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I'm a man who does more than his share of the household chores. She is getting a bit better about it lately, and I've been learning to let go.
She wants things to be clean and wants things to be put away. There are times when she'll get in a cleaning mood and start straightening around the house. Which usually involves picking some stuff up and putting somewhere else for me to have clean up later. As two female posters noted earlier in the thread about men being neat not clean.. the same applies to my wife. She picks things up around the living areas and moves dishes to the sink in the kitchen. But she'll often stop there, so the counters are cleared, but there is a pile of dishes so high out of the sink that I can't turn on the faucet. And her neatening of the living areas almost invariably overlooks 'her' mess in favor of 'my' mess. I chalk these differences up to having been raised in very different environments. Just another example of how our upbringing shapes our adult behavior.
I grew up raised by my mom in a single parent household. She was a manic, and I mean MANIC!, cleaner. I learned how to clean every inch of a house, and how to do it thoroughly. I also lived on my own during college and before getting married. My wife never did. She lived at home while going to college and never got the chance to move on her own. So she never really had to divide up household chores until she moved in with me after we were married.
The thing is, I don't really mind doing more of the chores in the house, even though she is a stay at home mom. Or I wouldn't mind, if I ever got any praise for it. The lack of acknowledgment of my hard work sometimes does just make me throw up my hands and give up. Not that I need validation of what I put into making our house clean and livable, but praise can go a long way to making the other person feel that what they are doing is being noticed and appreciated.
I guess my response to this thread has devolved a bit towards my own relationship issues...
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