AIBU to not leave the kitchen spotless once I have finished prepping dinner?

[ablastfromthepast]

Settle an argument.

When you have finished prepping and serving dinner (ie, dinner is on the table ready to eat) is it normal to still have bits and pieces to clear up in the kitchen, or would you expect the kitchen to be left as you found it (pots in dishwasher, surfaces wiped down, all items used in meal preparation away?)

I am the cook, all meal preparation with rare exception falls to me. I will call DH and DC when dinner is on the table. We have a few different dietary needs in the house so I am often making 2-3 different meals or variations, and I am not a naturally tidy chef, so in the process of trying to get dinner on the table for everyone at the same time, there’s usually a bit of tidying up to be done after dinner.

DH will often come down after I call him for dinner and huff about the mess and start tidying up rather than sitting down to eat, He thinks that it should be possible to tidy-up-as-you-go and by the time dinner is served, the kitchen is basically as you found it.

I think this unreasonable and it is to be expected that there will be some clearing up to do after dinner. Who is right?

YABU - you should be able to tidy-as-you-go and leave a neat kitchen
YANBU - clearing up after dinner is to be expected

The man's an idiot. You can leave thr kitchen pristine if you don't mind cold food and nobody is hungry, not otherwise.

You can tidy up so much as you can as you go, I have to really or there is nowhere left to work, but you dish up veg out of the pans and meat out of a casserole, etc. If you then stop to wash all that up or put it in the dishwasher, if it isn't already full with the stuff you did clear up, the food would be stone cold.

It also depends how much of a rush you are in, I often find I'm way behind and running around in full panic mode so clearing up is low on my priorities.

Definitely always stuff to do afterwards, I would never clean all the cooking pans before eating. But I would have cleared the chopping board and prep stuff and wiped down sides from the raw prep. There’s almost always time to do all that while the food cooks. So I guess it depends whether the kitchen is a bombsite in which case YABU, or if it is the pans and utensils actually being used for cooking in which case HeIBU.

Tidying up as you go along does not mean finish cooking, plate up and leave the dinner on the side to go cold whilst you tidy the kitchen! It means that you clear and put away as you go along, so that there's no mess left by the time the dinner is ready. You serve up eat eat fresh, hot food, but the only things left to wash after dinner are the dishes/pans you served from and the plates you eat off of.

I try to clear up as I go whilst cooking, so that after the meal there's not a daunting pile of dirty utensils to get through. The kitchen is properly tidied up/wiped down/floor swept after the meal once the washing up has been done (we don't have a dishwasher)

He needs to be called down earlier to start the "tidy up" mission before you sit down for dinner if he is so bothered.... Or cook all meals, the choice is his! I would have to tell him he is being an ungrateful prick!

YANBU

Tell your husband to arrive ten minutes before dinner and clear it all up himself , if he’s going to cry about it

I wouldn't tolerate this from him.
You cook a meal, call the family to the table, and his thing is to come and complain and gripe over a little bit of clearing up?

He needs reprogramming.
He should be coming in saying "this looks good, love." Sitting down enjoying a meal. And then clearing up while you relax.
You aren't his servant. 😠

Haven’t read the full thread but my initials thoughts are YANBU and he’s a bit of an arse!!!

in our house whoever cooks (9.99% me) doesn’t clean!! It’s everyone else, including DC that do the clean up. Obviously I do a bit as I go, but that’s been a rule for a long time after I got sick of doing everything

When i was growing up my dad would always put his knife and fork together after dinner and say thank you to my mum and make some comment about how delicious it was. I saw and heard that every day of my childhood so it is now automatic for me to thank anyone who has cooked me a meal 😊

This doesn’t answer your question, but if he’s so exercised about mess he can cook all the time and then see how much energy he has for tidying up before eating.
He's also behaving very rudely. When someone cooks for you you say thank you. You don’t criticise the food or the state of the kitchen.
This is also not the point, but no way would I be making multiple meals. One dinner on the table. Eat the bits you want and leave the rest. Or you are welcome to make your own or go hungry.

I’m a clean as I go kinda gal too though I clean up while my husband cooks. No food gets cold during this endeavour

It is very seldom that he cooks when I am there to witness it! If I am out he will make something for him and DC but I’m not there to see what happens. When I have seen him make a meal I would say he prioritises tidy-as-you-go more than I do but I don’t think that he is dealing with the routine pressures of juggling time pressured meal prep in family life.

