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Is it fair?
I feel like I am the only one motivated to do any housework. I have the sweetest (almost) husband in the world, but he just seems a little clueless! Then again, I don't even know if it is fair of me to try and demand him to help me with the housework. Our schedules are both packed. He works two jobs, which sometimes means his workweeks are over 50 hours. I work 25 hours a week as a caregiver 45 minutes away from our apartment and also write freelance about eight hours a week.
I know he works very hard in stressful jobs, but I am also the one who does the shopping and cooking. I feel like my overall workload exceeds his. I don't want to nag him or demand that he do the same amount of work that I do, but I do wish that he would do something without my having to ask once in a while. I frequently come home to find dishes in the sink (the dishwasher is right next to it - and if it has stopped running, the dishes are left in there until I put them away!), empty snack wrappers strewn about, clothes on the floor, etc. I am trying hard to make our apartment a nice, clean place for us to live - not going overboard, but just general upkeep. I'd like him to want to help without me having to request it.
Does anyone have any advice about this?
Re: Is it fair?
We had the same issue. I was doing most of the house work and had to nag DH to do anything around the house. So we sat down and figured out how many hours per week each of us works each week. Then we figured out how many hours of housework there was per week.
We divided up the chores so that we each work (in the home/out) the same number per week.
I'm sure it will. If he's working 50+ and you're working 32 you will have most of the housework to do. Though, that doesn't mean he can be a total slob either.
We ran into this problem when I was a SAHW while going to school and volunteering. We sat down and figured out that I would do most of the housework since some weeks he can work 50+ hours as well. Though, we also agreed that we pick up after ourselves. It sounds simple and stupid, but it's easy to leave things around the housing expecting the spouse to pick it up. Once we got on the same page it became a lot better.
My husband (then boyfriend) went through all of this when we first moved in together. He would seriously unwrap a piece of gum and leave the wrapper on the counter a few feet from the garbage basket, and so on. I didn't say anything at first you know, all in love, and he'll change. Well after we moved into our house out of the apartment I exploded one night yelling and crying at him. I'm a total neat freak FYI. He felt so bad, he didn't even realize he was doing all "those" things. When he lived at home his mom picked up after him and all his brothers (the brothers' now girlfriends say they all act the same way and beg me to help them break the brothers since I've broken my husband.)
After I blew up at him, we sat down and I calmly explained to him what he was doing. I'm proud to say a few years later he doesn't do any of those bad habits and he usually does all his own laundry and loading and unloading of the diswasher on his own. We also made the deal if I do most of the inside house work, he'll do all the outside house work like taking out the garbage, putting the recycling on the curb, mowing and trimming the yard, keeping the garage clean, spraying for weeds, clearing the snow, etc. It seems to be going fairly smooth now.
I don't know that housework can ever be "equal" we just do it as things come up and I have my weekend routine of vacuuming and dusting. I clean my bathroom and DH cleans his own bathroom, although I do have to remind him it is time to do it.
GL!
Before divvying up the chores, I think you need to discussed what you each expected your workload was going to look like at this point. DH works a stressful job outside of the home, I work a stressful job as a SAHM. DH takes care of the outside and I take care of the inside (though he vacuums the stairs b/c it's a PITA for me to do it). We've always expected this from each other. DH will help me clean at times if I ask him, and sometimes w/o asking, but in our house, the cleaning is MY job. DH does most of the cooking (I'm not a fan of cooking), and we do most of our shopping together (yes, all 5 of us).
I think not discussing what you expect is a huge stumbling block in a lot of relationships, from cleaning, to handling the bills, to caring for the children (don't care who you are, this is impossible to be equal, but both parties should be as involved as possible).
Discuss what each of you envisioned, then come to an agreement so that one party doesn't feel that they're getting short end of the deal.
You both need to sit down and make a list of everything required to have a clean home. You need to figure out who will do what and when they will do it. I find having a schedule (laundry on weekends, bathroom cleaning every other weekend, etc) helps to reduce stress and ensure that chores don't "slip" someone's mind.
