How would you react if your DH came home and said this?

[Enchilada81]

Yesterday DH came home from work and said "have you got much tidying up done today?" and glanced around the house.

He's on at me constantly about the house. I'm not houseproud and never have been. He knew this when we got together but i do keep it respectable and every now and again I'll have a mass do and blitz everything.

But when he comes home and says stuff like this it makes me feel like he's checking up/judging/keeping an eye on me.

I feel like I have to live up to his standards all the time.

How would you have reacted? honestly?

'I ironed all of dp's shirts yesterday and work trousers, did two loads of washing and he nearly fell over in shock'

My DP would fall over in shock, then ask what i wanted!

I'm not the house proud type and never have been my DP accepts that, it's who i am.

graceagain, if I do I'd get my head snapped off.

Sit him down and tell hime how this upsets you, I work full-time and manage DD and the house and if my DH doesn't pull his weight I bloody tell him, any word about where's me tea (i get in before him) and he gets a thick ear.

LOL at 'he's at work 10 hours a day'. I've worked as a PA to some quite high-powered people. They spent quite a lot of time going out for lunch, chatting, picking on minor things and flirting. Yeah, they did work too, but let's not pretend that a day at work is 9 hours of solid graft.

But seriously, yes I agree with Rhubarb too.

If he is going out to work 10-12 hrs a day, paying the bills and keeping the roof over your heads, while you are at home, then yes, he should be able to expect that you are trying to keep back the waves of dirty laundry and general grot that households generate, even if you are looking after a child/children too.

If you are trying to get stuff done, but can't keep on top of it, then of course he should help where he can, because parenting is a job for both parents, and keeping the house in a half reasonable state is part of parenting.

Then get a job. Or volunteer for a charity so you don't have time to do all the housework.

He probably thinks that it takes less time than it does to do everything and he won't notice what you've done if it's always clean and tidy.

Go off somewhere for a couple of days and then come back and pick on everything he hasn't managed to do. It's only when they try to juggle everything themselves that they realise how hard it is.

If you are at home all day every day then I suppose the housework is your job, of sorts. But just like being at work, it's nice if he could show a little gratitude every now and then. Otherwise where is your motivation?

Are you his wife, or housekeeper? Do you go into his work and ask him how much work he has done today? I imagine not, so what on earth gives him the right to breath down your neck about the one thing you haven't gotten round to doing that day?

Just say no, I was doing .... If you go in and do it now, I'll get the tea on.

oh my dh said this all the time when i was on mat leave with 2 under 2s in house all day. used to drive me mad!

he would say i see you got nothing done again today. i pointed out once or twice that i had fed and dressed 2 children, changed nappies, done washing up, cleaned kitchen, made lunch, cleaned up, put washing on, changed more nappies, done grocery shopping made beds, put clothes away, took rubbish out etc etc all the while bfing baby.

he would say but fridge needs cleaned etc. i soon learned to ignore him and just huff to myself about his unreasonableness. i got the day to day stuff done but how he ever thought i could clean skirting boards etc i dont know.

interesting thin is he is at home at min with kids and does do not cleaning like he expected me to do - he takes kids out for the day.

i am clearly much nicer wife than he is husband and am just happy my kids are happy!

If my DH came home and said anything like this...I'd sit there in stunned silence...and wonder since when did he get so brave!

Even though I'm a SAHM my DH never assumes any of the 'home jobs' are mine. I may choose to do the housework/decorating/fixing/mending but then again I may not! If he can throw a sickie for work so can I regarding the housework.

PS It's all usually finished by about 9.30am so I have the rest of the day to myself....but don't tell him that!

You need to have a meeting between two equal adults where expectations are clarified and responsibilities agreed.

At the moment he is sounding like your boss/parent.

I'm not houseproud either (or am just hopeless at housework), but I do what I can. DH used to get annoyed with me about things that I hadn't done and I also felt he failed to notice all the things I had done and picked on the one thing that hadn't been done.

In the end I told him his choices were to either do it himself, or get the cleaner to do it, or if he really didn't like it, he could leave and live somewhere else. But what he was most certainly was not entitled to do was criticise me like that as he was not my boss or superior.

He has since stopped all his critical comments so I suppose I must have got through to him.

