Sharing House Chores
 

I think for most couples, what sometimes becomes a bit of a contention point, is the sharing of household chores.

How do you share or have you shared your household chores? Was it ever a problem? How did you work the problem out?

I'm sure there's lots of interesting stories here. I only ask because so many of my girl friends complain that their boyfriends/husbands don't help as much as they'd like around the house, sometimes being total slackers. I imagine the opposite may also happen. And I'm sure some guys pull their own weight too.

In my own experience, having only ever lived with one guy so far, I have to say it was something that often would cause silly arguments. To me, it seemed like the further in time the relationship progressed, the less he was concerned with doing anything around the house. That would mean that, where I would get home late and still have to make dinner plus my chores plus any chores he hadn't done (that had to be done, like clean the cat litter, or feed the cats), he would lounge around and never say a word of thanks.

In a way I think men that behave this way are taking advantage of their woman, blatantly. They know they should have done the chores, that were equally shared out, but they choose not to, and to just take the bitching instead - hey as long as it gets done!

Right now I tell myself I don't want to enter into another relationship like that. Minor tiffs over chores, sure, but daily battles, no thanks.

I have a friend who has stopped cleaning at all to see if her guy gets the hint. She tells me she'd argue with him about him not helping her clean (which would invariably force her to use one of her 2 days off to clean the house from top to bottom every week), and he'd refute it by saying that he dusted. Yeah, in the living room, while watching TV. Same for vacuuming. Also, since she won't do his ironing, he takes it to his mom. Now that's just wrong!

If both people are working full time, chores should be shared as equally as possible.

So, how do you share the house chores?

It's definitely up there on the list of things that cause problems. Money, sex, and the TeeVee remote are at the top of that list.

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I've been both the all-doing and the slacker in relationships. I think the biggest part of it is just picking who does what and sticking with it.

Also, there are different levels of comfort regarding chores. I don't go to sleep at night if I have more than a glass in the sink. I also have a hard time relaxing when there is shirt strewn on the floor. I use bags for my laundry. No piles. Shoes must be paired up. Some people? They're friggin' slobtacular.

State it up front and call 'em out on it when they don't do it. One my biggest peeves when I was married was bathroom neatness... don't leave bottles and towels and shit all over the counter and toilet lid and floor like magic mushrooms growing in the dark. I did dress-right-dress with bottles every evening.
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Also: Men only dust when that gray blanket appears on top of the TeeVee.

And I've been in relationships where the girl is doing the man-bashing role reversal thing. "You should do the dishes. My mother did dishes her whole life."

Please, let's avoid sex bashing and stick to humans doing chores. We're all "equal" here, right? Except for tits and feelings and who's a sellout.

Yeah, the whole 'men are lazy pigs' subtext is a bit uncalled for.

When Magpie and I moved in together we decided up front who'd be responsible for what. It's not hard and fast, but the general rule was that I'd handle cooking, laundry, cat related chores and cleaning the bathroom, while she'd do.. pretty much the rest of it. It's not a big apartment.

Right now I actually handle more of the chores. I've been cleaning the kitchen most nights and doing the sweeping/vacuuming/mopping on top of my regular stuff. Then again, I'm not working right now and she is, so I really don't mind. Once I'm in school it'll change again.

I'm supposed to be the one that vacuums weekly. That...doesn't always get done and when it does it's usually after some to a lot of nagging.

I hate chores.

We pretty much trade off or otherwise just do what needs done. The only thing that really falls on one person is the yard. We have a big honkin' yard and it takes the better part of a Sunday to do it and I get those honors.

She prefers to do the laundry. I'm allowed to do towels, jeans and anything that she doesn't give two shits about being sorted.

Years ago there was a fight or three over me not doing my share. Truth is maybe I didn't, but we were young struggling parents and likely would have fought over anything. May have well been something everyone else bickers over.

im pretty traditional...male does the outside chores females do the inside chores....

with that being said i clean up after myself...if i cook something i clean up after myself...if i fill the dishwasher i start it up...ect...

I just want to point out that the 'men are lazy pigs' subtext you are apparently reading off of my OP is not intended. It's only my general experience and what I could offer from my own view point. I was kind of expecting that backlash though, because I can't really offer much from a man's point of view.

