The division of household labour

I am wondering how you divide the domestic tasks in your household, whether you're married, cohabiting or even house-sharing with friends/strangers.

This is a No Judgement thread (this being the TFP, that's surely already inherent). I will not be giving you the side-eye for not putting that plate in the dishwasher!

There's plenty of academic work and popular media stuff out there on the subject but I'm not sure I want to muddy the waters by posting stats and conclusions here (additionally, much of it seems to focus on the divisions along heteronormative lines in marriage-like scenarios and I think that might risk excluding people from the topic and sending it down a too-specific path). I think I want this to really just be about you and how you're getting things done at home, and what could be worse and what could be better.

This isn't a survey but here are some questions I thought might loosely guide the discussion; I don't insist you answer them all, and you also needn't limit yourself to them:

Who's doing what in your household?
Are tasks divided in accordance to your strengths/weaknesses, or more arbitrarily?
Do you find the split fair for you both/all? (if you feel like a bit of self-analysis)
How would you prefer things to be?

Of course, the composition of people's households will vary (workers vs non workers, babies/children, multi-generational homes, etc) so feel free to share as much or as little as you're comfortable with.

And if you live alone, how the heck do you manage everything yourself?

(I'll need a little time to put together a breakdown of my own situation but in the meantime I just want to get the ball rolling.)

 

I also meant to say: go easy on me, it's my first thread!


Background: I am in the peculiar situation of having been married to my husband somewhat longer than we have been cohabiting. So we're at 20 months of marriage but only a little shy of five months of living together. No doubt there is still plenty of time for everything to change drastically, especially if children are added to the mix. I've been at home these last few months (and he is therefore covering the household costs) but that will be changing from next week, so I expect things might settle into something a little different.

At my insistence, we agreed the rough division of labour before I moved in and things have largely been consistent with that, albeit with small tweaks.

Cooking: I do all of it and I enjoy it. For us, this really just means the evening meal. For snacks and other meals, we handle our own but I'll prepare something for us both if we're having the same thing at the same time.

Cleaning: Before I arrived, my husband already had a cleaner coming every two weeks to do some of the more time-consuming tasks (mopping/vacuuming, dusting, bathroom duties, more intensive kitchen cleaning). Of course, things need touching up, the main example I can think of being the kitchen, and it usually falls on me since I'm usually the one messing it. The cleaner has the unenviable task of vacuuming cat hair out of the rug (I tried it once, never again) but my husband will periodically try to get some out if it's becoming visibly bad.

Tidying: I consider this a separate thing from cleaning, and includes loading and unloading the dishwasher. I am atrociously untidy, so most tidying and neatness comes from my husband (and boy does he nag). We try to load the dishwasher as we use things but I am more prone to let dishes linger before putting them in. Unloading is shared but I would let it wait a little longer than he would.

Laundry: The initial agreement was that I would do all of the laundry, which I don't really mind. In practice, we tend to just handle our own. but I'll often fold/sort his while sorting my own. I expect when I'm on a similar schedule to him, our laundry will be more of a combined task that I handle completely.

Lawn-mowing: I am not getting involved.

Snow-shovelling: I swore I would not be getting involved but then I ended up getting involved. My efforts are limited most of the time to keeping the front stairs clear, but I've also been out there with my husband after bigger blizzards (such as today's) to help get the driveway under control. For future winters I think we'll have one of those guys with a plough/truck that you pay to handle your driveway. I'll continue to stay on top of the stairs since I've realised this isn't really that bad. So that's a small win for my husband.


So far I am pretty satisfied with how the chores have been split between us. I might have sounded like a bit of a 'harpy' insisting that we figure it out before I arrived but I think it has paid off because the chores haven't proven to be a source of contention (well, except my awful untidiness). I think in our situation until now I probably could have been doing a bit more with all of my free time, but I also wouldn't want to set any precedents since I didn't expect to be staying at home forever.

I am not sure we can have children as my husband would likely have an emotional breakdown over the mess they maintain at all times. He already has one, really, albeit one who cooks for him and pairs his socks.


This post ended up a lot longer than I intended. I'm not expecting anybody to be as detailed as this, I just kept writing things and feeling like I wanted to qualify them.

 

Well done on figuring things out before hand. and may I say, your description of your own siuation sounds like you have been taking inventory and concluding "Good". Well done!

When I was married, I worked at home ... office upstairs. Therefore I did all the household chores except the gardening, which she liked doing, and I felt no connection. Cooking .. during the week, mostly me. Weekends, the two of us would work in the kitchen together. Clothes .. each washed our own ... both had exacting criteria.

Now I am alone, it is not that difficult, because I get to live in the condition that I can put up with. Also, my routine is not trying to fit or fit around someone else. doing my own chores, cooking and cleaning up after me has always been a natural 'thing' for me since I was about sixteen. Honesty insists I disclose that when guest are coming, then I am ninety minutes' intense work away from the place being ready for them to enter. To my credit, the place is never MORE than ninety minutes away from being ready.