Dh does do this to me. The correct response is 'Fuck off and your making your own tea. I'm a lazy cow, remember so I'm off to bed/my mums/my mates. Bye'

I'd go with somehting along the lines of sungirltan and make it quite clear that he is not to fall into a habit of coming home to 'inspect' and comment upon my work in the home.

If you are the one at the home you can choose how to run the housea dn spend your time, you can dictate the level of housework you want to spend your time doing vs other activities.

Obviously if the house is a complete filty tip, the kids uncared for and you watch tv all day he would need to address this with you, but I would not tolerate that feeling of being inpsected and judged by my Dh when he came home. To a large extent while he works he has to trust me to run the house and take care of the kids without constant comment and nitpicking by him.

I couldn't live like that.

Tsk, Enchilada.
I agree with most of the above - I'm like sungirltan, I clarify my complete lack of interest in housework - he's bullying you really, and you need to train him out of it.

How about this for starters:
1] Ask him to put towel in basket (or bathroom, wherever it should be). Do this quite pleasantly & simply. If he snaps back, just say something bland like "oh dear" or "I'm sorry you feel annoyed." But don't move the towel.
2] When he comes in & says "You haven't cleaned the bathroom." Just say "No, I haven't" quite pleasantly & simply, then move immediately on to a question about his day, a bit of gossip or what's for tea.

You get the idea ... Don't 'play' with him.

There's real confusion here because the OP has asked for our reactions, but very few posters have the arrangement that OP has with her DH. My DH and I both work full time and we have an explicit understanding that we share household responsibilities. I would fall over backwards if he said something like that to me.

As far as I can tell OP is a housewife. Children at school, DH full time work, no paid work. This doesn't mean that you work for DH, but he seems to think it does.

Or perhaps he is unhappy with your arrangement and this is a passive agressive way of suggesting it should change.

In any case its clear that you are both unhappy about it so you need to talk about it.

Sarah, OP said she works part-time and DH is home by 3:30pm. For me, that's enough information to decide his expectations are unreasonable. And I think uninvited criticism is unreasonable at any time! Even if he were her boss, he'd be managing her badly. And she doesn't work for him; she's his equal partner.

Tea bag on the side would get a - "Are we saving this manky teabag for anything in particular...if not it needs to go in the bin" whilst leaving teabag there and walking past it with my fresh cuppa.

Towel on the sofa would get a "It doesn't live there." whilst flinging towel at DH.

If he 'snapped' at me then.....he obviously wants to do ALL his own housekeeping!

grace sorry for missing the part time work, I wasn't suggesting he was in his rights to behave this way, just that my reaction is not the point. Of course she is his equal partner, but the details of that partnership may need discussion, rather than OP simply returning her husbands sniping with sniping of her own.

I think a lot of people start off as SAHM's and then drift into being housewives without the changing circumstances beign explored. In my experience DH's in this circumstance get more demanding and DW's feel less satisfied with life.

Sorry, where does she say she works part time? She says he works full-time and she doesn't. She then went on to say that she walks the kids to school and back, does housework and he gets home at 3.30. If he works full-time then I presume he either works at the weekend too or he starts very early.

From what I can gather from her posts, she doesn't do a paid job.

Isn't there a saying that goes something like "dull women have immaculate houses"?

If dh didnt work and only had to get teh kids to school I would expect him to do all the housework tbh.

my husband says things like that to me quite often! - I usually lose my temper and point out all the things he neglects to do (which are in his 'remit').

I like kactus' suggestion - I say things like that and it really winds him up.

But seriously its all a bit of banter and we laugh about it once the air has been cleared - sometimes these comments are useful to get a bit of debate going and gives you the chance to explain how you feel about it. (i.e. gives you the opportunity to mention the wet towel)??

I think the key phrase is this "I wash up breakfast pots, sort the pets out, hoover up, put laundry on, iron what needs ironing, polish ... yet he comes home and picks on the one thing I may not have done." and that makes him a twat.

Obviously the housework is part of your "job" but he appears to only be able to see the stuff that hasn't been done, rather than the stuff that has. There is a fair amount of effort involved in not falling behind without finding time to catch up with jobs that may have been left.

Maybe keep a detailed diary and next time he asks the question shove it up his arse under his nose. But only if it puts you in a good light, obviously

He needs to work on his attitude. Treating you like the cleaner isn't nice. Praising what you have done to show he notices and appreciates it/you is the way to do it, or just keep schtumm about anything he wants done but doesn't see fit to do himself.