Me 28F, him 32M. We both work 40 hours/week, no kids. I clean the bathroom weekly (scrub toilet, clean sink and counter, mirror, mop floor, shower cleaned every other week), clean the kitchen weekly (sanitize counters, clean stove top, vacuum and mop), and vacuum and dust the bedroom and living room weekly. He’ll MAYBE help with this once a month if I ask him, but I don’t like to ask him because he’ll leave things half done (for example, he won’t vacuum the landing of the stairs/entry to the house because as he says “there’s no point, it’s a landing” but this mean dirt gets tracked everywhere else more quickly; or he wont clean the base of the toilet that is covered in pee because he says “I didn’t see it, and no one else will.”) I do 75% of the laundry (clothes every few days, floor and bath mats once a week, change bedding once or twice a week as our dog sleeps in the bed). He does help fold and put away clothes if I ask him. Sometimes I’ll ask him to fold and put away clothes right away because I hate it sitting around all day and I like the house in order before I relax or work on other things. He likes to do it on his own schedule and gets mad if I ask him to do it immediately (usually playing video games when I ask him). We both cook and do dishes about the same amount but I like to make healthier things spend more time meal planning and getting groceries.
Today after I had cleaned the whole house on Saturday I asked him to empty the dishwasher. He was doing this but as I was walking into the kitchen to get a snack, I notice he was putting away a pot that had drops of water in it (like several dozen drops, not one or two). I got frustrated and asked him why not take a towel and dry it like I’ve asked him to do many times. He says sorry and drys it. The next item he pulls out is a wet silicone mat we set our dogs food bowl on. He immediately turns to put it on the ground and I yell asking why isn’t he drying it. He says the water is going underneath the mat on the floor so it doesn’t matter. I tell him he is dripping water as he carries
Which is going to make the floor dirty faster. He says the dog is dripping water too (I had just given her a bath). I told him I dried her as best as I could but I can’t make her 100% dry and this a doesn’t mean he can’t dry the dishes. He says I have impossible cleaning standards.
It’s been like this for 8 years. He’s otherwise a good guy but this is wearing on me. Can this get better? What am I missing?
20 comments
You two just have different household cleanliness standards. Doesn’t seem like he is a slob. Just you are very clean. Not sure how to fix this, just how you both are. Been like this almost a decade.
Cleaning is women’s work
Can you divide household responsibilities with him? My wife also has very high cleanliness standards and I feel like I just can’t dedicate that much of my life to trying to meet them. Instead, I’ve assumed some of the other weekly responsibilities such as grocery shopping, taking out the garbages, pulling weeds, washing the cars, etc.
Have you tried sitting him down and explaining *why* things need to be cleaned properly?
Urine needs to be cleaned off of toilets not because someone might see it and judge you, but because it erodes the enamel. If he doesn’t clean it, the toilet will be ruined and need to be replaced. That is expensive.
The landing needs to be vacuumed to prevent dirt being tracked into the rest of the house. Dirt ruins carpets. Ruined carpets need replacing. That is expensive.
Dust eats away at paint. Dusting prevents damage to the paintwork, so you don’t have to repaint – which is expensive.
Putting wet mats on the floor results in mould. Mould is unhealthy, and can make you and your pets sick. Not to mention, once it’s worked its way into the grouting of your tiles, you’re *done*. You need to re-grout.
Point out that you’ve been carrying the entire load of preserving your home and possessions. Ask him to step up.
Get a maid to come in once a week for the heavy routine stuff (wash floors, vacuum, scrub bathrooms, etc) You both are employed, you can afford 4 hours of maid service.
STOP browbeating him about water drops. They are clean water so you are just being OCD about those.
DO continue asking for help folding laundry, but your reason for doing it right now (“because I prefer it”) is a bad one. Again, a little controlling and OCD.
I don’t find your standards impossible, but you are fussy about things he does that are different than you would prefer. This is irritating to other people. Watch it.
I enjoy cleanliness too but this schedule is very exhausting to keep up with if I was presented this and expected to follow. I can’t imagine changing whole bedding twice a week lol I also don’t have luxury of having my own washer and dryer so it’s a lot more work.
You have expectations for him to do everything exactly how you would expect it done. You have to compromise a bit on those standards and also let yourself relax a little bit..