 

Before starting back to school, I did almost all of the housework. I live with two of my daughters. One of whom is 25 (we share all of the expenses...well, most of them) and the other who is 13.

Getting my older daughter to clean anything other than her room and her laundry can be a pain in the ass and it has been a source of frustration between us at times. She is, after all, living with her mother (which helps me while I am getting through school, you know, and I appreciate that) so I have tried not to be a total pain in the ass about it. If I ask her directly to do something, it will usually get done...otherwise, um, no. It is what it is. She works full time, she pays her bills, she walks my dog for me when I'm not here - so for the most part I let her slide. I love her and by my estimation it's not worth it to disrupt the amity between us. I pick my battles.

Since going back to school, though, I have had far less time to clean and it shows. The vacuuming needs to be done, my bathroom is a mess (although I do keep the toilet clean, 'cause I have some standards) there's always shit piled up all over the place (books, papers, clothes...more papers, more books). The good news is, my other daughter, the 13-year-old, has really stepped it up and she does a lot of cleaning around the house. She does all of the dishes, she cleans the litter boxes, she keeps the living room picked up and, occasionally, she will break out the vacuum...even though she hates it. If neither I nor my older daughter is here, she will also walk the dog and feed him. She is also in charge of feeding the cats. I still do all of the laundry because I am particular about the clothes...particularly my school uniforms because they were expensive.

So that's pretty much how it works around here. I would characterize it as low-level chaos.

 

In general my wife does the inside and I do the outside. But I do the grocery shopping and cook every once in a while, more in the summer when I grill out quite often. My son and his wife are living with us temporarily so the balance of things have been slightly skewed, more help on inside tasks but so for non additional on the outside tasks.

Even though Avestruz won't post studies, I will. Here's a surprising one.
Husbands who do housework may have less sex, study says

 

Oh, and cooking. When there is cooking done, I usually do it, but it's a rare occurrence. We usually eat out or bring in which is expensive and, because I am trying to eat healthy, challenging. We live in an apartment so there are no outside tasks.

I also forgot to mention that my younger daughter also takes the trash down to the dumpster. Sometimes I'll walk in the house after a long day at school and everything will be done and she'll be sitting there reading a book or looking at the internet and you can tell how proud of herself she is and it makes me want to squeeze her to death because I didn't have to ask her to do any of it. She's a good girl.

 

We seem to have arrived at a happy medium, where we each do the tasks we are more prone to like, and the really unpleasant crap is roughly equally divided.
I do most of the cooking and so I prefer to grocery shop as well.
We split dishes.
My wife does more child care than I do.
Lawn, snow, general outdoors is mine, but we both love to garden so that's shared and not really a chore.

I think it all works out because we are both motivated people and not prone to try to dump stuff on the other.

 

It was my time outside shovelling snow yesterday that got me thinking about it all. There was possibly a little bit of "I did not sign up for this!" but on balance, I think my situation is very good. I know, for example, I would accept my husband's help in the kitchen if cooking for a dinner party so I figure a little help could go both ways if the situation warrants it.

I wonder how it would have been if we hadn't discussed everything first. Also, some things just can't be planned for.

One thing I was adamant about not doing was cleaning out cat litter but it turns out my standards are a little higher about that (my nose seems to be much more sensitive to very subtle smells) so I guess I'm welcome to go right ahead... Taken to my own extreme preference I would be waiting ready with the scooper under the cats' asses.

We've had numerous cat puking episodes, and even one cat peeing on the couch and also wiping her ass along the floor right after defecating (this was during a UTI). I definitely didn't sign up for cleaning up piss, puke and shit, but that's how it went. A little practice for having kids, I guess.

This is a lot like how I was when living alone. Maybe it was more like 2 hours' work since there'd be a bit of clearing up before the more intense stuff could begin. I kept a perfect bathroom at all times though!

This sounds a lot like how things were when I moved back in with my mother as an adult. Well, she might have brought up my lack of effort during tiffs about other things, as a woman is wont to do , but otherwise she didn't care to make a big deal of it. I did a good amount of the cooking, we all did our own laundry, and I was right there with her for the nightmarish gardening/landscaping tasks (the garden got extremely out of hand after my father passed away). But all of the cleaning fell on her, every little bit of it.

If I moved in with another woman I wouldn't dream of putting my feet up while she did all of the cleaning! So I guess that's something like the precedent thing I mentioned, where it was like that in previous circumstances (childhood) because it made sense for it to be that way, but without renegotiating it just sort of ends up carrying on that way even if it's a bit outrageous.

I saw this on my travels through the internet while writing this thread and I considered posting it. If this thread is anything to go by, some chaps here at TFP aren't getting much at all!

 

I have two young children and a husband who is rarely home. Most housework falls on me. I don't think anyone else can live up to my high standards though.

 

I live with two adult males--spouse & son, and two little dogs that shed.
I make a weekly chores list every weekend--no one is assigned specific chores but I prefer to dry mop the wooden floors and let someone else haul around the vacuum for the carpet.

