to think that 'masculine cleaning blindness' is real

[biddysmama]

and there should be some sort of treatment for it!

dp said he would clean for me so i could rest (26 weeks pg,spd and a toddler!) he vacuumed the floor with a blocked hoover which picked up nothing! and didnt realise... he left dd's highchair with her tea on it, didnt wipe the kitchen surfaces or sweep the floor and went to bed cos he had finished

ds put on 'clean clothes' out of the dirty washing basket and didnt realise it was filthy and told me the bins had been put out... when they were still in the kitchen!!

I love the sound of your DH Screamin

Masculine cleaning blindness is real, and it's alive and well in our house.

DH genuinely doesn't see what needs to be done, like he'll stack up the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen, but leave a couple of things out on the side. When I asked him once why he didn't just put the couple of things away so the kitchen is totally clean and tidy, he said he didn't see them

Luckily I'm not bothered about doing the housework, he's just hopeless in a fluffy male bimbo kind of way Thankfully good at 'manly' things though cos our boiler packed up this morning.

My DH will do the washing up but then walk away from the sink as soon as the last pot is washed without even emptying the dirty water out of the washing up bowl.

I wonder where he thinks it goes?

Exactly what ScreamingEagle said. My dp is also obsessively tidy and while I often miss things,he never does.

Agree biddysmama, DH will (somewhat reluctantly) do housework when told asked, but wouldn't notice that it needed done without me nagging pointing it out

Astounding, isn't it, that men are so obviously better suited to do things like run the country (judging by all the 'I hate it when women just get jobs because they're women' posts on the politics threads), and yet can't be trusted to do laundry.

Why, it's almost as if they choose what's important to them based on its status and whether a fool woman will take up the slack.

masculine cleaning blindness is BS manipulated by lazy men and enabled by mums and wives who let it slide.

'masculine cleaning blindness is BS manipulated by lazy men and enabled by mums and wives who let it slide.'

Perhaps it's me that's manipulating him, maybe I like him needy

Well there's nothing sexier than a needy man, AgentZZ

Yes, of course it's real, and the most effective treatment is for mothers of sons to invest 10x the energy teaching their sons to be hygienic and tidy that they invest teaching their daughters the same lesson.

Lol tortoise, as I said, he's only needy in the housework dept, so we compliment each other like MadamDeath and her DH.

i bought my ds new socks last week and washed them all first (sometimes gives him a rash if its not washed first, next morning asks me for clean sock i said in the kitchen, he couldnt find them any where.... there were 10 pairs of socks on the radiator in a line!

And I'm no fool, I like doing the housework

'masculine cleaning blindness is BS manipulated by lazy men and enabled by mums and wives who let it slide. '

^^

i like the feeling afterwards not the actual doing... not that it lasts long with my 2... most days looks like ive just moved stuff around the room

No of course it's bollocks, and the most effective treatment is for parents to model good cleaning to their children. If a man can hold down the most basic of jobs he can observe the difference between dirty and clean, and remedy it. Cleaning rarely raises a man's status or gets him what he wants (although having a dirty house might militate against it) so they don't invest time or thought in it.

I'm teasing really, Agent. But it does strike me as odd, that men who are otherwise concerned with their image as competent providers who have a can do attitude, are happy to be completely fucking incompetent when it comes to housework. Which, let's face it, is not difficult to execute.

Well, I say odd. What I mean is, completely consistent with a patriarchal culture that rewards male achievement while denigrating the traditionally female sphere, thus perpetuating an unhealthy culture whereby women make themselves feel better by sighing and bemoaning how hopeless their partners are, and expending their own energy on basic tahnkless unpaid tasks while their partners go out and earn money and increase their social status.

But hey, as long as you compliment each other.

'What I mean is, completely consistent with a patriarchal culture that rewards male achievement while denigrating the traditionally female sphere, thus perpetuating an unhealthy culture whereby women make themselves feel better by sighing and bemoaning how hopeless their partners are, and expending their own energy on basic tahnkless unpaid tasks while their partners go out and earn money and increase their social status.'

You said that without taking a breath didn't you??

We're both grateful for what each other does to contribute to our family. I can imagine it must be hell on earth if you loathe cleaning up etc but feel you're under an obligation to do it.

It doesn't bother me if people look down on me in a patronising manner because I like to be needed and traditional divisions of labour work for us.

Dp is so clean and tidy that I turned my back for 1 min the other day and he had tidied away all the baking stuff I had just got out. Well it was lying round making the kitchen untidy apparently.

He cant stack saucepans tho. the concept that you will get all the saucepans in hte cupboard if you put the small ones inside the bigger ones is alien to him.

It's the other way around in our relationship. I just don't have time/don't find it a valuable use of my time to ensure the saucepans are stacked in a secure sensible way in the cupboard.

Masculine cleaning blindness is a crock of shit. DP is far cleaner than I am and even professes to like washing up, my younger brother once rang me to find out how the washing machine worked so he could put a load of washing on for our mum while she was out.

My mum does most of the cleaning as she works 2 days a week to my dad's 5 but if he sees she's busy and the washing needs hanging out or whatever then he'll do it and never feels the need to bring it up afterwards to score points.

Ladies, you need to train your menfolk.

Ahem. Definitely real. I have masculine cleaning blindness. . . and I'm a girl

AgentZigzag, I'm genuinely sure it works for you. I like cleaning too. And making jam, and pickling vegetables, and choosing throws for the couches. I'm not sure that I'd refuse a life where someone else paid for me to stay home and do those things. I was just thinking through some of the narratives around this stuff and it came out very bitchily. Sorry about that.

Thanks for saying that tortoise, but as I said I don't look for approval or anything, and this is AIBU lol