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How do you divide the chores?
I am sure this has been discussed at length on this board, but how do you and DH divide household chores?
In our house, DH does all of the outdoor work. I do most of the indoor work. He also takes out the trash. We do our own laundry.
Except for a few major days in summer, he mostly just mows the lawn once a week and does some side projects here and there. However, I do all of the grocery shopping and cooking, pretty much all of the cleaning (he does pick up after himself, so I guess he helps a little), and almost all of the dishes (and we don't have a dishwasher - once in awhile, he will do them or put them away).
I think it is tough because I work full time now, where I used to work at home two days a week which use to make it a touch easier. But now, come Saturday (and actually all week) I feel so overwhelmed. We don?t have kids yet, but I just don?t know how people do it! Hire a cleaning lady? I don?t know!
Just wondering how other couples handle this. Thanks!
~TTC Buddy to ebeneezer~
Re: How do you divide the chores?
If you both work full time, it needs to be a more even split. The yard is not THAT freaking hard. With a now deployed DH, I know this for a fact and know that I have been shafting the hell out of myself even though I SAH...he lives here too he should be contributing more.
You're just going to have to bring it up to him, that you're overwhelmed and exhausted and you have no energy for ANYTHING outside of what you HAVE to do everyday (he will immediately think this translates to sex, I'm sure). Try to find ways he can help you, and if he truly won't, then have cleaning lady information ready to have him help you "decide which one" not IF. You need help, either he pitches in or he ok's it in the budget.
Funny you should ask. We were watching Sister Wives on TLC last night and I told him we should get another wife who does the cleaning (I love to cook) - just kidding. As DH says, one headache is enough.
As it stands now, I work, cook and clean. DH helps out by washing the dishes, taking out the trash and he does the yard work though now we hired a gardener. I don't mind cleaning but I just wish he would at least clean up the little things after himself like the banana peel from the evening before.
BFP #1 - 11/16/10 CP 12/1/10
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No chore is set for one specific person, for a while I thought it was my job to do the heavy lifting because my husband was on the ship but he didnt like it that way. So we both do dishes, vacuum, laundry, clean the floors, and take out the trash and generally we do all these chores together. I do though scrub the bathrooms myself but I think its a female thing to want a spotless toilet and shower. And we have discuessed the yard thing(if we had one) it would also be the same way the house is; a shared chore.
we're in a condo- so there's no outside chores- the maintenance guys and landscapers take care of that
as for the rest:
i do all the shopping, cooking, straightening, laundry, dusting, most cleaning around the condo
DH does the bathroom (weekly), dishes (daily) and takes out the garbage
we split vacuuming
I wish mine would do this too. For some reason he gets dressed in the living room, don't ask why because I don't know. He says the bedroom isn't big enough, and I say bs, because its not like we are both getting ready at the exact same time and weigh 600 pounds. So anyways....he leaves his dirty clothes all over the house! Deodorant is ALWAYS down in the couch, hangers down in the couch, drives me crazy. Oh and God forbid he put the wet towels in the laundry basket. He also leaves tooth picks on the end tables, and then I get home and find them on the floor, I think the dogs are getting them. I told him the other day to stop leaving toothpicks around because one of the dogs is going to choke on them!
Girl you got me on my soap box! lol
We grocery shop together. We cook together or trade off. We both do dishes.
For cleaning, I tend to do more of the day to day picking up, while he does the deep cleaning jobs. He is really good at focusing on one thing and making sure it is perfect before it is done, so this is great for him. I like to do smaller jobs and don't have the motivation to scrape at burned on food on the stove like he does.
He does most of the heavy yard work like running the mower and leaf blower, but I do small stuff like pruning bushes, picking up sticks that fall from the trees, etc.
I do the laundry and he will help me fold it if he's around. If I didn't do it, he would let his pile up for two months (yes, he has enough underwear and socks to go that long!). I can't handle that much dirty laundry sitting around so I just do it all.
I meal plan, grocery shop (though we usually do this as a family), do all of the cooking, trim hedges and do whatever container plants I want that season/year. I also am usually the one to keep track of when something needs to be done around the house.
DH does dishes and cleans up the kitchen after dinner, mows the lawn, and does a lot of the household maintenance. And kills bugs.
The real cleaning just gets split up- I ask if he wants to vacuum the house or clean a bathroom, and I take whichever he doesn't. We both tidy, do laundry, empty the dishwasher, etc. There's no divided list.
Everyday: DH does the dishes, and I do the laundry and wipe down the counters/clean the sink. We pick up the living room. I make the bed, he checks the mail and takes out the garbage as needed. I swish and swipe the bathrooms. I do the majority of the cooking, he does the majority of the budgeting.
Weekly: DH does the vacuuming and mopping. I do the dusting and the tub/shower scrub and change the linens. We do weekly budget "meetings" and weekly menu plans together. We usually end up shopping together, though sometimes I do it alone. On the weekends, we'll generally work together on a "hot spot," where papers or books might have collected and need to be sorted.
Monthly: Using the FlyLady system, I end up adding some extra chores to clean up a certain room or area of the house, rotating to a different place each week, so that every room ends up with a deeper clean about every 4-5 weeks. DH will usually pitch in: If it's the entry way, he'll go outside and sweep really well and beat out the welcome mat. If we're in the master bedroom that week, he might clear off his nightstand of extra books and clean out the drawers of his valet.
I'm really blessed to have a hubby who pitches in, but it wasn't always that way. About 9 months after we were married, I got really, really fed up with trying to keep up with the house by myself. I came home early, did a marathon cleaning session, and when he came home, I sat him down and explained how exhausted I was, that it had taken me more than 6 hours of furious work to get the place clean, and that I just couldn't do it anymore. We talked, and he explained that he could tell when something felt cleaner, but he usually didn't know exactly what to do. Our chore system we have now was basically born that day, in which we each took a couple of things we didn't like, a couple of things that we liked or at least found satisfying, and decided on activities that we might need to do together.
We don't really divide chores. The only work DH does consistently is yardwork. Otherwise, he only vacuums or does laundry when I ask. He's been going out of town a lot for work, though, and I've found he's been washing all of his dirty clothes from his trip. He usually gets a day off once he gets back, and it's usually a day that I have to work.
I pretty much do everything around the house. I vacuum, do dishes (no dishwasher), clean up after meals, sort mail, pay bills, do laundry (and put away clothes), tidy up rooms, and deep clean rooms. I do all of the nasty work, like scrubbing the bathroom. I usually end up taking the garbage out, too.
I've explained to DH over and over again that I need help. It's not realistic for me to do all of this when I also work full-time and go to grad school full-time. He feels that helping with laundry and vacuuming is enough. He doesn't get that it would be super helpful for him to wash his dirty dishes on the nights I have classes, so I don't have to do them at 10:00 at night. Because he's not as helpful as I'd like, though, he has to deal with the fact that sometimes life gets too busy to have a spotless house. I've got a paper due next week and a midterm to study for, so I probably won't get much cleaning done in the next week.