I can understand and sympathize with your strong feelings of wanting things done how I would or judge someone a bit lol but I realize that’s a me problem and a control problem. When I think about it as a puzzle of how can fit together best. Right now you have a very one sided approach to how the household should be run. Did you live together awhile before getting married and thought maybe things will change? That’s never fair to expect of someone
I would start by discussing what chores he dislikes least and working towards him doing that regularly because him showing effort in house work would mean a lot to you
This means you need to let go of your standards and let him complete the chore how he would and you do your chores how you would regularly. It’s all about some compromise.
Most of your standards are not too high, but I think you’re starting to get nitpicky (e.g. the dogs Marv had some water on it) out of frustration (understandably). Personally I think you’re doing laundry and dusting too often, but that’s just me.
You need to stop enabling him by doing all of the work yourself. Sit down together and figure out what chores have to be done and how frequently. Include things like shopping and cooking. You may need to compromise a bit on how frequently you think things need to be done, but it’s better to do that and have him on board than for him to feel like you’re dictating everything.
Figure out a way to split this chores up. For my husband and I, we split the chores into two sections and swap each week for which section we do. For example one week he will do the shopping, cooking, and cleaning the kitchen while I do the laundry vacuuming and bathrooms. Then the next week we will swap. This works well for us because the person doing the cooking has to plan for it by shopping, and they can be as messy as they want when cooking because they’re the one that has to clean it up. We don’t always stick to it, if someone is busy it stressed we help the other out. So it’s good to maintain a bit of flexibility. But the biggest thing I’ve noticed is it takes away the burden of being the “manager” all the time. I don’t have to plan everything and then delegate, instead half the time it’s on him to plan what we eat and when.
That approach may or may not work for you, but whatever approach you do take, the first step has to be to have a shared understanding of what jobs are required and when.
You share the cost to get a cleaner to do the weekly jobs and stop arguing about it.
From a practical perspective it seems like you’re very much a micro manager. And one of the downsides of that is that you will make others feel like they are lacking in autonomy.
As to how you might go about fixing your problems, I think you’ve somewhat stumbled into some of the solution. Take the folding clothes example, it is not the case that he absolutely refuses to fold the clothes. What bothers you is that it isn’t done immediately, and when you don’t insist on it being done immediately, it gets done. The solution is to have the clothes in the dryer well before you expect the clothes to be folded and put away. You give him just a little autonomy of when he wants to get the task done, and you can enforce the task being done by a certain time. It takes a very minor change on your part to have no complaints from him when doing it.
Take the dish washer incident as another example. The problem isn’t that he’s not doing the chore, it’s that you are exhibiting a need to control how the chore is completed. Now how can you change the situation just a bit so that he completes the process without being overly managed? Try Setting out a towel that exists right over the dish washer. If the towel is on the handle, then he’s not having to go search for it to dry things that aren’t completely dry. With it being so close to him, the likelihood of him drying off less than dry items increases significantly.
Again, for my sake, I would find you difficult to deal with as well. Not because of your cleaning “standards”, but because of how little autonomy you afford to anyone trying to meet your standards. Little adjustments on your end though, and even if the same standards are there, the amount of autonomy increases and thus is less likely to provoke arguments.
I’ve been in relationships before where my partner was very critical of my cleaning. Yelling or being upset about it just made me want to help less. If me trying to help is going to get me berated, then why bother? What did help was being told that it made them happy. She told me that it was some emotional baggage from when she was young. I can understand that. It’s not worth arguing that his way is bad (maybe it DOESN’T matter if the mat is wet depending on the mat and where it’s going). Letting him know it makes you happy and then telling him you appreciate what he did when he does something well may be more useful.
Also, pick your battles. Does he do ok on something like vacuuming? Maybe he washes dishes and you can dry them or empty the washing machine. He can’t possibly be wrong all the time.
He is not going to change
You have normal cleaning standards, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t normal too. Honestly, he might be a clean person who just isn’t as clean as you- it’s hard to tell. The truth is that no, there is absolutely nothing you can do to make him change except show him what it is like if you don’t clean for him, and then that only works if he isn’t ok with living like that.
