I’d say I’m more thorough at cleaning. He never, ever irons. There are things I don’t do though. I never mow the lawn for example. Holidays are something we sort together, we have a financial catch up monthly. I’d say it works out 50/50. I appreciate all he does and he feels the same about me. I’m very lucky.

It is

Yes, he pulls his weight and there are things I don't like that he does and vise versa, plus he always makes breakfast (I have to deal with spiders lol). I do all the gardening, my choice, including the mucky stuff, he does all the maintenance his choice, but both of us add our weight to a task when needed. A good partnership after 28 years.

DH does all of the cooking as I'm useless, and we share the housework. I couldn't imagine him not pulling his weight. We both work full time, why should I do it all?

Yes he does, we split things pretty evenly and we both like things to be clean and tidy. I couldn't be with someone who wasn't like that. My dad was the same, people used to always tell my mum she was lucky that she had a husband that "helped" until she pointed out he wasn't helping as it was his home too!

I mean the obvious question is…. Why carry on enduring this situation?

We struggle to manage everything that needs doing in our lives.

Because you’re together by the sounds of it

Yes. Because he is an adult who lives in our house and I am not his mother. He will clean, cook, shop, do laundry etc. I do not ask him. He just sees wash basket is getting full and puts a load on. We swap notes only to work out what chores are left and then divvy them up. We both work FT big jobs. I earn slight more than he does now, but was the same when he wasn't more. I have very low tolerance for fuckwittery so I probably would have throttled most of the men of mumsnet who seem completely useless.....

Not sure what that means? We would struggle even more separately as there is so much to do.

He does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Not only do you do everything, you live under a cloud of what sounds like unrelenting unhappiness. Home life must be tense and unhappy.

Children?

Do you work insanely long hours or have other particularly time consuming commitments, like caring for relatives?

That poster said she doesn’t do any cleaning either, so I don’t think it’s a case that she’s doing everything while he does nothing.

How did you deduce that from what I have written? He actually does a lot, as do I, but neither of us have the time or the energy for any housework

Both work part time but I’m on long term sick leave with MH illness. We have a lot of land and animals to look after and elderly parents.

Exactly.

Oh i got mixed up with @BlueRin5eBrigade

oh yes… you were the poster that lives in a shithole because neither of you clean!

Got it

Oh I know who you are
you have posted loads

Yes, he does. He vacuums, tidies a lot more than me and cleans the kitchen regularly because he doesn’t cook. He cleans the litter box and walks the dog about 60% of the time. He also does his own laundry and ironing, and often our DD’s. He isn’t great about bathrooms but I don’t mind doing them. We got married later than most — in our 40s. I told him I hated housework and he never pesters me about it. We have a cleaner too, to keep up with dusting and the floors. Really I am quite lucky.

I doubt it. I haven’t shared that information before