First off, I'd like to say that my DH is a good man, a great father who loves our little DS to bits. He is good at some things like managing our finances and helping with cooking and cleaning of the kitchen (we alternate who does this each evening).
However he is a terrible procrastinator and I am finding it increasingly difficult to deal with.
Yesterday we had a massive fight over him doing the laundry.
Friday evening I asked him if he could do a couple loads of laundry on Sat as he was home with DS whilst I was out at a hen do.
He then decided to go out on Sat with DS and "didn't have time". I only left the house at 12:45pm and know that he spent most of the morning on the sofa, before going out with DS at around 2pm.
Sunday morning he still didn't make a start on the laundry, so I reminded him. He put one load in. Once it was complete he just left it in the washer for a good hour or more before I asked him to please go hang the laundry up and put the next load in. Which he very reluctantly did. That load finished and was left on bottom step for an hour until the next load was finished. The two loads then sat there for god knows how long. Eventually at about 6:30pm he went upstairs and started hanging them up and folding the dry laundry. At 7:20pm I asked him to come downstairs and put DS to bed whilst I got on with dinner.
He was STILL hanging the laundry. And furious at me because he can do nothing right and he was only doing what I asked and now I am interrupting him to sort out DS.
My point is that if he had just done it more efficiently or done atleast some of it on Saturday when he was home in the morning, he wouldn't have had so much to do Sunday evening.
I hate nagging him to do things, but if I don't he just does half a job and then leaves it. Or doesn't do the job at all. The laundry could have been done in 3 hours but he spread it over an entire day.
Some historical examples.
- We assembled DS nursery furniture when I was pregnant. The bookshelf, chest of drawers and wardrobe needed to be attached to the wall but he didn't have the right fittings at the time. He then bought the correct fittings. I asked him over and over again, for almost a year before it got done. And he didn't even do it himself, a visiting relative helped us out.
- The year before our wedding he admitted to me that he had £4000 worth of unclaimed work expenses that he 'hadn't gotten around to' dealing with. That's for £4000 of our personal money that he had spent on travel, hotel, etc and not claimed back from work. I was fuming. He was lucky his finance department agreed to pay it back, as it's was a years worth all at once. Most companies won't go back further than 3 months.
- We currently live in a new build that doesn't need much in the way of home repairs, but he want's to buy a larger property that is "more of a project" that has more space for DS. This terrifies me because he can't even get basic jobs done around our current home.
Sorry this is such a long post, but I am just trying to illustrate that this is a problem that causes issues both at home and at work.
I hate that my son hears me constantly on at his father. He is only 15 months but soon he is going to start understanding what we're saying and I don't want him to be affected by us bickering.
Does anyone have any advice on dealing with procrastination in a partner? How can I motivate him to do things without nagging him? I hate the way I sound when I do. I am generally quite a relaxed person, who is not at all a neat freak or needs to have a spotlessly clean house. But we both work and I don't see why he can't just see something needs doing and do it without me having to go on about it.