Unequal Household

[Rammstein9483]

Myself and my fiancée have been living together for just over 2 years now and we have a little girl who is 21 months.

We bought our house, the first time either of us have done so and it's absolutely lovely. For the first 4 months of living there my fiancée was heavily pregnant so getting the house ready for our little girl was our priority.

The problems have all started in the last 12 months or so, since my fiancée has returned to part time work (I work full time).

A bit of background, we live in my fiancées home city and I am over 300 miles away from all of my family so we rely almost solely on her family for help and support. Although my parents who are in their 60s, travel up once every month or two to look after our daughter when we are both working as their way of help, to expect them to come up more is totally impossible because they both still work too.

We have minimal issues with childcare because my fiancées family are a massive help to us when we are occasionally at work on the same day. I work 40+ hours a week and my shifts are completely different every day because of the industry we both work in. Some weeks I work 4 days, most 5 but occasionally 6 days and once a month I do 8/9 days in a row. It's just how the roster works.

My fiancée works 2 days in 13, sometimes 3 days in a row but then has almost two weeks off. Again, this is how her roster works because she is part time doing 16.5hours per week averaged out over a month.

She does the majority of looking after our daughter because she is off work more but I pay more into the bills for the house, because I earn more. It's just an agreement we had when we planned having a child. This works well, however now I am the one who does the majority of housework, cleaning as well as paying more out. I pay out £1650 per month on all the house costs and her contribution to me is £450, whilst she also takes all of the £90+ child benefit. So effectively she gives me £360 towards ALL the house bills. Mortgage, insurances, utility bills, broadband etc, etc. We have bought a new electric car recently and I gave her my old one which saves her £95 per month that she paid for her old car and we charge at home so she has no fuel costs, it's all on the house electric bill.

I do the washing, laundry, deep cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, garden work, DIY, car maintenance etc as well as working full time and paying most out for the house. To be fair to my partner, she does a lot of the cooking, mainly because I'm not there but it's not a case of her making dinner for me when I get home like other people might think, it's mainly for her and our daughter.

My question is, is this fair? It really feels like it's not. I am absolutely exhausted. There's about 3 or 4 days a month where I am off work and my partner is in so I have our daughter to myself them days, so it's not as if I don't look after her too. I do and and I love having her.

My partner is very untidy and leaves things lying around the house all the time which I have to tidy up. Clothes, cosmetics, shoes, toiletries, wrappers from food, she will use something and then just leave it somewhere instead of putting it back where it came from. So I am constantly chasing around the house on a daily basis putting things back where they need to go. I bought new storage for her to be able to keep everything in place but that's all gone haywire now, she just doesn't do it. It's so frustrating. She hates putting the bins out so I do that, she hates cleaning, so I do that too. The bathroom only ever gets cleaned if I decide I'm going to do it one day and that's every 3 or 4 weeks because I don't have the time.

She's already told me she hates housebound chores, like literally hates doing them. But then I'm expected to do them as well as everything else I do.

Can someone please tell me how to approach this. We always end up in arguments because like today, I'm in work 2pm-11pm and in the time before work I've had to put clean washing away, run the vacuum around the house and make lunch for us all.

I really don't know how much longer I can cope with it. The arguments just get more and more regular and we don't seem to find any middle ground.

Aww bless you.

My argument would be that if she isn’t doing housework while working so little she either has to work f/t and pay for a cleaner / childcare from her wage, or she needs to step up and get her finger out. She can’t have it both ways.

How much do you both earn? We can’t really say whether her contribution to the household is reasonable unless we know how much money you both bring home.

I suggested this a few months ago when we had a blazing row about it all and we even went as far as enquiring about a cleaner online.

She agreed that she would start being a bit more conscious about mess but this only lasts a few days and then we are back to square one.

I might seem petty but it's little things like hair bobbles everywhere, baby wipes stuffed down the sofa, socks and other clothes just left in random places. My pet hate is laziness, I don't mind doing the work but just don't give me extra stuff to do because you can't be bothered. Yesterday she was at work so I had our daughter. I did 3 loads of washing and drying and put it all away except for her PJs which I left on the bed. Today, those PJ's were just stuffed down the gap between the bed and bedside cabinet so I asked her to put them away and she said "I'm wearing them tonight". This was at midday. There was a phone cable and two shampoo bottles on the kitchen work top so I asked her to put them away, she put all of it in a basket in the bathroom where our toiletries are, including the phone cable...WHY?!

