ajrwdwgirl
Premium Member
Oh yeah, my husband leaves dishes and stuff all over the house. You don't even want to see the area next to his side of the bed. I don't touch that....that's HIS mess to clean up. I'll empty my own trash, the one in the laundry closet, and the one in the bathroom, but he has to do his own, and he usually only does it when I tell him he needs to do it because I can't get to his corner of the bed to make it anymore because of all the dishes and empty packaging there. Everyone seems to be allergic to emptying trash cans. None of them will ever get emptied until I do it. The one in the livingroom, if it's full, they'll just start throwing things on the floor next to it. And I got really frustrated a few years ago when I came home from work to find my regular sized kitchen bin replaced with a smaller bin with 3 compartments. We have to separate our trash into plastic, organic, and regular trash. When we first moved in, he didn't want to have a trash can in the kitchen at all. His parents don't have one....theirs is outside. Every time you want to throw something away, you have to go outside. If it's pouring down rain, I'm not going outside just to throw something away! So I said no way, I need a trash can in my kitchen. Well, he thought it would be handier to have the one with 3 compartments, and had they all been regular sized, it would have been, but the can is smaller than a standard trashcan, and then it has 3 compartments, each about the size of one of those little ones like you put in a bathroom or bedroom. Not much fits in those, which is fine for an area that doesn't generate much waste, but the kitchen is where 80% of the trash comes from, with food packaging, vegetable peels, papertowels from wiping up spills, etc. So the compartments would all be full after half a day, but no one would ever empty them except me. And when it was full, they'd just throw stuff on the floor next to it, so I'd have to pick all that up AND take the trash out constantly. And it sits under a counter top, and has the foot pedal to open them, which they can't open all the way while it's under the counter. It kept sliding all the way back, so every time you wanted to throw something away, you had to reach under the counter and pull it out before you could access it, and then 9 times out of 10 it was already full and I'd have to empty it before I could throw anything away. It was SO inconvenient, and I HATE that thing. I told him after a month or two that I wasn't going to use it anymore and it was his responsibility to empty it, because it was a pain, and as I wouldn't be contributing to its filling, I wasn't going to contribute to its emptying either. It got full, no one ever emptied it, and it got pushed into the back where no one can get to it, and now everyone just leaves their trash sitting wherever. I'm pretty much the only one who works in the kitchen anyway. I have to make several trips out per day to get rid of trash, but at least I don't have to mess with pulling the bin out and finding it full, etc. Finally last week, my husband admitted defeat and ordered a couple of bins like my old one, so we can still separate the trash, but have decent sized bins. My husband has a habit of thinking of things that he THINKS will be handy, but that he doesn't ever have to deal with, so he does it, and then it turns out he hasn't thought it through and it's not nearly as handy as he was thinking it would be. "We should put screens on the windows so the mosquitos can't get in!" I told him it wouldn't work....the windows open to the outside, but have a lever thingy that goes to the INSIDE, so if you put a screen there, you can't open the window. Oh, no, we can do it....I'll figure it out! he says. He buys all the framing and screen etc....starts in A's room, removes the lever so it's not in the way of the screen...and then realizes if he puts a screen there, you can't get to the window to open it. "We should put a different lock on the port so we can lock it from the outside so we don't have to go around to the front every time to lock it from the inside!" I told him I didn't think it would work because the door doesn't "latch". It's a sliding bar system like a bathroom stall door. The latch isn't INSIDE the door, it just has a bar the slides across into a loop on the wall. He bought a lock mechanism, pried off the sliding bar and loop....then realised there's no way to install a lock that fits into the door and the wall....there's no hole in the brick wall, nor in the door tofit the lock mechanism into. But he's the only one of us who doesn't have a bike and never has to go out the back, so he had never really paid attention to how the door was set up. He figures as an engineer, he can figure something out, but he doesn't look first. He buys all the stuff, and starts pulling things apart, and then realizes afterward that what he wanted to do won't work, and then he sets it aside "until he can get the right stuff" and then it just sits there for years because he never gets back around to getting whatever he needed.
I know he doesn't INTEND for me to do everything. Just the other day, when I had to work and he didn't, I went to the grocery store and he had wanted something particular for dinner that didn't sound good at all, so I was eating something different. I started cooking and he came in and said I didn't have to cook his food, I don't have to do everything, he's a big boy and can do it himself. I know he CAN, it's just that he usually DOESN'T. He's perfectly capable of taking his own dishes to the kitchen, of emptying his own trash, etc, but when a dish has been sitting there for 2 weeks and it's a dish I need for some reason, I can't wait for another month for him to remember to take it down and put it in the dishwasher. I don't want to be the nagging wife always treating him like a child, telling him to clean his room or reminding him 6 times to do this or that. And I know from past experience that his strategy is to nod and say "Sure" and then ignore whatever I said. He told me that's how I should handle his mom when she nags me to do certain things, like when she insisted that I should be riding a bike to my school every day instead of walking, and I kept telling her I preferred to walk, and she kept insisting that Dutch people ride bikes, I had to fit in and adapt, so I needed to ride a bike. He told me just to agree and then do what I wanted anyway. Agreeing would shut her up for a month or two and then when she brought it up again, I could just tell her "Yep, I'll do that." and then ignore it and walk. That's how he always dealt with his mom, and I notice he does the same thing to me. "Yeah, I'll mow the lawn tomorrow." and then when he doesn't, and I remind him, "I don't feel like it now. I'll do it on the weekend." and then he doesn't do it on the weekend, and something always comes up so he can't until I end up just doing it myself. It's not that he plans for me to do it all, it's just that he puts it off and puts it off, and it HAS to be done, so I end up doing it. And then he says "You didn't have to do that! I would have done it!" But there are worse things. It's frustrating, but nothing that's a real deal breaker, and nothing that most women don't have to deal with...from my friends and such, it sounds like it's pretty much standard. I don't really know many women who DON'T do the majority or all of the housekeeping tasks. I shouldn't complain, I guess, but sometimes it's nice to have the validation that it's not just me!
I think I'm a little spoiled. My husband does all the laundry, I do about 3-4 loads a year. During the school year he does the housekeeping (dusting, vacuuming, etc.) on Fridays which he has off, that way we can do stuff on Saturday or just relax. Over the summer I do all the deep cleaning and regular cleaning around the house. He also does all the lawnmowing but we typically both will shovel snow. I do 99% of all the cooking but he helps clean up.
We've also tried to shift some of the housekeeping to the kids. If they want to earn some extra $$, get to work! 
I also use it as a punishment. K was being a drama queen the other morning, got really nasty with me, and was 15 minutes late getting out of the house...so she cleaned the kitchen. The reality is that we all have our challenges and annoyances. I know a pretty good mix of people and have decided it all comes down to...whatever works for you guys.
