S/o outsourcing cleaning as a relationship fix

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and it improves quality of life because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive.

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?

Eh. If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you. Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex. But for some people, those things are an issue. For us, it’s chores.
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.

But it does. The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.
If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Something we've learned is that even if you have a partner who is bad at cleaning or hates doing it (which in our case, like most cases, is my DH), you can still technically both contribute more equally, if not perfectly equally, simply by being respectful, mature people. I do the bulk of the cleaning that is purposeful and planned, as in "I'm going to go clean the bathrooms now" and I get out cleaning materials and scrub and wipe things down and actually "clean". But my DH is a grown up and does a ton of stuff that makes it easier for me to be the person who handles the bulk of the cleaning, including:

- keeping his stuff (paperwork, phone and iPad, reading material, personal mail, etc.) organized and tidy
- cleaning up after himself and after our kid, by putting dishes in the dishwasher, wiping down counters and tables when done using them, etc.
- doing the laundry at least half the time if not more, including doing our kids laundry
- doing grocery shopping and keeping an eye on the fridge and pantry and knowing what we have and need
- doing dishes after he cooks or after we eat, at least half the time
- helping me with cleaning periodically if it seems like I need it, like helping me make a bed if he walks in the room and I'm doing it, etc.

None of this stuff is "cleaning" in the sense that none of it could be outsourced to a cleaning service. It's more like basic maintenance and taking responsibility for your immediate surroundings plus being respectful of the people you live with. I still do the bulk of the cleaning. But it doesn't cause problems most of the time because DH does all of the above. And if your DH doesn't do these things, outsourcing the cleaning will not solve your problem.

It's really about being a grown up, taking care of yourself, and not treating your spouse like your mother. We can't afford weekly cleaners, and even if we could I would probably still do it because I truly don't mind, but it's not a huge problem because my husband behaves like an adult in his 40s with a mortgage and a child, not like a 9 year old.[/quote]

I couldn't have said it better.[/quote]

I don’t know. My husband and I are both doctors. I would rather spend my time taking care of my patients (I always have a long waitlist), and use the money they pay me to hire someone else to do the laundry. DH works in the ICU, and I would rather he feel that he has time to have a family meeting about end of life care than have to rush home to make dinner. There is more than one way to be an adult. [/quote]

I'm the PP who liked the first post.

My husband and I also both work and we have a maid. Neither one of us cleans, other than making the bed (which apparently we're not supposed to do?!?), keeping the kitchen clean, and picking up things around the house. So I don't have a problem with both parties deciding that they don't want to clean.

What I think my issue is with some of the posts is when one spouse acts like the other spouse should do all the cleaning. If you say you don't want to do it and your husband says he doesn't want to do it and you decide to hire a cleaner, I think that's fine. If your husband says he won't do it no matter what and he believes it's your problem to solve so you hire a maid, I think that's ignoring the actual problem, which is that your husband is a disrespectful a$$.[/quote]

This seems like a pretty fine distinction that requires some level of mind reading.
In both of your examples, the husband is saying that is isn’t going to clean, the wife says she isn’t going to clean, and the couple hires a housekeeper, how the rest of the housework is divided, etc.

I would say that whether or not he is a disrespectful a$$ depends on how he treats the housekeeper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and it improves quality of life because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive.

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?

Eh. If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you. Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex. But for some people, those things are an issue. For us, it’s chores.
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.

But it does. The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.
If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.

No, I wouldn't, because we're both on the same page and neither one of us want to cook, so where's the conflict?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and it improves quality of life because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive.

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?

Eh. If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you. Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex. But for some people, those things are an issue. For us, it’s chores.
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.

But it does. The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.
If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.

No, I wouldn't, because we're both on the same page and neither one of us want to cook, so where's the conflict?

The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the problem.


The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him. Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.

[Anonymous]

This thread really feels like my past self reaching through time to talk to my present self.

I used to have SO many of the views in this thread, like that certain tasks absolutely must be completed by me or DH or otherwise the results would be unacceptable; that if he didn't want to do half of those tasks, it was because he didn't respect me; that he was selfish and lazy if he tried to weasel out of them.

Really and truly, none of that is true. Him not agreeing (expressed or unexpressed) that you need to cook nightly, do your own laundry vs a pickup/dropoff service, make beds, vacuum multiple times a week, etc etc... These are not signs that he is a bad husband, or that he doesn't respect you/your time, or that he has some deep character flaw. You can choose to make it mean that, but it does not inherently mean any of that.

[Anonymous]

A lot of people in this thread would rather be right than happy and then a whole other group finds it acceptable to be married to a jackass. There have to be some happy mediums.

There is nothing wrong with a married couple getting a cleaner to reduce their workload. There is nothing wrong with a couple hiring a yard service to reduce their workload. There is nothing wrong with one spouse saying “I honestly don’t ever want to do that task and barring some major financial issue, I plan to outsource it.”

My husband never cooks. I never do yard work or laundry. We outsource pieces of all of this, some of this one of us does — and we are happy.

