Division of labour when on partner is full-time stay-at-home parent

[ThisNattyTurtle]

Help me figure out if I'm being unreasonable!
Partner is a very kind and good natured person. They wanted to be a stay-at-home parent and stopped work as soon as first came along. I supported this but never asked for it/pushed it in any way. I am the sole earner and all finances are fully shared (joint account joint savings joint mortgage joint cards etc).

I work 65hrs/wk in a senior role which also involves a lot of work at home. I have for the last few years been grafting extra hard to get a promotion so that we could stay in partner's home city (as is their preference).

Kids are 8 and 5, youngest has been in nursery 3.5 hrs since age 3 and now school.
Partner is a fabulous parent, but in terms of managing the house/life admin they drive me nuts. E.g. they clean bathroom but not the floor because "it doesn't need cleaning". The house overall is generally grubby and dusty. I have suggested multiple times we get a cleaner for a few hours/week, rejected and met with hurt feelings that I think the house is not clean enough.
They do cooking and shopping - but it's haphazard, might be done only after we've run out of stuff/we have to go out on our precious weekend/late eve etc etc. I just don't see why it can't be ordered same day every week with a stock list of essentials and a meal plan for the week. Again though, they won't accept me doing it (and I do think the person in the house who can see the shelves is the ideal person to place a shopping order).
They do laundry - but until a recent row about it, they could quite happily put a load on Saturday without checking it had the school uniforms in it so Sundays would be a made scramble to get them washed + dried + ironed (no dryer).
I have to initiate, and nag and pursue, planning for all birthday parties and presents etc. They do all the invites and the balloons and buy and wrap the presents - but only after lots of initiating by me, I ask the kids what they want or trawl Mumsnet for age appropriate suggestions.
I do all bedtimes and bathtimes (2hr every evening) every evening that I am not at work, so I do them 5-7 times per week. I do not have any hobbies since the kids. My weekends are spent with the kids and/or doing extra work from home. Partner is encouraged to socialise at weekends but generally we hang out a lot as a family (which I love).
The really galling thing for me, is that their mum used to come over 2 weekdays per week. They are great with the youngest. If I were in my partner's shoes I would see that as golden chance to smash out chores and get house sorted while a beloved adult played with the youngest. But partner just used it to hang out and chat. Every week. We see the entire family including MIL plenty at weekends etc as well. Now both are at school that's 6 hrs a day free to get stuff done.

I love this person, I do not want to lose the relationship over this, and the kids have such a great parent. We have had so many rows about it and they just get hurt and feel that I am blind to all they do. So please let me have it, wise hive, am I actually being an ass? And if I'm not, how do I move things forward without another bitter row?

Stay at home parent usually does the bulk of it.

They sound pretty incompetent honestly. They are a SAHP with school-aged children and don’t do bedtime so they have hours to themselves a day during term time, what do they actually do with their time? You could spend an hour a day on keeping on top of the house and grocery shopping online etc and still have hours of the day to yourself, so what are they actually doing?

But there are no kids to parent for 6 hours, 5 days a week?

The children are at school all day.

wtf does your partner do with their time all day

SAHP? it sounds like they just wanting to not work and using being a SAHP as an excuse to be at home whilst shirking the workload...

Id be encouraging them to get a job not funding their joblessness

When I was a SAHM I generally matched DH’s work hours. So say he works 9-5 (he doesn’t), I do everything during those hours. Anything out of those hours, ie when he’s home, is split 50:50.
Often DH worked abroad a couple weeks at a time, so obviously then when he’s chilling at hotel, seeing the sights, on socials, I was still doing 100% of the hands on parenting. But his contribution to the family was making the money.

They should be doing everything that is not time specific for the house and family during term time.

Evening stuff once OP is home from work and weekend stuff that is specific to that time (kids bedtimes, shared DIY and gardening stuff etc etc) should be shared 50/50.

School holidays or if kids are sick then the kids are the priority (although a day a week with the kids in holiday club should allow them to keep on top of things).

