Do you pack your husband’s bag when he goes away..?

[ShillyShallySally]

Was chatting to a friend of a friend the other day. She was having a moan about her useless husband. In the course of this moan she mentioned that she’d had to pack his bag for a work trip. Just breezed past it as if it was the most normal thing. I was like wait…why are you packing his bag for him?? She huffs and puffs about “oh he won’t do it properly” or some shit. Didn’t really have much of an answer.

Mentioned this exchange at work. Seems this is not particularly uncommon. Had women moaning about having to do “all the packing for everyone” for family holidays etc.

i am quite baffled by this. Why are some women packing their husbands bags for them..? If nothing else, my husband wouldn’t want me to pack his bag for him. Being a grown adult he’d rather choose his own clothes.

Some men are absolutely fucking useless but my god, some women really don’t help themselves…

A holiday can be ruined by bringing the wrong thing, a top that doesn't quite fit, a too heavy jumper, bringing the dental floss that's not as nice, choosing the wrong set of books you are reading or forgetting a particular after sun cream or your toenail clippers or a charger with a long lead. I can't see how any adult can do that for any other adult.

Nope. Though he does expect me to be weirdly interested in what he’s packed. This or this shirt? ….holding up two, to my eyes, identical blue polo shirts.

before we met he traveled for work for years…

we shared a suitcase once….just the once. It didn’t go well. He folds up worn shirts neatly, me …not so much.

Well my mum does virtually everything on my dad’s behalf including picking out clothes for each day!
when she was in hospital for a week all the clothes were laid out on the spare bed and ready meals were piled up in the fridge with post it notes eg “Tuesday” etc

so now he’s nearly 80 and can do barely anything for himself.

I do similar to a few PPs. If we’re sharing a case for wherever we’re going, he gets out what he needs/wants and I put it in the case. I also do things like (both of our) meds and he does other things, so we both have our allocated jobs, which just generally tends to work best.

If he’s going away on his own then absolutely not!

A friend of mine not only packs her husband's suitcases, she buys his clothes, decides what he is going to wear each day and puts his clothes for the next day on a chair for him the night before.

They are both in their 50s and she has done this for him every day since he left his mother's house to live with her, over 30 years ago.

On the other hand, she has never filled her car with fuel, washed her car, or taken her car for a service since they met.

Neither of them is incompetent, both could easily look after themselves, they just have these weird ideas about what is his responsibility and what is hers.

No. I’m not his mum

I know because we've been married for 25 years 😊. Personally I find it more efficient for me to be in charge of the whole process for a family holiday. So I do the pre-departure laundry for all four of us, and we don't have individual cases, we pack across them all. This is partly so we all have clothes if a case is delayed in transit and partly so I can divide by usage/activity if relevant. Plus DH works much longer hours than I do, so would end up doing it last minute after a long work day, whereas I have time as I finish earlier and WFH.

So that's why it's more efficient for us. Every household is different, this is what works for us and nobody resents it.

The very idea is absolutely ludicrous.

Ugh. Incompetent men give me the ick. I have a friend who went away for a couple of nights recently and her partner stayed home. He got strict instructions on how to look after himself before she left. They don’t have children. When she got back he expected pats on the back for making his own packed lunch 🤢

A holiday can be ruined by bringing the wrong dental floss?

I take it you’ve never been camping or roughed it in any way..:

My mum used to pack for my dad and my sister packs for my BIL, they think I'm odd in not doing it - but my husband can sort his own things out, he also packs for the kids if he is taking them away without me.

However I always pack a belt and cuff links in my bag if I think they will be needed as I have spent too many detours or being left on an early morning before a wedding/party etc as he is racing off to get these things!

No, I don't "have" to but it's hardly onerous and more than half the stuff in our shared case is mine as a general rule anyway. DH travels much lighter than me.
It feels a bit petty to me to refuse to do a trivial task for someone you love when you are doing it for yourself anyway. Equal division of labour doesn't have to mean dividing every task in half or only doing your own thing. DH does lots of stuff around the house that I don't contribute to at all, and there are plenty of things he has done far more than half of over the years, for example about 85% of school runs. Putting his socks in the weekend bag whilst I'm putting my own in is hardly going to hurt me and is efficient use of time.

Nope! He’s a grown up and can pack his own bag!

Exactly. I can’t get my head round women who do this - crazy.

Love it!

I didn't even know there were different types of dental floss, let alone that they differed enough that anyone's holiday could be impacted by the "wrong" one.

Like others, if we're going away together AND flying, he puts out all his stuff, and I split between 2 cases, with mine.
Any other scenario, he packs his own bag.
But I do know that my SIL packs for her husband!

Love these threads like no I don't even pack the 1 year olds change bag, he does it himself

I do! As does my mother does for my father and as does my MIL for FIL. I thought it was much more normal than it seems to be on here!

it doesn’t make my husband incompetent and for sure could pack his own case but he does other stuff I would never dream of doing. Oil changes, fixtures in the house, car washes, he takes the bins out, takes mice out of the cat brings them in

I don't pack "his" bag because he would only have his own bag if he was going away on his own so nothing to do with me. Otherwise all our bags are shared as we take as few as possible so I like to pack them myself in one go. Everyone lays out what they want but I do the actual packing because I get a certain sense of satisfaction from it.

Same reason I do 90% of everything to do with laundry and clothes in general and he does 90% of everything to do with food.

What n earth would you do if divorced or windowed lol.

I

@Am99 Why are you packing a grown man's bag?!!
Out of interest, do you work at all?

No, he's better at packing than me. I do help my DS pack his bag though and he's just turned 29🤣🤣

I'll assist ASD DH with what to pack, but I don't pack for him. In the past he has had to go and buy emergency pants and socks on work trips, so that reinforced his learning! But it seems very common for the wife to pack for everyone.

I can't get my head around why a wife would be such a doormat!