I also did mention that I am aware it can be reversed and I know many guys who tell me they are the fastidious neat one.

Hell, I'm very messy myself. I like clean and tidy, but I'm not the best at enforcing it. To give you a little insight, my ex used to complain that I wouldn't vacuum often enough since he liked to walk around the house barefoot and hated getting dust on his feet. Sometimes he'd pick up the vaccum in a fury and huff around the house doing it. My bad.

I posted this topic mainly because a lot of girls I know complain about their guys not helping. There really is no subtext, just my experience. I hope more of you will post, I am curious to hear more on how people resolve little issues like this.

Basically, she cooks and does half the dishes - I do everything else.

This is how we roll. I pick up the slack when my SO is busy, and vice-versa. He works 40 hours a week. I do not. Works for us.

Now that we no longer have any roommates, it makes things a lot easier. Besides, there are some chores I would prefer he not do, like cleaning a bathroom. He is the kind of person who will start cleaning and then get distracted by something else; for instance, last week we had to clean up before some company arrived, and he decided that he needed to snake the drain of our bathroom sink after he had started cleaning it up. He spent a good hour fucking around with the sink, and I ended up having to clean the toilet and everything else in the bathroom. It really shouldn't take that long.

She cooks inside, I grill.
I mow the lawn, she tells me when it needs done.
I do the laundry (because she has basementphobia), she does the dishes.
We both clean when it needs done. The dog leaves hair EVERYWHERE so we have to vacuum about once a week and neither of us mind doing it, so it's a matter of whoever notices it needs done first.

Apart from possibly one year in college when I had my own room in a student hall, I've never really lived on my own - I've always had housemates. Pretty much every place I've lived in has had some issue or other about sharing of housework, apart from one where we all chipped in and got a cleaner in once a week. That was the best idea anyone ever had.

I haven't yet lived with a woman so I haven't had those issues affect a relationship just yet, but I'd like to think I'd pull my weight. Most of the time so far I've found that I want the place cleaner and tidier than my housemates, but everyone has different expectations.

My ex didn't clean for shit. Her excuse was that she cleaned a lot at work so she never felt like doing it at home.

So I pretty much did everything. She would maybe help me with the dishes... if I bitched enough.

The norm for us is

Dave does all the laundry, cleans the bathrooms and takes care of the floors, takes out the garbage, dusts

I cook and change sheets

we do have times where that switches :) he does cook and change sheets to surprise me and I do his stuff to surprise him

Neither of us are neat freaks so we dont clean on a "schedule" and I admit to being the messier of the two of us

We share things like emptying the dishwasher

There really aren't outside chores, we have a lawn service

I do all the chores.

So this might not be very constructive, but the word "chore" send shivers down my spine. Nothing about sharing various activities around the house, but the moment I hear "chore" I need to go outside, take a break and chill out.

I:
yard work (cutting, weeding, she does the flowers)
grill most nights, we are bbq folks
kill all intruders, bugs and scary things
house hold repairs
odd laundry
25% of the bathroom cleaning

She:
puts up with my shit. no more needed

we split the dishes duty, whoever cooks the other washes the dishes. she does most of the grocery shopping, I'll go 50% of the time. we split all the bills. she makes the bed i don't do it right or is that fail to learn correctly? either way i win lol.


/not sure why i am using percentages, looks like i used them in 20% of my sentences...

answer to your question is within your post! heh

It does seem like people argue over who is doing more, or at least who should be doing more (I work longer hours than you, yadda yadda).

I think for many of us in the younger crowd, the problem is we are coming from a generation where our parents didn't teach us to do many things (that at least, in the past, young girls were taught to do by their mothers), and many parents do everything for us. My mom to this day is always wanting to do things for me, though I stop her a lot of the time. Luckily she did teach me a few things so that makes it so that I am alright at chores, and not a total slob.

Another part of it is also mindset. Those people who feel everything has to be neat all the time are more likely to pick up the slack and do things.

All I know is that if I have kids I will try and teach them to do several things that no-one ever taught me to do, and more importantly, enjoy as part of regular activities (take ironing), because it will better prepare them to harmoniously share a home with a SO.