One thing for sure is, you CANNOT do his chores for him. You will resent him and wind up hating him over it. Accept a messier house or accept living with him will drive you mad. It will also likely get worse, not better, as time goes on.
Your cleanliness regime does seem a tad stringent for two adults and a pet. I’ve seen worse, but the amount you’re doing still adds a lot of extra cleaning burden. Most of what your doing could easily be reduced to once a quarter for a deep clean with some light spot cleaning in between. Cleaning isn’t an all or nothing activity. You don’t have to do a heavy duty deep clean every week.
That landing, for instance, sees much less traffic than the rest of the house. Plus, most dirt tracked in from the outside only makes it so far from the door. It makes no sense to vacuum a landing at the same rate you vacuum much more trafficked areas like by the entryways.
Dish drying is a bit extreme to the point that you sound like you have OCD. They will air dry just fine. A quick wipe to clear water spots if you’re serving company is all they need. It is just as safe as drinking your tap water. Mold will only creep in where the water gets trapped and sits without being able to evaporate. So long as the humidity in your home is low, mold will have a hard time growing. Most air conditioning will keep humidity low.
That isn’t to say that one should *never* do a deep clean. But doing so too frequently causes more wear and tear on the house and your free time than necessary. You may want to seriously look into what experts suggest for house cleaning schedules.
Here’s the thing:
If he makes a mess, he should clean it up. He is not automatically cleaning up his messes, to the point where you have to remind him. Further complicating matters, he tried to ignore messes he’s made as if they never happened.
He has very little possibility for change, considering he’s been like this for 8 years. What you are expecting is normal. You need to ask yourself whether you can continue to live with someone who is lazy, among other issues.
>I yell asking why isn’t he drying it.
>I yell
T O X I C
I think lots of men try and do ON PURPOSE a bad job, thinking, she’ll get fed up and do it herself. Just because his mum did everything for him, you shouldn’t be tolerating an adult behaving like a child. You both work full time, you both live in this household, you both should contribute. I would sit down with him with a list of every job that needs to be done in the house during the week and divide the jobs. Put the list somewhere visible and tick off your jobs as you do them, so it’s visible for both of you if someone isn’t contributing. And I strongly advise to sort out this situation before kids come along. I didn’t and it was an uphill struggle to change this thinking that it’s a woman’s job to look after kids and a house. I still do more around the house, but I work part time, so I obviously accomodate that. But I definitely trained the child out of my husband, it was an uphill battle, but it can be done, we don’t live in 1950’s anymore!
Why has he to adjust to your standards? Shouldn’t there be compromises in a partnership?
He is purposely doing a bad job to get out of doing it in the future.
Edit: I read you do bedding twice a week??? That seems like a lot. We have a dog sleep in the bed and we just have a light blanket ontop of the comforter he sleeps on. Easy to throw in the washer once a week. Comforter gets cleaned once a month (since there are layers of blankets between our bodies and the dogs bodies), pillow case weekly, flat and fitted sheets weekly.. all bedding fits in one load when it’s not the week to do the comforter. Less laundry the better. Don’t do the bath mats so much either.. once a month!
Sounds like my fiancé!! Minus the dusting. We both hate that 😂
vacuuming and bathrooms are a weekly chores, moping is done weekly during muddy seasons or just once a month when it’s winter.
For the clothes issue I’ve resolved this by buying an extra laundry basket. I fold my shit and throw his clothes in the closet in the basket. He doesn’t care if they’re folded and it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do it. So this is my compromise to keep things looking tidy. It’s his reputation with the wrinkled shirts at work not mine 🤪
He does cook more than me (thank god) but is awful at cleaning up after himself, counters, stove top, etc. I bitch him out and he does the cleaning for a week before going back to the good old ways. So he can cook for the rest of my life and the day he cooks and cleans up after himself will be the day I start cooking equally again being the clean up crew 🙃 He will also put away wet dishes.
They are doppelgangers.
I like our home to be very clean and organized and want things done certain ways. Honestly I just do it all myself because I’m the only one doing it to my standards, I know that how I want things cleaned can be ridiculous so I just take care of it. I’d say if your getting upset with him over drops of water from the dishwasher then maybe you should be doing those chores, he’s trying so I wouldn’t call him out on that