My spouse is very tidy in almost every regard (he folds my underwear--which I think is so cute). My 20-year-old son does not 'see' messes though thankfully, he keeps his contained to his bedroom (and the bathroom--whiskers seem to be every where after he shaves). Son has been assigned the daily kitchen garbage and recycling, spouse gets the smaller trash bins. We live in a condo--so no outside tasks except our deck and the immediate area beyond it where spouse must scoop poop each day. I am here working from home with both son and spouse away 7-days a week for different portions of time but leaving me all day on Sat & Sunday with the dogs--so all that goes with that.

I do not cook dinnertime meals, nor grocery shop. We always eat out or get take-out on Friday night and do something very simple on Saturday night. I do bake a couple times a week and I help clean up dishes every day. I do almost all the other shopping except in places like Home Depot, which I despise. I consult with, then purchase clothing for both men. I take care of all the household decorating like replacing linens, hanging curtains, replacing household items. Spouse and I shop together for big-ticket items.
I only online shop.

We have some really nice gardens in front and back of the house with spouse doing 95% of the work (I take care of potted plants on the deck). I take care of all the houseplants indoors--a 'chore' I really enjoy.

I am rather hyper about making sure everything is clean--I'm clutter-phobic after growing up in a dysfunctional disgusting home environment. I try to cool my jets about the less crucial stuff and get to it when I can.

The chores are pretty well divided between spouse and me and it is based on what we do well/what we can deal with. It's me however that has to crack the whip if things are getting really out of hand. Keeping pets is like keeping toddlers who never grow up--messy, messy, messy.

 

I despise Home Depot as well.

 

I do all the cooking and all the grocery shopping, and some of the kitchen cleanup (loading the dishwasher, tidying after cooking, etc.). I do around 75-85% of taking care of the dog. We split taking out the trash and recycling about 50/50, and also miscellaneous errands (dry cleaning, drug store, etc.). She does the rest of the kitchen cleanup, and sundry tidying (she is far tidier than I am, and does much of the sundry tidying simply because I cannot tidy to her satisfaction, and she also tidies as a way of sublimating anxiety when stressed). We have a cleaning woman who comes once a week, cleans the house thoroughly, and does 90% of the laundry, and we hire people to do lawn care/snow removal. Ideally, I'm supposed to be covering around 40-45% of baby care, but in practice it works out to more like 30-35%, mostly because my wife is extremely experienced with babies (she had younger sisters, a ton of cousins, and did a shitload of babysitting when she was young), and I had never even held a baby until I was 36 (only child, no cousins, rarely babysat when young, and never for a kid below elementary school age)-- but I'm working on that. She does all the household bookkeeping (I suck at financials, and keep abysmal records, but she is very orderly and good with money) and suchlike.

At the end of the day, it works out that she does more than I do. To some degree, she's cool with that. To some degree, I'm working on doing more. To some degree, it's really for the best that we hire occasional help. Thank God, she's a very forgiving woman, and also appreciates that it's not always how much one does but what one does, and how well one does it. For example, I suck at cleaning, mostly because I have very few fucks to give about tidiness; however, I am an excellent cook, and she is very much not (her mom, who taught her to cook, has a spice rack containing only salt, pepper, cinnamon, paprika, and garlic powder), and my wife tends to feel that it's worth her doing extra tidying or laundry if she is constantly being fed semi-professional-level cooking. If it ever changed for her, and became a deal-breaker, I would try even harder to learn to clean better and stuff. But so far, so good. She's very consistent about giving me feedback, letting me know if she needs me to step up a little extra on certain days or weeks, to compensate for her being extra busy or stressed from work, and I do that. Communication is key.

 

Son and I pitch in together - but he has taken a liking to gardening, so does most of that - gives him an escape from me. Because I have physical limitations, some things he does because I cant. I have poor organisational skills to be honest.
The question did make me think though. My friend and also my neighbour are both married to former Royal Navy sailors. Both of the husbands are so well trained by the military, they both do the hoovering and ironing - friends husband takes the ironing board out into the garden with an extension lead - I have never heard of women friends thinking to do that on a nice sunny day. Both husbands are tidy to a military standard. Next door cooks, and was main raiser of the children I believe (injured in Falklands war - think he was on the shiney Sheffield.) my friend cooks for her husband as she is professionaly trained and enjoys it.... although her hands are giving out now, so I suppose things will have to change in some way. Are all former sailors the same?

 

I was a slob and my wife can still be a slob, so I got her a maid once a week about 6 years ago, to take care of the big stuff like laundry and the real cleaning part. We both keep the kitchen clean and generally take care of our own stuff

She takes care of the kid stuff that the maid doesn't cover.

We both have snow duties, shes in good shape and weight lifts so she can handle her own when it comes to physical work which is a nice for both of us. She used to mow the lawn since I have an allergy issue there but we gave in and got a lawn service too. I personally hate lawns and lawn work.

So basically we bought our way out of 80% of the house work