Housekeeping things your DP does that horrify you

[Fluffyelephant]

My DP moved in earlier this year and he’s a lovely man. No regrets. But some of the housekeeping things I’ve discovered him doing have me 😳

There was the usual man stuff.. thinking it was normal to only change the sheets every few months. And when he does his washing he washes everything together. And I mean everything. Dark clothes, white clothes, kitchen towels, the bath mat, dog’s blanket - all in one load!

Tonight I discovered when he cleans the kitchen he doesn’t use the sponge that we keep with the cleaning supplies but just picks up the sponge we use to wash the dishes, sprays it with the super strong kitchen cleaner chemicals and then proceeds to clean the whole kitchen.. and then pops it back in the sink for us to use.

I mean do other people do that?! He’s adamant they do and I’m crazy for thinking it’s not normal.

So firstly, am I some kind of clean freak and the sponge thing is what everyone else is doing? And secondly, what cleaning things does your DP do that horrify you?

I will happily use the same sponge for cleaning the kitchen. Just rinse it out? And washing everything together wouldn't bother me, apart from not wanting dog hairs to get onto other clothes.

Be glad it wasnt the toilet cleaning sponge 😉

Mine refuses to use the allocated cloths for cleaning the kitchen/bathroom and will just spray and then wipe the spray off with kitchen/toilet roll?

When I put the plates away I have two stacks of 4 . DH will put 3 and 5.

I’m with him I’m afraid.

DH leaves all sorts of things to rot in the fridge though which gives me the rage!

Mine is the same - washing the tea towels and underwear in the same load unless I catch him "shudder"

Also watching him handle meat and then touch numerous things before washing hands

DH does the sponge thing (though without super strong chemicals). I use the sponge only for washing up and wiping chopping boards - he uses it for everything. I like a different cloth for surfaces, top of the microwave, etc. But I try and chill about it.

Not DH-related, but I hate having no towel in the kitchen, and people wiping their hands on the tea-towel that will be used for drying plates. I find that pretty gross.

Uses the hand towel as a tea towel and vice versa

I’m with your husband on the sponge, although sometimes I’ll use kitchen roll instead.
My husband doesn’t wipe the draining board so our mugs always sit in water and then have to get redone. Drives me nuts.

I also wash everything together - I spilt darks and lights, but underwear goes in with tea towels. And I only have one kitchen sponge for dishes and worktops 🤷‍♀️

🤮

I dont get this. Get a dishbrush for dishes! Then any sponges/j-cloths will just be for countertops.

washing the tea towels and underwear in the same load unless I catch him "shudder"

Umm ... nothing wrong with that. It all comes out clean ... that's the point of washing things, isn't it?

I use the same sponge for dishes and kitchen work tops. Plenty of hot water and cleaning products.
don’t see the issue…

I’m with the ‘tea towels are ok washed with knickers’ crowd. My DH does various household things that grate but one is not understanding which foods need to go in fridge or not. I find opened jars of pesto or mayo going foosty in the cupboard then things like cake put in the fridge.

Another is him being obsessed with having clear work surfaces but giving no fucks about a floor covered in crumbs and detritus.

DH insists on putting leftover food in a cereal bowl in the fridge with a plate on top. This is despite us having many plastic and glass square containers for this very purpose 😡 It take so much space in the fridge and you can't stack things on top!
He also drops hot tea bags into the sink plug hole area so that when you come to run a tap the water doesn't run away and you (I!) have to retrieve them.

My DH is brilliant at most things and certainly pulls his weight around the house but is terrible at actually running the dishwasher after breakfast/lunch.

It's beautifully stacked but when I question why he hasn't run it, it's because 'there's still some room'. Maybe for an extra teaspoon or maybe one yet to be used side plate. Just run the bloody thing and then it's empty and ready for dinner dishes.

I was completely hopeless before I met dh and learned a lot of housekeeping from him, so it always surprises me when he does mad things like deciding to store the Christmas leftovers in the oven instead of the fridge, or washing bits of food down the drain.

I would absolutely use the sponge from the sink that we wash the dishes with to wash the sides ( never even considered using anything else). I might put a separate white wash on but everything else can go in together.

