Please help me work this out with my husband! It's a common problem, I think, really rather boring but I am not making any headway. How will he commit to take on some of the household labour and execute it?
He works 4 days, I'm 4.5 days with school holidays off. I do the dusting, hoovering, mopping, laundry, the bathroom, the food shop every week. I do the vast majority of the cooking. I also look after the finances, house admin, book holidays. I do the less regular cleaning jobs, e.g. filters, vents, descaling etc in the school holidays. He loads the dishwasher when I've cooked and will usually wipe down the worktops and hob. I usually empty the disgusting sink strainer thing and wipe round the sink. If I ask him to put some laundry in the tumble dryer he will do so, but invariably he will not think to get it back out. I might hang out a load of washing in the morning, he wouldn't think to bring it in when dry. He seems to think the kitchen bins need only to be emptied the night before the binmen come; the rest of the week he squishes everything down. Then the kitchen stinks so I also take the bins out to the garage and struggle to empty them as they've been compressed so much.
At the start of this year our cleaner retired. We agreed that he would clean the bathroom and upstairs on his non working day. I would sort the rest. I think he's cleaned the bathroom maybe three times since then. If I ask him about it he gets defensive. I tried to explain last weekend that I'm feeling anxious about returning to work after the school holidays as there'll be so much less time for me to do all the things I've done over the summer. His response was that the food shopping doesn't have to be done in person, I could get a delivery. This irritated me beyond belief! I feel resentful, frustrated, put upon, uncared for and taken for granted. I just do not know how to share this load. We have been together donkeys years and this is nothing new, however it feels exacerbated this year since the cleaner left and he dropped a day of work.