How much housework does your OH do?

margaretclare

He cooks. And he does his own ironing. Not a problem. I'm happy putting the washing through and putting it on the line, he's happy ironing his own stuff.

honey9

Mine does quite a lot - in fact he's tidier than I am! I do do the dusting and hoovering but he tends to do a lot of the rest of it - cleaning kitchen, bathroom etc. and general tidying and watering the plants. I do the cooking, shopping, changing bedlinen and putting away clothes, and sorting out bill payments. We share laundry, ironing, putting out rubbish and recycling, and the washing up! We both work so really we have to split/share the chores or they'd never get done.

ilovecheese

We both work full time, and no children.

I do the cleaning, most of the washing, we never iron (I buy clothes that I can wash, fold or hang up then wear!)

My hubby does the food shopping, all the cooking, looks after the car and the garden.

He never sees any dirt! the floor can be covered in bits, the sink covered in marks and he just does not notice, if I ask him to hoover up and clean the bathroom he will do it willingly, normally saying "doesn't even look dirty to me"

The only thing he refuses to do is change the bedding, he just cannot get the duvet in the cover!

Becciboobah

1sttimer wrote: »

Hi, just a general question - how much housework (indoors & outdoors) does your OH do? We both work FT (no children at home) but the housework generally gets left to me. I have to ask him to do anything and TBH I feel more like his parent than wife when I do this - especially when he pulls a face and makes remarks to make me know that he doesn't want to do them!

He admits that he does not notice any mess in the house (there is plenty - believe me!) and never thinks of washing any clothes/dishes or tidying stuff away. If I wash something, unless I have specifically asked him to hang them out, he will leave them in the machine all day. He makes 1 meal a week and rarely plans what we're having till it's time to eat then uses what ever I have in the fridge/freezer (that I've planned meals for) and then leaves the table/work top in a mess.

This is just one example of what he is like and it brought it home to me how little he does. He was having a bath Saturday afternoon and I had gone out shopping and forgot to ask him to clean the bathroom out afterwards. When I told him this, he said 'Well thanks for that - I'm glad you forgot'. I let him know on no uncertain terms that that wasn't what he should have said! I asked him how much he actually did in the house - and an inevitable argument occurred! Then on Sunday morning whilst I was at church, he vac'd the house out - except I had already done it all on Friday evening - but still didn't clean the bathroom! He thought it was because I didn't like doing it, and he said he didn't want to do it either! It was because I was busy!

I don't want to sound like a nagging wife, but need to sort it out to make it fairer - so how do you share it all out? I've tried to do this in the past - but he often 'forgets' to do it and when there's a pile to do, I will eventually do it to get it done! I don't really want to go back in time and do a wall chart like the children had as we are fully functioning adults (supposedly!) but would like to have some plan of action.

Thanks for your input.

If you weren't so far away from us, I'd be convinced your and my OH were the same person

SugarSpun

I:

administrate the credit card/UK bank accounts
find discounts and buy stuff we need
look after the baby while working from home 3-4 days a week
do the laundry
do most of the dishes
put stuff away
vacuum
clean the bathroom/toilet
clean the kitchen counters
dust as and when it needs it
organise our social life

He:

does the grocery shopping
takes care of all the foreign-language paperwork/bureaucracy (we live outside the UK)
does all the cooking
1-2 days a week working from home with the baby
does the few bits of ironing we have
takes out rubbish/recycling as and when
does household repairs
cleans/tidies things when he notices they need doing and it's convenient for him to do them

It looks as though I'll be a SAHM at least for a while once my current contract ends, so I expect some of the things currently on his list will migrate over to mine. But for the moment it's reasonably even and while I get annoyed that his tolerance level is so much higher than mine so he doesn't notice when things need doing very often we work it out fairly well.

I made a massive list of all the things that need to be done in our flat today and shared it with him on Google Docs. I'm hoping a fair few of them get done soon