This happens day in, day out. Our little one makes mess but that's the kind of mess you expect, shes not even 2 yet, so I don't care about any of it but that combined with my partner's just gets on top of me. There's been times when I've left things that I've seen because I want to give her the chance to sort it herself, but days later it's still there, so I tell her "it's been there for days, I left it to give you a chance to sort it out" and I'm made out to be someone who's playing a game....I'm not, I'm giving you the chance to just do things instead of me doing them.

Im made to feel like I'm being totally unreasonable but I'm not surely?

Her take home pay from work is £1400 plus the child benefit payment and my
take home from work is £2400. Like I said though, we always agreed I would pay more out because I earn more, it's common sense and I'm fine with it. It's the fact I'm doing more in every other way as well as that.

I think it's always difficult when you cohabit, because different people have different standards of tidiness. She leaves her stuff where she leaves it because, presumably, it doesn't bother her that it is there. The phone charger for example - she was happy for it to be where she had left it. But it offended your sense of order. Neither of you are objectively right or wrong, just different.

Does your desire to have things put away, trump her desire to leave things where she wants them to be? Nobody here can tell you the answer to that, because there isn't really one.

But if you want the relationship to work, you and her need to agree some rules as to what is and isn't acceptable in the house, and stick to them.

I would suggest it won't help if you approach the conversation convinced that your rules are the correct ones, and that she is somehow "lazy" when she doesn't meet them. Listening, compassion and compromise are your friends here.

In my relationship, I am the one who puts things away, and my partner leaves them in places that to me make no sense. (Tools in the kitchen, for example).

We are hoping to move house quite soon, and when we do so we have agreed that we will have parts of the house where he is free to leave stuff where he wants it to be, and parts that will be kept free from clutter.

That way neither of us have to feel we are being excessively constrained.

But I would be lying to you if I told you this compromise was one that was easy or pain-free to come to!

Honestly, I imagine housework is responsible for at least 50% of break ups! The devil is in the detail. It's death by a thousand paper cuts if you let it be.

Just try to remember, she almost certainly ISN'T doing this stuff to piss you off, or because she doesn't give a fuck about your feelings. Just as you almost certainly aren't trying to control her with your rules of tidiness.

You are just two different people, with different preferences and different standards. Listening, compassion and compromise.

So there's a couple of ways of looking at this:

Firstly the housework tends to massively increase when you have a child or children. They make a lot of mess, and both parents are generally much more tired.

Secondly if you are on unpredictable shifts, then under normal circumstances if her family were not stepping in to cover any gaps in childcare you'd be paying out for 16.5 hours of nursery or childminder a week which is quite a substantial amount of money. So her family being so helpful is helping you both out.

Thirdly, you could ask her to go up to full time and pay for a cleaner. But if her family won't cover full-time (and it would be a pretty big ask) you'd be very much worse off financially as full time nursery or childminder for that age is going to cost you a lot of money. You will be much much worse off.

I think it was a really bad idea to have a kid with someone you didn't know that well but too late now.

YANBU - it would really annoy me too. I think getting a cleaner might make a huge difference.
Are you likely to have another kid? If so then don't expect her to change because she probably won't. If you don't want another kid make sure you take responsibility for it so that you don't get a suprise pregnancy.

Having blazing rows is very worrying especially as it's still a new'ish relationship and because you have a child involved. You getting frustrated with her probably isn't going to work. It sounds like she doesn't care. Some people are fussed about tidiness and think it's pointless to do more than the minimum.

Might she be feeling 'lazy' for any other reason? Health or depression?

I'd try for a cleaner twice a week for a few hours if you can afford it. It would make so much difference.

Generally Mumsnet think that couples should end up with the same amount of spending money but I'm not sure I agree 100% when one person is working much harder than the other.

Thank you so much for this, I see where you're coming from.

She's told me that her mind runs at 100mph and she doesn't mean to be so untidy and it's not like she's thinking "I'll leave this, he will do it". That's a totally new problem which I sure as hell couldn't live with.

She suggested a planner which we bought for the kitchen wall to note down what needs to be done and I find that's helped with certain things.