But neither of us is a total jackass that would refuse to do something that really needed to be done if the other couldn’t do it for some reason and the outsourcing failed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok seriously people I think the bigger problem being illuminated in this thread is that your bathrooms become 'covered in pee' on a regular basis.

My housecleaners come biweekly and I have three children and NONE of my bathrooms are ever left 'covered in pee'. If someone pees on the floor that is like, spilling milk. You clean it up then and there.

My husband pees on the floor, and also has mobility issues - legitimately - preventing him from bending down to clean it up. We've tried him feebly attempting to do it; we've tried leaving it until the cleaners come; we've tried fighting and not fighting - and at the end of the day, I have concluded that it is easiest and most efficient if I just take on the responsibility of mucking up pee from the floor.

Honestly the mental burden of making up some other system is greater than the physical burden of just cleaning it the heck up.

NP. Sorry you're going through this. Can you place chucks or pet house training pads on the floor next to the toilet where he pees, and then just toss them and replace them daily? Just wondering if that would help, since this is something that would need to be cleaned daily or more frequently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m kind of with you, OP.
Outsourcing to a cleaner every other week helps somewhat, but it isn’t that helpful. If we were really only talking about 4 hours/wk of work, then all of this complaining would be ridiculous.
But outsourcing daily cleaning really isn’t that expensive. It’s not cheap, but it’s considerably less expensive than other alternatives like divorcing and maintaining two households or quitting your job/going part time (as long as you make a higher hourly wage than your housekeeper).

Also, I would argue that it isn’t any harder to teach kids to clean when you have a regular housekeeper. When you have this, then kids are used to things being clean, and they feel like that’s the way things ought to be, so they tolerate less mess. My kids were used to having a clean room, dusted and vacuumed, with a made bed and clothes put away. Now that they are older, and we don’t need a daily housekeeper anymore, when they have to clean their rooms, they only feel clean when they are dusted and vacuumed with made beds and clothes put away. Same goes for bathrooms, kitchen, etc. If it had been up to me, they would have spent their childhoods digging clean clothes from a huge pile in a hamper that I never completely got folded.

We had a daily maid growing up and I had no problem keeping a clean dorm room at college and an immaculate apartment after that. My whole life I've been neat and clean and I now have a maid and my kids don't do cleaning but they do make their beds, put their laundry in the hamper, clean up their toys, set the table, and put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher. At age 7 we're not doing laundry yet and they can't reach to put away most dishes but we'll get there. Doesn't mean they ever need to scrub toilets. I do have girls though, so I may feel differently if I had boys.

We have two boys, 8 and 10, and no maid, and they do all those things. I think it helps that we've normalized being tidy and taking care of one's home and things from an early age. We frame it as everyone contributing to the household. They also clean the bathrooms and their bedroom and do yard work when we tell them to (DH and I supervise)..

[Anonymous]

why are you cleaning your older kids bathroom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and it improves quality of life because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive.

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?

Eh. If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you. Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex. But for some people, those things are an issue. For us, it’s chores.
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.

But it does. The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.
If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.

No, I wouldn't, because we're both on the same page and neither one of us want to cook, so where's the conflict?

The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the problem.


The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him. Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.

I guess the way I see it is that a house has to be cleaned (much like you have to eat). A husband saying, I know the house has to be cleaned but I'm not going to clean it so it's your problem to deal with, and the wife then having to be the one to either (1) clean it or (2) hire a maid I think is crap. The husband saying, I know the house has to be cleaned and I don't want to clean it so either (1) you can clean it or (2) we can hire a maid is not a problem. Because then the wife can decide what she wants to do. But it seems like in many of the posts (and not all in this thread, so it's not fair of me to assume that you've read those as well), the husband seemed to think that cleaning the house was a problem that was entirely the wife's. I guess in my mind there is no conflict if both parties agree that they will support the other's choice regarding the house. We have a maid so I've never felt like there is conflict in our relationship about cleaning, but perhaps I misinterpreted what the poster was saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and it improves quality of life because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive.

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?

Eh. If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you. Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex. But for some people, those things are an issue. For us, it’s chores.
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.

But it does. The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.
If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.

No, I wouldn't, because we're both on the same page and neither one of us want to cook, so where's the conflict?

The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the problem.


The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him. Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.

How do you solve the daily cleaning issues, like cleaning the kitchen after a meal? I guess in your example if you're ordering takeout for every meal, it's just a matter of throwing the containers out. But what about a situation in which you actually use your kitchen? I'm fine with dividing labor, and I do more laundry than my husband and he handles the dogs more than I do, so if one spouse handles cooking and cleaning because the other does laundry and yard work, for example, that's not a problem. But it seemed to me in OP's post that her husband was refusing to do anything. (Granted, I think OP should make her kids clean their bathrooms, but that's a different issue). So my problem is with husbands that see anything around the house as the wife's problem to solve, and I think that's a jerk move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only thing done daily in my house from your daily list is the dishes, and other than that, laundry (sent out) mail management and putting away groceries, our weekly cleaning service does it for $120/week.