Also I am much more fussed about food being piping hot than he is so I want to eat food ASAP when plated, he doesn’t seem to care about that!

I would tell him if he complains one more time you are going on strike.

I cook; my husband clears and cleans afterwards. I try not to leave him too much of a mess but he would never complain about it because he's not rude. How do you put up with him and his lack of respect for you? I do hope you don't just grin and bear it although, if he does it every day, it sounds as if you do. Only you can fix it.

The having to make multiple meals thing is really the bane of my life but there’s genuine reasons beyond being a bit picky that need catering for. I try to do the same thing for everyone when I can but that’s often more work and stress than catering for people separately.

Lots of people have pointed out that your DH can take on more of the cooking if he’s so fussed about this. Is there a reason you’re not engaging with this?

You seem to be getting stressed about this and trying to appease him, when you really should be getting cross. Why is that?

Requirements, fine, but you say there are 'preferences' too, to which I say tough; no one gets to eat their favourite foods all the time to the exclusion of others.
And it's your DH's family too, so the dietary requirements thing should also be the bane of his life – it would be much less onerous if it were fairly shared.
He should also, if he has any sense/awareness, dial down the criticism of your cooking style and aim to make mealtimes less stressful for you, not more.

I have never been able to keep a clean kitchen when cooking, it looks like a bomb site by the time I've finished. I clean it after everyone has finished eating. My partner says I'm a messy cook so I told him he's welcome to do it instead, strangely enough the comments have stopped lol.

You need to change the narrative sharpish before your children think this is normal
behaviour.

re the prep - everyone is different but it’s cook’s prerogative. Sit him down when calm
and tell him how rude you find it when he saunters in and starts clearing up
passive aggressively instead of eating. If that doesn’t work, tell him you won’t cook for him if he is going to continue to be so rude.

At the same time you need to instil some basic manners into your family. In ours, no one leaves the table without saying thank you to the cook (adult or teen) and taking their plates/helping to tidy up. All family not cooking contributes - one loads/washes, one wipes, one clears etc. it shows children how life works - they don’t have a maid service. This is especially important here where you have for some reason taken on all
of the cooking responsibilities - you need to show that women are not doormats.

start with a polite conversation, including asking your husband to model appropriate behaviour for your kids. If he can’t do that then you have a bigger problem than the washing up.

My husband washes up as I start to plate out meals and does dishes after we then eat together. We are a great team!

So do they leave the food to go cold or keep it warm in the oven?

I usually clear up as I go, but there will always be pans to do afterwards because we eat as soon as I plate up. I don't put pans in the dishwasher.

Also, as we have to be careful with water usage I am doing fewer washing up sessions to save water.

I think it would be odd to leave things to get cold just for the sake of srubbing down the kitchen to then add a bunch of dirty dishes to the kitchen.

My husband does 99% of the cooking - he does what he can while he goes along, but of course there are pots / counters / dishes / whatever. Sometimes he's juggling a few different things and it's a disaster, sometimes it's just a handful of dishes. It's never perfect!

But this is just part of a general lack of appreciation and respect for you. I think you need to pare back the special meals significantly - preferences are for restaurants, not one person cooking in their own home. My son can be pretty fussy so the rule is he needs to try whatever my husband makes, and if he really can't eat it (he has some sensory stuff and is underweight) then he can make himself a peanut butter sandwich / cheese and crackers / whatever. He needs to have a protein, carb and veggie but it's okay if it's simple things. He eats maybe 2/3 of what my husband makes and the rest of the time he sorts himself out. And he's done this since he was around 7/8.

And your kids should 'definitely' be loading the dishwasher / wiping counters / helping put food away / saying thank you. These things are not optional at all.

I generally load the dishwasher as I go and have a bowl of washing up on the go but there are always serving spoons and saucepans etc left to clean afterwards. If he’s so bothered about the mess then leave him to tidy it! DH learnt very early on that if he moaned about anything then it would become his job!!

I’m not going to let my dinner go cold while I want for hot pans to
cool to clean them up.
But I live alone and do everything on my own schedule.