Why are my choices between a: doing all the shitwork myself or b: living in a dirty tip or c: diverting all household disposable income into cleaners or d: shouting at my DH all the time?

[howdidthishappenthen]

Seriously. I don't like any of the above choices. When we both work exactly the same hours, why can't DH do his share?* He does do half of the childcare which is great, and rare, but I have yet to introduce him to the arts (ha!) of laundry, emptying cat litter, online shopping, cooking, washing up, or bedmaking. We employ a cleaner three times a week to do vaccuming, bathroom and kitchen cleaning, and all our ironing, but that still leaves about 2 hours of general work to do every day. I don't want to live in a tip. I don't want to row with my husband every day to make him take his turn. How on earth am I even HAVING THIS BLOODY CONVERSATION in 2010! Anyone out there got any tips?!

*I have just read Wifework. Probably not a book conducive to domestic harmony..

The best way is to have defined jobs

You cook/He washes

You wash and sort the laundry/ he irons and puts it away

You mop/he hoovers

If you have specific jobs then I find it leads to less resentment. Although you do have to lower your standards.

I don't think howdidthishappen's house necessarily has a crazy amount of housework going on - I think she is just counting it all - and so she should if this is a truthful conversation about housework. You know those surveys that say couples who think they do equal amounts don't really.... well maybe the same person is tidying up in the mornings as a routine and not counting it.
Still, an hour in the mornings? Or is that shorthand, counting other bits & pieces at other times? I suppose maybe I am just marvelling at you finding that hour in the mornings, when I would be forced (by not getting up in time) to leave a lot of stuff and grimly come back to it later.

If you have someone in disposable nappies you do have to empty bins every day, and a 7mo old and a 3 year old would need a lot of tidying up after, and 7 mo old's eating arrangements can be fiddly and everything has to be FIENDISHLY clean.

I feel your pain on crap dishwasher and crap landlord.

I do 'lists'.

When there are tons of jobs to be done, I make a list. Everything goes on the list...from the most trivial to the most difficult. No-one is allowed to sit down (including teenagers) until the list is done.

We also have specified jobs. Cars, bins, grass cutting, etc are specifically DH's jobs and I never touch those. Clothing repairs, cleaning shower cubicles, etc, are mine

Everyone does their own laundry.

Of course, this only happens if everyone agrees in priciple that everyone should share chores.

I would just refuse to wash his clothes until he realised he had to do it himself. And every other day, insist he does the cooking and washing up, or else food doesn't get made. It's not being a feminist harpy, it's expecting him to pull his weight - would he honestly stand there and argue that he couldn't possibly do it, but you should do it again when you did last night, and the night before, and the night before??

I'm very lucky - DH and I allocated bits of housework when we first moved in together, and we still stick to that. He does the cooking and washing up, I do the laundry. He cleans the bathroom once a week, I do the hoovering and put the bins out. Do what works for you but it has to be fair.

QuintessentialShadows I am in awe - how do you fit it all in.....

In fact I am inspired....

I'm with you OP. I feel exactly the same way (although I can't claim to do 2 hours of housework a day!). It drives me mad. I've been meaning to draw up a rota for ages but I never seem to find the time!

Thanks Vezzie. I am counting it ALL. All the 5 mins here and 5 mins there.

The bathroom each day, for example, I do what I think is the bare minimum

• scoop the kids toys from the bath into their little basket and hang up the non slip mat (so it doesn't all go mouldy)
• put the kids dirty clothes from last night into the dirty laundry bin

-rinse and fold flannels, and put jettisoned toothbrushes back in their mug

• fold wet towels and put them back on the rad so they can dry properly.

It takes about 5 mins. Fine.

BUT when you add it to the 5 mins feeding the pets and rinsing their food bowls afterwards, emptying the cat litter (has to be done daily or the little b*stards shit on the floor..), and the 5 mins straightening duvets and opening curtains, and the 5 mins taking the wine glasses out of the sitting room so they can be washed, the 5 mins xxx,xxx,xxx, then it's a half hour or so each morning. Then an hour on cooking dinner & washing up at night. Then an hour or two here and there on laundry and other misc during the week.

Suddenly 8-10 hours work for me each week that is not being shared around And I'd like to share it. But without being a harpy. Hence this thread.

We have settled on one really bracking all-out row on the subject, about once a month. And we occasionally resort to a cleaner for a bit or as a one-off, but we haven't done that in the last couple of years, rowing is more fun...