But you cant put on a planner "put the crisp and food wrappers that you've left all over the house in the bin" and "clean the bath after you've coloured your hair and left it in a right mess". That's surely just something you see at the time and think to yourself "I need to do this now".

I have read on here about people who leave their clothes and mess lying all over the place and their partners have just left them be until they either run out of clothes or ask where something is. We can't do this because of having a toddler. She's into everything and if she's unattended for a couple of minutes and ends up chewing on a phone cable, a food wrapper or a hair bobble and we end up in A&E I couldn't forgive myself for just leaving it.

No way would I have the same amount of spending money as someone who's working so little and does fuck all in the house!

If she can't be bothered cleaning and tidying, she needs to pay someone to do it.

I don't think you can change someone as messy and lazy as this. I think it would be better if she worked more hours and spent the extra money on cleaners.

Ha - the bath thing is interesting - my partner and I have fallen out about this when I forgot to clean the bath after I had shaved my legs! (Bit disgusting I know....)

Though I am more tidy than him in general, I do also get your girlfriend's point, sometimes my mind runs on to a new task when I haven't yet finished the one I should have done before...That's fine if you live by yourself, you just do stuff when you need it done. But to a partner clearly it looks like you just don't give a fuck about their needs.....

I think the good thing here is that your girlfriend is open to finding solutions with you, rather than being at loggerheads about it or failing to see the problem....

If she is committed to trying to change and be more tidy, then she probably will be able to, but you may have to accept it may take time for her to learn strategies and embed them. There are probably even self help books she could read about helping your mind stay focused on tasks - stuff like that - if she really is happy to change this and accepts it's a problem.

You will have to give her time, and accept it will be a work in progress. But there are probably things about you that aren't perfect too, that she tolerates - I say this because it is true of basically everyone!

I think a cleaner could help while the baby is still little - if your finances can stretch to that. Does you partner intend to increase her hours at work soon? Could she and would she like to? That could be a gradual thing, but it might make you feel better about the balance in your relationship. Can her family pick up the childcare slack if this happens?

I think almost all issues can be resolved if both parties are open to compromise, and both listen to each other. But there is rarely a silver bullet - it takes time. But if you love each other, it will be worth it

She's told me that her mind runs at 100mph and she doesn't mean to be so untidy and it's not like she's thinking "I'll leave this, he will do it". That's a totally new problem which I sure as hell couldn't live with.

Has she been assessed for ADHD, because she sounds like me and DD?

Things that help are timers like the pomodoro app, working in a job I love (that is hectic and crazy) and paying for services. I am the world's worst housewife but I can do my job.

She sounds like a right scruff. I couldn’t tolerate living with someone so untidy. I also wouldn’t be doing all the housework, laundry etc whilst working 40+ hours per week to her 16 hours.

It sounds like she is hardly working any hours at all and the household chores are not fairly distributed.

First of all I think that you and your DP need to acknowledge that you both have different levels of tidiness and cleanliness and you need to meet in the middle.

Your DP should be doing more housework but you need to know that childcare can be grunt work and you can have some days that you can't get anything done / finished.

Long term, if you both can't compromise/ change then you might be incompatible.

We absolutely do love each other and other than this we have no issues which cause us to argue. I'm not perfect and I don't want her to be either, I just want there to be a middle ground on things.

House chores are more my thing than hers and I don't mind doing them when I have the time to, it's everything else that creates more work for me. The little things that make a mess that just add up over time.

Cleaning is one thing, I can enjoy it, I give myself a couple of hours to really do it properly. Put music on and blitz it. But the next day there's socks stuffed down the side of the sofa, wrappers all down her side of the bed, clothes everywhere and it looks a tip again. My argument is to just tidy up after yourself, it's that simple. It's half the battle of running a home. If you both do that then that's all that's needed.

She sounds like a child. I think you’ve inadvertently enabled her.

What happened before you had children?

Also how do you get wrappers down the side of the bed?!! How are they getting in the bedroom? 😳

I have adhd diagnosis and live v much like it sounds she does. Stuff everywhere and absolutely socks down the side of the sofa.

It's the daily tedious tidying that I simply cannot do - but I do enjoy a good deep clean. Can you swap roles - you do routine tidying and she does weekly or bi monthly deep clean? (I outearned my partner incidentally and worked FT - she sounds like she's busting your boundaries and being lazy)