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Who does the housework in your house?


Cerina
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I'm a member of several organizing, parenting, and home school groups on Facebook. I like them because mostly people just post links to great articles and/or ideas and tips about one of the above. But every so often, one lady apparently reaches a breaking point and unleashes a rant about how she's the only one in her house that does any of the housework or chores. Then, her post is flooded with other women commiserating with her because, they too, are the only ones who ever clean anything or put anything away.

 

Is this really still a thing? I do not get it. Are there really parents out there who don't make their children do chores? Are there really men out there who still believe that all housework is women's work? Or did these women just marry lazy asses who then produced lazy ass children?

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No kids in my home, but my husband and I split the housework fairly equally. I do more deep cleaning than he does, but he does more frequent spot cleaning than I do. My guess is that women who complain about doing all of the work are either exaggerating or not communicating their requests for support clearly/helpfully. Some people just like to be victims.

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My mother-in-law is a total neat freak. She can't stand messes. So she picked up after my husband his whole life, so he's just a total slob. She decided to do something about it when he was 13 and resorted to some rather immature tactics, and she didn't get the response she hoped for, if you can imagine that. I grew up in a household where my dad had to do all of the housework because my mom was disabled, and her standards were ridiculously high. However, my parents were also pack rats, so there was clutter and piles of paperwork everywhere. As a result, I'm kind of a minimalist but I do tend to have a paperwork pile, because filing sucks. The minimalist lifestyle probably fits us, though, because my husband is used to having the house neat, even if he's the biggest contributer to messes. I've given up on being organized, I just shove crap into various containers so I don't have to look at it. When you have kids, you learn they aren't going to put anything away properly, anyway, so you might as well let go and be happy you don't have to look at it.

 

Currently, the division of labor is that my husband cooks and does yard work the 3 months of the year that it's not raining. He's started to help with dishes now that we have kids, and I've taken on more of the kid duties. He usually gives Quinn a bath and puts her to bed, although I think bath time is going to be my responsibility soon, since she's getting older and he's less comfortable with it. He's responsible for cleaning the kitchen between housekeeping visits since he's so anal about food cleanliness.

 

I do laundry, dishes most of the time, and most of the kid duties like getting them dressed, feeding the baby, and changing diapers. I also do more of the dropping off and picking up from daycare and taking them to do doctor appointments. I hired a cleaning service when I was pregnant with Ethan because it was physically too much work for me with the bigger house. It has been worth every penny, although dealing with the agencies themselves is aggravating.

 

Quinn likes to help feed the dog. When the kids are older, I do want them to help out. When they can reach the sink, I'll have them help with rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher. I'll probably have them help wash and fold towels and linens. Laundry will probably wait until they're a little older, like when they get smelly. I have hope that some day I can cancel the cleaning service when everyone can pitch in, but right now the kids are so much work and I really would rather spend the time with them than dusting. Right now I'm really looking forward to Ethan being done with bottles. I quit cloth diapering because it was just one more thing to worry about, and Ethan is so skinny that they really didn't fit very well anyway.

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Our approach is that if something needs done, just do it. No clear division of labor, we just deal with things as they come up. As newly weds, we tried to make it fair, which was a disaster because then we started keeping score. We have a lot more peace of mind since we started considering it a team effort.

 

Of course, duties are naturally assumed by one person over time, but that works better than arbitrarily assigning duties.

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^That's how we do things. My husband and I just have a "if it needs to be done, do it" sorta philosophy when it comes to housekeeping. Noah is the only one with specific job duties. He empties the dishwasher, takes out all the trash, feeds and waters the cats, cleans out the litter box, maintains his own room and belongings, folds and puts away his own laundry, and occasionally vacuums and helps prepare dinner. (Btw, my entire family thinks it's incredibly lazy of me to assign chores to my 6 year old. I don't get it.) When my husband was working more hours and coming home around 7-8 PM every night, I did a lot more of the daily stuff like cooking, dishes, laundry, and picking up, but now that he is home by 4:30 every day, he helps out with more of that. I do generally do most of the cooking though.