It is the single biggest cause of tension between me and my generally pro-feminist part-time-working equal-childcaring DP. He's crap at housework and cleaning and doesn't see it as important.

But he knows that if he doesn't attend to this then at some point I WILL leave him because of it, possibly after the dc are grown up, and he doesn't want this.

It's not ideal, having to remind your dp that in the end this will be a relationship-buster, but for me it is. for feminist reasons, as well as the fact I don't like doing it all myself.

I would go for the 'We need to wash up and unload the washing machine. Which one would you prefer to do?' approach. It's non confrontational and it shows you are a team. There's almost always more than one job on the to do list ('If you cook, I'll clean the bathroom whilst you're doing it') and it gets him into the habbit of realising how much needs doing.

Also, do not under any circumstances tidy up after grown ups. This is my golden rule. If there are a pile of clothes on the floor, I just move round them and live with it.

The teamwork approaches people have said here all sound helpful.

I do think that you could let most of the morning stuff go, though. Morning is the most stressful time for us, and other than putting the breakfast dishes away, and checking up on the dog (subbed out to DD), no housework is undertaken. No bathroom tidying, no making beds, no straightening out. Our main objective is to get everyone out of the door on time (sometimes including the dog).

It's interesting how everyone underestimates the amount of work that goes into running a household.

Like you say howdidthishappen it's all the little things that add up, or things that maybe aren't counted as 'housework'.
Cooking is housework, shopping is housework etc.

Yes I don't think 2 hours a day is that much, I think I probably do that, if you add up all the little 5 minute things.

This morning for example I have been working from home because DD is ill. I have:

tidied away the plates from the breakfast (too much rush for them to do it before they went out) - 5 mins

wiped down all the surfaces - 5 mins

Put the washing on the line and put in new load - 20 mins

Heated up soup and got out dips and celery and carrot sticks then cleared all away again - 15 mins

Hung up a few items of clothing - 5 mins

Sorted through a pile of papers on the table which have been irritating me for 3 days - 15 minutes.

That's over an hour just off the top of my head and I haven't started on cooking the dinner and cleaning up after that. And the house isn't that tidy, I could do more, but I prefer to mess about on mumsnet should probably do some more paid work.

I'm sure that by the time I go to bed, I would have fitted in 2 hours housework most of which I'd be unaware of. And that's demanding that my DC's do their own stuff (apart from cooking)

Thanks Dittany. To the point. Would certainly cut down on the laundry. I'm going to try some of the other suggestions first though

Agree with all of the above. The main things, I think, are:

1. Lower your standards. That will both reduce the overall amount of work, and make it more likely that DH will do some of the work spontaneously (because the house will be dirty/messy enough that he will notice, whereas otherwise you get to it before he even notices).

1. Agree that specific tasks that are always "his job". Eg making the beds, emptying cat litter and bins, washing up. Whatever division suits you as a couple. (As others have said, this works best if you mention the jobs you are allocating to yourself at the same time, to make it clear you are being fair.) Also as others have said, you have to be willing to let him do the jobs a little later/a little less well than you might have.

Hi there

My children are a similar age to yours (3 and a bit, and 16 months) and TBH I have accepted that the house is not going to be anything great until they are bigger. At the moment they are both at the stage up picking up random stuff and depositing it all over the house, getting all their bricks and putting them inside the duvet cover, that kind of malarkey.

I am going with, as long as it's clean, and we're fed, and there's food in the fridge and clean clothes, then that will do. Tidiness is just not going to happen so I have let that one go (for now!!!).

I also agree with others that the 5 mins here and there adds up very quickly. What works with my undomesticated DH is I simply ask him to do stuff, and he does it. ie please can you clean the upstairs toilet then hang the washing out etc. It's annoying that I have to direct him, but it's better than just doing it myself.

I also have a friend who is married to a man who is really super-anal about tidiness and it is an absolute nightmare for her - I really couldn't live like that - so when I think of her my messy DH seems better!

'DH will do some of the work spontaneously (because the house will be dirty/messy enough that he will notice'

AHhahahahahahahahaha!

I have abandoned housework on that principle for WEEKS before anyone but me (well, and one of DD's bolshier little friends) noticed a thing.