And, I should think obviously, this does not mean we are “living in filth.”

You don’t make your bed every day? What about crumbs, dust, hair, and dirt brought in from the outside by shoes/clothes or a dog? If you’re living with kids or an animal, you need daily vacuuming and sweeping.

Sorry but I think that’s living in filth.

WTF? Do you eat in your bed in your outside clothes?

And I don’t have a dog.

+1. What exactly is the purpose of making your bed? I have never done this and have no intention of starting. People outside my family are not wandering into my bedroom to see if my bed is made or not. It's more hygienic not to anyway. I do sweep around the table after my kids eat because they're little and messy, but if it's not too bad I generally assign that task to my 3yo son who loves it. Otherwise, vacuuming once a week is fine.

You're the second person to say this - can you please explain? I make my bed because I find it more appealing to climb into a bed with smooth sheets than a rumpled bed, but I don't see how it's less hygienic to make it?

Airing it out kills germs or something.

You get the same effect airing out your bedding while you get ready for work before making your bed. No reason to leave it unmade all day. Just fluff, let it sit a bit with covers pulled down and then make the bed.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and it improves quality of life because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive.

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?

Eh. If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you. Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex. But for some people, those things are an issue. For us, it’s chores.
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.

But it does. The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.
If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.

No, I wouldn't, because we're both on the same page and neither one of us want to cook, so where's the conflict?

The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the problem.


The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him. Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.

How do you solve the daily cleaning issues, like cleaning the kitchen after a meal? I guess in your example if you're ordering takeout for every meal, it's just a matter of throwing the containers out. But what about a situation in which you actually use your kitchen? I'm fine with dividing labor, and I do more laundry than my husband and he handles the dogs more than I do, so if one spouse handles cooking and cleaning because the other does laundry and yard work, for example, that's not a problem. But it seemed to me in OP's post that her husband was refusing to do anything. (Granted, I think OP should make her kids clean their bathrooms, but that's a different issue). So my problem is with husbands that see anything around the house as the wife's problem to solve, and I think that's a jerk move.

My housekeeper makes the meal earlier in the day, puts it in the fridge, and cleans the kitchen. She also does the laundry while she is there. After dinner, we just rinse off the plates we used and put them in the dishwasher.
Her husband does the mowing and weeding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the proble

The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him. Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.

I guess the way I see it is that a house has to be cleaned (much like you have to eat). A husband saying, I know the house has to be cleaned but I'm not going to clean it so it's your problem to deal with, and the wife then having to be the one to either (1) clean it or (2) hire a maid I think is crap. The husband saying, I know the house has to be cleaned and I don't want to clean it so either (1) you can clean it or (2) we can hire a maid is not a problem. Because then the wife can decide what she wants to do. But it seems like in many of the posts (and not all in this thread, so it's not fair of me to assume that you've read those as well), the husband seemed to think that cleaning the house was a problem that was entirely the wife's. I guess in my mind there is no conflict if both parties agree that they will support the other's choice regarding the house. We have a maid so I've never felt like there is conflict in our relationship about cleaning, but perhaps I misinterpreted what the poster was saying.

Does the couple in your example have separate finances? I don’t really see the difference between “hire a maid,” and “we can hire a maid.”
I guess that the difference is in what happens when your housekeeper is on vacation or if she quits, but i have never seen a post where people are complaining that their spouse isn’t helping when the housekeeper is out of town.
Most posts are women getting this tunnel that *they* have to do everything (because their mothers did), and not widening their view enough to see other possible solutions. .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the proble

The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him. Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.

I guess the way I see it is that a house has to be cleaned (much like you have to eat). A husband saying, I know the house has to be cleaned but I'm not going to clean it so it's your problem to deal with, and the wife then having to be the one to either (1) clean it or (2) hire a maid I think is crap. The husband saying, I know the house has to be cleaned and I don't want to clean it so either (1) you can clean it or (2) we can hire a maid is not a problem. Because then the wife can decide what she wants to do. But it seems like in many of the posts (and not all in this thread, so it's not fair of me to assume that you've read those as well), the husband seemed to think that cleaning the house was a problem that was entirely the wife's. I guess in my mind there is no conflict if both parties agree that they will support the other's choice regarding the house. We have a maid so I've never felt like there is conflict in our relationship about cleaning, but perhaps I misinterpreted what the poster was saying.

Does the couple in your example have separate finances? I don’t really see the difference between “hire a maid,” and “we can hire a maid.”
I guess that the difference is in what happens when your housekeeper is on vacation or if she quits, but i have never seen a post where people are complaining that their spouse isn’t helping when the housekeeper is out of town.
Most posts are women getting this tunnel that *they* have to do everything (because their mothers did), and not widening their view enough to see other possible solutions. .

I didn't make a distinction between "hire a maid" and "we hire a maid." I made a distinction between "this is your problem, wife" and "here is my suggested solution to the cleaning problem."