We are pretty traditional about things. Mostly because I enjoy cleaning, cooking, baking etc. Some because I'm anal about cleaning and don't want him doing it. Don't touch the dishes, don't touch the furniture oil, don't touch the vacuum. Don't. Touch. Anything.

Also I don't work outside the house, so home care is pretty much my job. We share the yard work because I enjoy that too. Weedwackers (gas) are rather heavy and a good arm workout!

We've never had a problem, but I'm sure that's the exception.

I actually learned to do most household chores from my parents. We lived (and they still live) in a large farmhouse, and without everyone pitching in, jobs piled up very quickly. I was expected to vacuum, dust/polish furniture, sweep and wash the kitchen floor, and do all of the ironing every weekend once I was of an age to do it safely on my own. I also had to help wash the dishes during the week and clean the counter tops and whatnot.

I enjoyed spending time with my mom, so I'd help her in the kitchen a lot (with cooking, cleaning, etc.) and she taught me the importance of keeping things CLEAN, not just tidy.

The thing I have noticed from living with partners (even just part-time, like on weekends) is that men are very often TIDY but not CLEAN. They will put items away and/or stack them neatly.. but not clean the surface they were sitting on. One college boyfriend didn't buy a vacuum for his apartment because he didn't see the need for it (!!). While I might be untidy (leaving clothes draped on furniture, papers all over my desk), at least the surfaces are free of dust and ickiness and the carpets and floors get cleaned!

My SO does this. He will tidy the kitchen, but not actually clean it; for example, he will put the stuff on the counter away but not wipe the countertop down. This is why I clean the kitchen :)

This is a good perspective because sometimes it not just who does it, but why they do it.

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...

Things I do pretty much every time:

• Dishes (we have no dishwashing machine)
• Garbage/recycling
• Vacuuming/mopping
• Cat litter (and a good portion of the dog walking/picking up poo)

Things I would like to do more of (I do these only occasionally):

• Cooking (our kitchen sucks)
• Laundry (we don't have our own laundry machines)
• General cleaning (yeah, I'm lazy, but when I clean...I clean)
• Grocery shopping

If I want our place to be where I think it should be, I'd have to do more myself.

Am I doing my share?

Just an aside on dishwashers -- our family had one when I was younger, and to this day I don't see how they cut down on the amount of work being done significantly. By the time you load them all in, add the detergent, etc, it's not that much more effort to wipe each one down with a cloth and be done with it. The dishwasher can't handle heavily soiled dishes like pots and pans anyway, so you still have to run a sink and scrub them. Why not wash them all by hand and be done with it?

Growing up, we were all expected to pitch in. We had a rotating list of chores that needed to be done every week, and so we'd take turns vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathroom and so on. We also switched off on doing the dishes nightly, and us children were doing our own laundry by the time we were teenagers. I didn't particularly enjoy these things at the time, but it did stand me in good stead as an adult.

Magpie had a roommate in college whose mother did everything for her when she was young, even cleaning her bedroom for her. Magpie tells horror stories about that girl involving things like week-old dishes. I feel bad for her, since she's clearly never learned to take care of herself. Eventually she's going to end up on her own with nobody to do it, and will most likely live in filth.

And to expand on my above post, Magpie gets out of cooking for the same reason thirdsun does. The girl once burned minute rice in the microwave. And not just burned as in blackened, but burned as in set on fire. To this day I don't know how she managed it.

So I cook. She did the dishes and cleaned up when I was working, and now that I'm not I take on that too. Honestly, it can get a little tiresome, but then again so can an eight hour shift.

I instituted this change myself, because it didn't seem fair to expect her to come home from work and then clean up after me. She was actually against it initially, but accepted it before too long.

She helps me out with the laundry occasionally, and that's pretty much as far as my expectations of her go at this point. I am thoroughly domesticated.

I do outside work. IE: shovel, trash, mow, lawn work. I move things, I do all heavy lifting of anything. I help clean the house. I iron our clothes.

she cleans the house on Sundays all day. I assist where I can, since I work on Sundays. Though I do clean up after myself all the time.

I am off 3 days a week, so I cook those days off. she cooks the rest of the days.

I pay for the food but she does the shopping for it.

As a former commercial dishwasher, trust me: a dishwasher helps immensely if you know how to use it. And there are models that can handle pots and pans.