My DH and I split the housework (cooking, cleaning, emptying bins, gardening etc.) pretty evenly between us but I do the rest of the household workload (dentist appointments, birthday parties, school activities, buying clothes for the kids, paying bills etc.) We have four DCs and it is a huge burden that I'm finding difficult, time-consuming and depressing.
Some time ago I told DH that I was going to stop buying birthday and Christmas cards and presents for his family members (parents, siblings, nephews and nieces) and he would have to start doing it again himself. He has managed this pretty well although a couple of presents have arrived a day or two after the birthday.
More recently I asked DH to take over the meal planning and food shopping. He drives past two supermarkets on his commute so it's easy for him to stop for something if we've run out, whereas I work from home so would have to make a special trip out since there isn't a shop within walking distance. I have been doing the bulk of the food shopping for years so I expected that it would take him a while to get to grips with it. However several months later our kids have been begging me to take over the shopping again because they're fed up of running out of biscuits, crisps, yogurts, fruit, bread etc.
I also asked DH to take over ordering and collecting one DC's prescription medicine. He only gets a 30-day supply and it's critical that he doesn't run out plus it's a class B medication so it takes up to a week to get a new supply. I write the number of days of remaining medicine on the calendar with a reminder at ten days to order more but DH keeps leaving it to the last minute. I spent a large portion of the last two days driving between hospital, GP and chemists trying to get an urgent prescription and find a chemist that had the medicine in stock.
So now I'm feeling that I need to take over the food shopping and ordering medication again because DH can't commit to doing it properly. When I look at all the other myriad tasks that I have to do I feel completely overwhelmed by it all. I feel that for every task I complete there are two more that aren't being done. I'm also finding it very difficult to put enough work hours in because of the sheer burden of it all.
My worry is that DH seems so incompetent with these types of tasks because they're just not that important to him. With the family birthdays then he's managing to do it because he gets thanks and attention from people. Whereas if one of the DCs won't eat breakfast because his preferred food has run out then it doesn't matter to DH. I really want to be able to pass some of the household tasks on to DH but it isn't worth it if he won't do them properly. We have had lots of issues in the past with unpaid bills and fines so eventually I ended up taking over most of these tasks. At the moment DH has a parking charge that he keeps forgetting to pay - it's already doubled and it's only going to increase the longer he leaves it.
Has anyone been in a similar situation and managed to persuade their partner to take on a bigger share of the workload... and do it properly?