In an ideal world I'm the type of person who would have a quick tidy up of the house before bed, make sure all the washing up is done etc. I think it stems from spending most of my 20s living in house shares and not wanting to inconvenience housemates by leaving mess all over. My mind set is to get the boring adult jobs out of the way early on in the day, then reward yourself with a bit of time doing something you enjoy. I'm by no means want to live in a show home, but do find it easier to relax when the house is relatively clean and clutter free.
Over the years, my DH now owns very successful business. He seems to think his days off are precisely that and he will literally wake up and have his games console on all day. He'll break off to make meals and more often than not his dishes will still be left on the side when he leaves for work the next day.
We do have quite a few pets which for the most part I enjoy taking care of. However, a couple of years ago I did tell him I didn't want to take on any more pets as I was starting to struggle with depression. About the same time, his mum got some pet birds. Pretty much the same month she started to drop hints about being allergic to them and wanting us to take them on. I told DH no I'm not interested as I knew looking after them would fall to me. I'm sure you can guess what happened. Recently MIL sadly passed away and left her large breed hairy dog to my DH. Introducing her dog to our old dog has been a slow and time consuming process.
DH rarely walks this dog or brushes her, understandably she's always wired and bothering our old dog which is starting to piss me off. When she was climbing the walls yesterday I suggested DH could take her for a walk. He snapped that it was raining, when it wasn't. He did take her but it honestly made me feel like I was unreasonable for suggesting he took care of his dog! I'd asked him to feed our pets yesterday as the garden badly needed sorting out and I wanted to get it done before it rained. He agreed but left the dirty dishes on the side, they were still there this morning, so I cleaned them up.
This morning I had a conversation with him about how I was feeling overwhelmed and quite depressed since MIL's dog has moved in. Explained that I could use his help more with sorting the pets and house. He told me he would help more but apparently I 'take over'. I had started feeding the birds as he still hadn't bothered to do it past lunch time and they were pecking each other. Honestly I don't want dishes covered in bird shit sitting on the kitchen counter where I prepare food. I think his argument is he would have done it early evening. To me it seems mean to feed an animal that wakes at dawn a few hours before it goes to sleep.
Sorry for the long post!