 

But I don't have to nag, yell, or beg for any of this. Noah needs prompting to do most of his stuff, but he does it without complaint or argument. Maybe it'll be different once he's a teenager. :shrug:

 

Our neighbors are just like Destiny's mother-in-law. She does EVERYTHING at their house, and won't even consider letting the children help out. So every so often, Noah will get a little "woah is me"ish about having to do a chore while the neighbors' kids don't. But we also let him have more independence than they do. He gets to play outside without constant supervision, cross the street to check the mail on his own, go to the bathroom alone in public, etc. while they do not.

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For the record I just folded some laundry. I'm kind of freaky weird as I like that part of laundry because the clothes are all warm and smell good. Sometimes they are so nice and toasty that Bob climbs in the laundry basket to sleep on the clothes and I have to evict him as the point is to keep the clothes cat hair free. He makes mad kitty. In between loads I usually clean the bathroom and use a vacuum on the floors and then mop the floors.

 

The worst household chore I have is the stove. I hate cleaning the oven/stove/range.

 

I usually cook on Sundays and then make it a meal I can add to during the week to stretch it out because I have an impossible schedule. My cats are almost feral because they rarely see me until I get home at night and collapse on the couch to watch teevee and grade. One more week until spring break. I'm going to the coast to fly a kite.

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I do it all. My roommate is a slob who was raised by divorced parents who both had house cleaners and he has no concept of how to clean. I have to tell him to use a ****ing cutting board instead of slicing food directly on the goddamn white tile kitchen counter- I might not care, if he cleaned up the crumbs but... he doesn't. He has never cleaned his bathroom- I finally yelled at him about it yesterday (he's lived here for 8 months) and he "cleaned" the sink and wiped down the counter but didn't touch the disgusting toilet or sweep or mop the floor. I am at my wits end. I don't need things to be super clean, but certain things need to be cleaned and disinfected on a semi-regular basis. It's just what you do as a grown up. I might end up kicking him out if he doesn't start treating this house with a little bit more respect. I might not care so much if it wasn't my grandmother's house, but it is, and I've explained that to him several times.

 

/rant

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Guest El Chalupacabra

It's like a 60% (girlfriend)-40% (me) split, when it comes to cleaning, laundry, dishes. And she gets the cat box duty, because, well, it's not my cat.

 

But I work a sh*t ton more hours at my job (50+hours vs 20-25 hours per week), so it evens out.

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Yeah that's the long and short of it. If you ever lived alone you kinda figure out its on your lazy ass and you start getting shit done.

 

Housekeeping is SO ****ing easy if you stay on top of it. Clean as you go. Let shit pile up and you're in trouble.

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Do your part for your future daughter-in-law as well!

For reals. I should've included that but I've definitely thought about it. That boy is going to know how to do laundry and some other things. My husband thinks the division of labor is going to fall along gender lines, but I told him Quinn needs to know how to mow the lawn and use tools, and Ethan needs to know how to do laundry and clean a toliet. At some point in their lives, they're going to live alone and have to do this stuff.

 

I had to take on a lot as a kid (like lawn mowing) because I was an only child and my parents were busy with their small business. That said, wish I knew how to use tools better. (Great op-ed in the Baltimore Sun about how female engineering students don't have some "machine shop" skills like their male peers do. I tried to work in a machine shop for work study, but I was useless, partially of my lack of skills but also no one was willing to teach me anything. It's definitely influenced how I became an intellectual analysis engineer instead of a design engineer, the type of engineer who builds stuff in their garage.) So I do rely on my husband to fix things more than I wish I did. But he's also anal-retentive about things like picture hanging, so I'm not going to do it if it's just going to be re-done.

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There's a running joke in my family about getting me tools. When I was 7 or 8 the only thing I asked Santa for was this "real" toolbench I saw in the JC Penney catalog. It had real tools and everything, but it was for kids. I really really REALLY wanted it. But I didn't get it, and was really upset about it for years though I didn't really say anything. Then once I hit about 14 or so I spoke up about it at a family function as "the only thing I've ever asked for but didn't get" (still true, I'm spoiled). So every year since, my family makes a big show about looking at tools for me, but nobody's ever bought me any. One year, we did a white elephant thing and I got a cordless drill. And my sister did buy me a really cool screwdriver set that came with something like 60 tips, but my husband left it outside a couple of weeks ago and someone stole it. Actually, every tool set I've ever purchased for myself has mysteriously disappeared as well! Figures....

 

Now I buy lots of tools for my husband, but he just takes them to work! It's like God doesn't want me to have tools.

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