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Greensheep
2,325 M Hopeful Heart 4
PathStep 82 Compassion hearts27 Forum posts20 Forum upvotes14 Current upvotes14 Age GroupAdult Last activeFebruary, 2020 Member sinceJanuary 27, 2017
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House Chores
Relationship Stress / by Greensheep
Last post
 March 8th, 2018
...See more Hi again! I posted some time ago about it, but I guess that the mesage went quickly down the list. I wanted to ask some advice and see if some of you have the same problem. I wanted to start a conversation about how to share the house chores with your partner (or housemate even). I looked in the forum and I did not see a post about it but please if I am wrong tell me and I will join it. I know that house chores are one of the main reasons for fighting in couples (or that's what I read at least) and I think that sharing our experiences could help to get better strategies to avoid fighting. In my case this is something that really bothers me, and it is seriously afecting my relation. He has a stable scheduled job, coming a home after being 8 hours of working. I have hovewer a more changing schedule as I am following a master. Some months I study from home and other times I am away 10 to 12 hours a day (because my internships are far away). I would not say that I am extremist about the cleaning (at least none of my housemates complained about me wanting to clean too much) but I really like things to be tidy (no dirty dishes in the counter, no clothes in the floor etc). My partner for the other hand can spend weeks without cleaning, leaving the laundry in the basket (or even the floor) for weeks, not doing the dishes etc. He is not a very dirty man (I lived with worse people) but he just does not care. While I would clean once a week the house (plus the everyday cleaning) he would clean once a month (or less). Because of this last months I have been working from home (being extremly busy, stressed and depresed because of the master) I have ended up doing most of the cleaning. At the begining it was just preparing the meals (after all I am more at home no? I have more time) but it has ended up being me doing the laundry, folding it, chaging the towels and bedshits, cooking, making the groceries list, cleaning, tidying, gardening, etc. When we started living together we agreeded in sharing the house chores and I sugested a few methods that we could use to split the tasks (cleaning one week one, the next the other person; puting a board in the kitchen with the list of rooms and who cleaned them; scheduling the cleaning; using an app to track the cleaning etc.). He is never interested in talking about it and he is never cooperating in the scheduling or planing. He says that we should clean 'when it is dirty' but as our standards are so different this obviously does not work. Finally, tired of sugesting ideas I told him that I would give him a few months to come up with a better ideas. But he hasnt... I do not know how to talk to him anymore, because he is never interested in us talking about it. If I tell him to do a chore he will but he gets angry at me for nagging him. After a big fight I sugested using an app (Homey, quite nice), we sat and agreeded in every chore (that I planned, he wasnt interested), who would do it and how many times (we went to cleaning twice a month, which for me is already quite low but I was fine with it). After two weeks I noticed that he did not do his chores (except vacumming the floor) so in a (wrong) effort to help I asked him if he wanted me to clean the kitchen with him once (to show him all the small tasks that this implies). He got really angry at me 'because I never think that he did something well' and refused to clean the rest of the kitchen (he agreeded on dusting, cleaning the counter/fire/sink/table, cleaning the doors of the cabinets if they were dirty, vacumming and mopping). That time he only vacumed (using a cleaning robot so he only needed to set it on) so I do not see how I was 'the bad one' for asking him to finish the rest of the tasks. I got really angry and we fought but after we calmed down we decided that from that moment he was going to be in charge of the planing (so he could not acuse me of naging or to want to clean too much). During this two last months I have tried to be very patient, only clean when he cleans (to not do his job and let him see what needs to be done) and never tell him to clean. It has not worked too, because he barely cleans at all. He may do one ot two things a week (like puting the dishwasher and puting the washing once) and for him thats it (so I would need to empty the dishwasher, put the dryer and fod the clothes for example). I really do not know what to do because I really love him (and he loves me back) but I can't continue like this. I really do not know how to talk about this anymore, or if I should. Sometimes I think that I should just stop cleaning at all (to show him that things do not get done by themselves) but it really hurts me to see the kitchen dirty, the sink full of dishes or to not have a nice meal if I dont prepare it. Any sugestions, please?
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