DH, DS1 and DS2 just make a longer leg to step over the piles without pausing in their monologue on Sonic the Hedgehog/choir engagements/Sam's party. DD ferrets in the heaps to extract her own beloved objects but leaves the rest.

To be fair, I can not-notice with the best of 'em when my mind is elsewhere, but my body does tend to collide with the heaps more than the others because I mostly work from home.

I hate the way women are always being told to lower their standards about how clean and comfortable their environment should be, in order to accomodate their partner's unwillingness to contribute properly to making it comfortable.

My standards couldn't actually get any lower.

I mean, I know it's practical, but if you constantly live in an environment that you find uncomfortable, it makes you unhappy. And it seems to me that sometimes, being told to lower your standards, may well mean "put up with being vaguely uncomfortable and unhappy and stressed all the time."

Is that just me being difficult?

HerBeatitude

If the woman has a higher standard of cleanliness/tidiness than the man, then it is fair that the woman does the "extra" work to get the house to the higher standard.

If on the other hand (as is more usual) the man has the same standards but just doesn't get round to it because the woman gets there first, then clearly they should both be doing the work. But in order to get the man to NOTICE that the work needs doing, and actually DO IT, it is sometimes necessary to leave the mess to build up for a while - because if she does it first he will never do it. That's what I mean by lowering standards.

By the way, I say this as someone who is the stereotypical "man" in the relationship. DH has higher domestic standards than me. Hence he ends up doing more of the housework. I don't really see why I should tidy a bedroom that I think is tidy enough, simply because HE finds it messy. If however he leaves the mess for a bit longer than he'd like to (i.e. lower his standards), it will get to the point where I notice and I will get round to dealing with it.

I have exactly the same problem as the OP.

When first married, I did it all myself.

When I got tired of that, I lowered my standards to the point where we are now living in a tip.

Now I am tired of living in a tip, so have been considering other options. These boil down to what Fennel said: either DH gets his act together or I will leave DH as soon as this is feasible.

DH is currently reading Wifework and knows full well what is in my mind. I expect to see results.

Can I suggest you get your DH to read this excellent book?

You also need to expect more from your 3 yo. My 3 yo will tidy away her own bath toys (and other toys too) and puts her own dirty washing in the wash basket for instance.

That's true. My son's almost two and he carries plates and cups back to the kitchen without prompting.

(I have no idea where he has this obsessive 'put away' streak from, it's definitely not from me or DH)

minipie, my problem with that, is that quite often, it is the woman who has been socialised to have the higher standards, so on that basis it's nearly always her problem, and also that some people's standards are so low, that it isn't reasonable to expect anyone else to put up with them (I include myself in that btw - my standards used to be abysmally low).

For me, it's also a question of consideration for the person you live with. If you can live with bowls of cornflakes being left on the kitchen top with the milk going sour for a couple of days but you know the person you share a house with can't, then surely you make the effort to tidy it away because you knwo that otherwise, they will feel uncomfortable and unhappy?

I used to live with a friend of mine who was a cleanliness maniac - I would leave the Observer on the kitchen table for him to read and he would say: "what's that mess?" So I learned that I had to put things away and leave the kitchen and our shared spaces spotless (as I had found it) because otherwise, he would feel agitated and uncomfortable - it's not that he'd whinge at me, he never did, he knew I was a slob and was extremely tolerant of it, but he'd clean it up after me and I'd feel guilty because it's not his job to clean up after me -even though he didn't mind and told me not to worry about it - so I learned to do it myself, out of consideration for him.

I know there's a balance between living with someone who is OCD mental "sleeping with the enemy" tidy and not having to pander to that and then tolerating the standards of someone who would get anywhere condemned as a health hazard within a week of moving in, but I'm wondering where that is.

I don't think you should lower your standards, if it really bothers you, you should say. But pick your battles. And be understanding that if your partner really hasn't done something before or as regularly as you they wont be up to your speed and standard immediately, nagging about it will only frustrate the issue IMO.

I know that I find cooking an enormous hassle and it always takes me 10x the time it takes DH to do the same task, cos I just don't do much cooking anymore so am out of practice. Similarly, DH is a total dunce at laundry because he never does it. It's OK because those are tasks we divided up, and those we share we both do well because we're practised.

Nagging or ranting is not the answer, you have to behave like an adult dealing with another adult. I'm sure you can use all the thoughts here to make into a coherent statement of your position and the basis of a reasonable split of responsibilities.