The chemical sponge is terrifying that would really upset me!

My big list of hates (apparently I am a nag and nobody cares about these things but me):

• My partner is a serious germaphobe (hands like sandpaper from constant washing every time he touches anything - his phone, a door handle etc) but when he does the dishes he doesn’t think to wipe the counters or clear up splashes on the tiles.
• He takes out a new chopping board for every item and usually there are 3-5 of them to be washed before we even get to dinner one might have been for cheese for his sandwich, then a new one an hour later for my daughter’s sandwich and none of them washed or put away.
• He doesn’t clean bathrooms - I think the not using chemicals and not tacking the dirty jobs feeds into his germaphobia and his fear of the effects of chemicals on his health - so if there’s the need to use oven cleaner it’s on me which is just lovely if he thinks it’s that dangerous!
• He stacks the dishwasher in a mad haphazard way that leaves it half empty so I have to reshuffle it before it goes on.
• He puts things like cheese graters away in a different place each time so I always have to search all the cupboards.
• If he is unpacking shopping he puts the same food types scattered throughout the fridge - like cheddar on each shelf so several get accidentally opened and you have decaying strawberries at the back of the top shelf that you are not aware exist. He also never touches or throws out the decaying hidden food but will mention that “we” must throw it out. It is chaos. I plan on filling the fridge with little boxes with labels on them but I doubt that’ll work!
• Laundry is the same tshirts go in with the trousers, pillow cases in the middle of towel bundles - if I question it he says I should draw a diagram of how I want things stored if I am that fussy and ocd! I recently got him to start pairing socks as he could never find his sock’s match and it has changed his life lol.
• Oh hanging clothes on the clothes line is mad, he goes out and throws them all on the line with no pegs, he then goes around pegging them afterwards and retrieving all the ones that have fallen to the floor, he pegs them as they landed in the line, ie top half of dress over the bottom half so it’s not properly exposed to the sun and comes in partially wet in the middle - I tell him to peg from the end of things and get told “your way isn’t necessarily the only way of doing things”. This is actually progress, it took me about ten years of arguing about the necessity of pegs and loads of our towels blowing into the river before he started pegging things - I do sometimes go outside and find a wash unpegged and a sea of socks on the ground “but it wasn’t windy when I hung them out”.
• taking socks off around the house and leaving them there for me to pick up (I throw them in his office)

We are both probably complete opposites in that regard - he doesn’t care about or notice small details and I like order! He has accidentally broken quite a few of my favourite things when putting away dishes or stacking things to dry as he does it without a care in the world. In the last two days I have lost a glass, a sentimental mug and a beautiful candle holder.

His dad is seriously organised, the house is show house clean and everything in his house has a particular place, is labelled, you can find everything - I love it, it is strange my partner grew up with that and is a chaos merchant. Incidentally his dad’s partner says she can not relax in his house as it is too organised and regimented for her tastes lol.

Same, I wouldn’t wash the dog blanket with anything else cos it’ll just get dog hair everywhere but everything else gets chucked in together.

I have washable cloths in the kitchen and I’d use the one on the sink to wipe the surface then rinse and put it back… I don’t see the issue, and I’m not dead 🤣

Mine is the same - washing the tea towels and underwear in the same load unless I catch him "shudder"

Why, does your washing machine not work? Stuff goes in dirty… comes out clean… that’s the point 🤣

Teatowels go in with clothes here, they all come out clean, that's what the detergent is for.

We do tend to use a separate cloth for the worktops and save the sponge for washing up but there's no logic to that really, apart from the cloth leaves less water on the surfaces. I can't see any actual problem with using the sponge, the counters only have food mess on, same as the dishes and it would get rinsed well after use.

I'm with you @Fluffyelephant but probably more extreme.
One sponge for dishes, different one for pots. Pet bowls have their own sponge too. Cloths for surfaces that go into the washing machine with other cloths and tea towels. Floor cloths and mop heads washed together.

Clothes are washed separately, lights, darks, whites. Bedding with bedding, towels with towels (not tea towels or pet towels) pet bedding on its own.

I always put towels and underwear in together. I use 40-60c water and soap, I don’t see the issue 🤷🏻‍♀️