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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

How do you deal with a DH who is genuinely helpful but not in the way you want?

52 replies

FuckYouSheRa · 28/10/2014 07:01

I don't know if I'm just being controlling and arsey.

We both work ft, Dh leaves at 6am. I do the morning shift with the dc and generally get a load of washing on or empty the dishwasher, as well as get me and three kids out of the house for 8am.

I often come home for lunch so I can do little jobs. Dh does the afternoon school run and cooks dinner for when I get in at 6pm. And then we have stuff in the evenings most evenings.

So it's just all go really and mostly we muddle through. We recently moved to a house twice the size as our old house though and although in a lot of ways life is made easier by this, there is obviously more to do.

So we hired a cleaner, and she came round yesterday to do an initial assessment. Because it's half term, dh had been at home with the kids all day. I came in at six and she was right behind me.

I am not exaggerating when I say the house was revolting. Downstairs wasn't too bad but she actually yelped when I took her upstairs. All three kids had tipped the contents of their rooms out, there were wet towels and dirty undies on the floors, the loos were filthy and there was just stuff everywhere.

I could have died. The cleaner (not the actual cleaner , she owns the agency) was visibly shocked by the mess. I kept apologising and she patted my arm and said, don't be embarrassed, this is why you need us. And I thought, actually , I just any someone to run the Hoover round, we don't generally live like this.

I've barely spoken to dh since last night, I can't even look at him. He knew she was coming and it didn't occur to him to either pick stuff up or get the kids to. He bathed ds2 last night and in the fifteen minutes or so I tidied EVERYTHING away. Not because I'm some super speedy tidy freak but because that's all it took, toys in boxes, dirty stuff in laundry etc.

He just doesn't get why I'm cross. When we've talked before it became clear that he genuinely thinks he does more than me around the house. He does a lot, I'm not saying he doesn't. But he takes so long about the jobs he does that he doesn't actually get much done.

I'm so miserable at the moment. Having a cleaner is going to ease the burden, but I am the ONLY person who ever tidies the house (other than moving stuff from one pile to another) and I don't know how to get him and the kids to start actually tidying shit up.

This may be just a rant, well done if you've got through it.

OP posts:
deste · 28/10/2014 16:41

Don't be embarrassed about the mess because as she said, that is why you need her company. If everyone was clean and tidy she wouldn't have a job. Some houses we look at you can't even see the floor. I'm not sure if you have said how old the children are. I would give them each a basket and tell them to go through the house putting all their stuff in it and putting it back in the correct place.

HansieLove · 28/10/2014 18:13

For those of you that answered and are cleaners, what do you do with the stuff on the floors? Do you pile it on a chair, or in a corner?

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