As others have noted, 33 hours a week does not come close to his 50 hours, so you may end up with a much heavier chore-load. But for the sake of your sanity, he's going to have to clean up his own garbage.
I agree with PPs that the spouse who is home more will and should be responsible for more housework. Also, the PP who is neater or to whom a task is more important should probably be responsible for that, though the other spouse should respect that. I also don't think it's too much to ask that someone be responsible for their own clutter and garbage.
I personally have a list of all the things we have to do around the house - daily, weekly, monthly. I keep it on the fridge. I think some people don't realize exactly how much their spouse is doing.
I also think it would be good to assign him regular tasks that don't take very long - that he can do between getting home and going to bed. Loading and unloading the dishwasher and putting away laundry seem more than fair to be his "tasks" - that he is solely responsible for. It might also help to have regular laundry days so he knows that he'll have to put away laundry on Mon/Wed/Fri, for example.
40/112
My Fiance and I are going through this now, again... I think it will be a reoccuring thing. Things will be going good, and then they won't be, and we have to sit down and hash it out again. My dream is finding that he does things when he sees they need doing, without being asked!
Anyway. This is what we did:
I sat down and made a list of all the things that needed done around the house. (Stuff that I had been doing.) We split them up. (Half and half in our case.)
The hard part is getting him to do them. He grew up with his Mom doing all the work, and his Dad doing nothing. So it is going to be a hard process. Recently we found that we were always grouchy and irritable. I realized that it was because of the chores. He wouldn't do them, so I would have to ask multiple times, making me grouchy, and making him grouchy. So I am working on not asking him so much, and he is working on doing them when they need done. (He actually did all the dishes in the sink yesterday!)
Kind of a spin off of the chore thing. Some peole don't think that sharing the chores is a big deal, but it leads into bigger things. Like raising children. I don't want to feel like I am raising our kids by myself, so this leads up to helping in all aspects of our life. If he thinks that I am going to raise our kids and then have the house spotless and dinner on the table when he gets home, he has another thing coming!
And yes, I have told him this, so it won't be a surprise! 
If you're at home more, it seems fair that you would do more of the housework, though that doesn't mean he should get to come home and kick his feet up w/ a beer each day.
If everyone picks up after themselves, it makes other chores so much easier. It's hard to get motivated to dust when you have to pick up two days' worth of junk mail and dirty drinking cups up off of the end tables.
I often blow up at my very wonderful H when he doesn't pick up after himself. But I really do try and keep it in perspective. We work and commute an insane amount of time every week. But I'm more OCD about certain things than he is -- and he takes garbage out, shovels/mows the lawn, and laundry. (We have a cleaning service who does all deep cleaning.) So if I have to throw away his gum wrappers and put his dishes in the dishwasher, generally I'm ok with it.
What annoys me to death is when he leaves piles of junk I don't know what to do with. Like his mail, receipts, hats, etc. When I tell him to take care of it, he just moves it somewhere else. Ugh I could kill him when he does that.
74 books read in 2011
We try to think of what's fair.
If I make dinner, he does the dishes. If one of us goes into the kitchen and needs something out of the dishwasher (when it's clean) we take the time to empty it. Unless of course, we're in a rush and running out the door to work. When the trash can is full and it's trash pickup day, whoever notices takes it out. We do our own laundry, but always ask the other person if they have anything to throw in if there's room. Lastly, I clean the bathroom and he vacuums.
I nag him sometimes about the house needing to be vacuumed, the same way he nags me about the bathroom mirror needing to be cleaned. We also nag each other when someone forgets to empty the dryer and we need to put our clothes in.
All the nagging is in good fun though and it keeps us on top of things. We've lived together for over two years and this seems to be the way things are and hopefully they will stay that way. There are times when we're more productive than others, but as a whole, we split everything pretty evenly.
We both work hard at our jobs, and we work hard as a team to keep our home looking nice. Although he works more, it's not unfair of you to ask for him to pitch in from time to time.
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