Have a look at "fair play" by Eve Rodsky, for how to split chores and how to apply agreed minimum standards to those assigned chores.

This all assumes that you're partner isn't unwell in any way.

I’m just here trying to figure out how you work 65 hour weeks and do a two-hour(!!) bedtime routine 5-7 times a week. You must be so tired! I’ve worked those hours and longer but before I had DC. Great that you get to see DC for that time at least, but the exhaustion must be intense.

Your partner isn’t pulling their weight domestically, at all. Do you know how they actually spend their time?

Children at school so stay at home parent has time to do the housework etc. if both working it's 50:50

Time for he/she to get a job then getting a cleaner should be more justifiable for him/her.

Not sure why you're keeping the sexes secret, but s/he needs to be in employment. Being utterly financially dependent on a boyfriend or girlfriend is never a good idea.

Does s/he own property? Been paying into a pension for the last 8 years?

(Edited for a ridiculous amount of typos!)

The gold standard is equal leisure time. That's very hard to actually achieve, but you seem very very far from that.

A list (like the one in Fair Play) might be helpful to see if there are lots of things they are doing that you're not seeing, but from your description you do need to have another argument about it. A list would be a good place to start that argument/discussion. It also might be worth a discussion on how often you each think things should be done + what is the lowest standard. For example, I think the hoovering should be done at least once a week but my lowest standard is once every 2 weeks for the ground floor and less othen for bedrooms. I don't always hold myself to my highest standard.

Tbf it does sound as though sahp does all the home stuff but extremely hap hazard and cleaning to a low standard

I think your partner is taking the absolute proverbial.

I’m a SAHP. I do all the school runs, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, kids activities, kids admin, school stuff, holiday planning, birthday and Christmas planning and about 90% of the garden. To a standard where DH doesn’t even think about if a kid has football boots that fit at the start of the season or if X has a gift to take to Y’s birthday party on Saturday or when the bathrooms were cleaned last - it’s my job and I do it properly. And I still have a lot of free time, so I try to ensure DH gets a decent chunk of weekend and evening leisure time instead. I don’t say I keep a show home but I would be mortified if my house was so dirty DH was suggesting a cleaner and kids didn’t even have clean uniforms organised.

I think there’s possibly an element of different standards at play - I keep the house much cleaner than DH would (he just doesn’t notice dust/dirt until it’s glaring) and I am much more organised about kids stuff so I suspect if roles were reversed and he was SAHP I’d find his standards annoying.

If your partner went back to work, how easy would it be for you to pick up 50% of eg school runs if you work 65 hours a week? Does your partner have the opportunity to put their efforts into work the way you do?

I think it’s difficult because not everyone is super organised or good at cleaning just because they are a SAHP. It sounds as if they are doing the basics but not in the way you would choose to do them.

I would insist you get a cleaner as the honest answer is yes they aren’t keeping the house to the standard you would like it to be at. I wonder if you could suggest swapping 1-2 bed times so you sort out uniforms for the week.I don’t think you should be doing any more, but swapping some jobs around may help.

Thank you all so so much, in a rush so can't reply individually til later but so grateful for the answers, it's such a relief to know that I'm not nuts.
Definitely the standards thing. Lord knows I'm no Martha Stewart but I at least see the difference between dirty and clean (and accept that a bathroom floor needs to be cleaned! Give me strength!)
I work 8am-6pm 5 days then have an out-of-hours committment each week.
During the day they do exercise for 1-1.5hrs (great) and then sit and decompress for about 1hr then do the chores. They just do them very sloooooowly. E.g. when I do bedtime they wash up, takes them the whole 2 hrs. When they go out of an eve, I do bedtime, then wash up in 45min. The shopping, for example, I have a dietary requirement and my staple is often not ordered/forgotten.
It's just exhausting because I never know what is or isn't done, what's going to pop up last minute to sort.
Thank you very much for the Fair play suggestion, will try that this weekend. The resentment is really affecting my behaviour with them.