Tired of managing my household

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have the money, hire help. If you have even more money, hire a household manager as well as services/people to execute tasks.

Yup. Just like men can hire cooks and cleaners, women can hire handymen and housekeepers. Just make sure to be active and equal partners in child raising, even if you two decide to hire nannies.

Lol.
Too lazy, ignorant or clueless to do basic stuff around his property and you think he’s going to parent and discipline his children!?!? Lol.

[Anonymous]

My husband didn’t talk much to the nanny at all over 10 years of having one. He just checked out more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're basically describing the life of most married women.

Lucky me: in our household, this describes my low energy ADHD wife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH is the same way. It gets old.

I’ve started looking into hiring a handyman- we can afford it. I don’t plan to check with DH first- I know once the work is done (if he even notices) he will be glad. He just wont ever take the initiative.

That's my husband, too. I hire what we can afford to hire out.

Op, make a list. Leave it on the fridge or somewhere he will see it. Tell him you need him to do those things. You shouldn't have to, but some people have no initiative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If money is the issue than find a marital counselor and learn to fairly negotiate household chores and smartly handle finances. If one person gas higher earning potential, other person can cut down hours so they can hold the fort.

I've rarely seen that help around chores and when it doesn't resentment gets even worse. Outsourcing almost universally seems to be better spending of the funds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If money is the issue than find a marital counselor and learn to fairly negotiate household chores and smartly handle finances. If one person gas higher earning potential, other person can cut down hours so they can hold the fort.

I've rarely seen that help around chores and when it doesn't resentment gets even worse. Outsourcing almost universally seems to be better spending of the funds.

Absolutely. If you've to spend money to fix the problem, its likely better spent on hired help who can help manage household than using it to fund nannies and maids for lawyer or marriage counselors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m back in the dating world. I only consider for serious dating those men who live alone, have groceries in their kitchen, meal plan at least part of the week, bathrooms look clean enough, their home appears to be in a relatively well maintained state, and I can get some indication that they care for their physical health (make medical and dental appts). Never again.

Scheduling a dentist is impossible. You can’t possibly exclude people for that.

I wish I could go to the dentist. They have lost their minds with self importance. None of the good ones take new patients, or if they do, they schedule like a year out. I have no idea what I’ll be doing on Sept 1 2024. If you cancel that appointment in June, make sure you are available 12 months later.

I even had a dentist cancel for me their own reasons, offered me 1 time to reschedule, on the “reschedule day” that they chose, and it didn’t work for me, so the next opportunity was months away.

Then I learned more about dentists and understood they just want to make as much money with as little effort as possible and like 50-75% of their stuff is totally unnecessary/exaggerated.

I know I need to go back, but it requires my life to revolve around a dentists’ schedule. It’s absurd.

[Anonymous]

OP, most people feel this way but it's part of being a parent and an adult. Someone has to be in that role or you need to delegate (at least DH seems to follow through) or hire help. Allowing your though patterns to fester will rob your life of joy and may help tank your marriage over time. It's common, but rarely leads anywhere good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m back in the dating world. I only consider for serious dating those men who live alone, have groceries in their kitchen, meal plan at least part of the week, bathrooms look clean enough, their home appears to be in a relatively well maintained state, and I can get some indication that they care for their physical health (make medical and dental appts). Never again.

My DH would have fooled you. He met all of the requirements on your list.

Great guy, but he tends to hoard. He cleaned the heck out of his house when we were dating and kept in clean and uncluttered for the entire year before we married.

Now that we are married, without ultimatums and threats, he hoards. Things will pile up to the ceiling if I just let him be.

In the grand scheme of things, it's no big deal since he does a lot around the house and i am not hesitant to confront. Hoarding is his weakness, and he hid it pretty well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband is the same. He helps. If I ask. He would literally watch me struggle to carry a boulder up a hill for a mile. He would carry it. If I asked.

That's funny and true for me too.

OP, take the horse by the reigns and implement some of the suggestions in this thread. Schedule a meeting with your DH and revamp how you tackle things.

[Anonymous]

Are you a stay-at-home parent? If so, these things are part of your job description so he can work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH isn't this bad, but it is really astounding sometimes the stuff that he just chooses to take zero responsibility over. Like literally he will notice something and point it out to me and say "we should do something about that" and then never do anything about it ever again. And then a few months later, if it's not fixed, he'll say "hey, weren't you going to do something about this? what happened with that?" It's amazing.

I just call him on it though. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. We still have a major house issue that he "noticed" like 3 years ago and will suddenly start asking about every 6 months and I have told him repeatedly that I have my hands full and can't deal with it but will support him in however he wants to handle, and he will say "oh yeah, I'll figure it out" and then forget about it and then ask about it again 6 months later.

We will move out of this house before he takes care of it.

That sounds . . . exactly like what OP is doing to her husband.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH is the same way. It gets old.

I’ve started looking into hiring a handyman- we can afford it. I don’t plan to check with DH first- I know once the work is done (if he even notices) he will be glad. He just wont ever take the initiative.

Or - do tell him in advance and watch him handle everything that week. DH is not useless like some of the guys mentioned on this thread, but when we first moved into our house there were so many things to do and he just kept saying "I can do that" and then . . . not doing any of them. So I made a punch list and asked him to put anything I missed on it and he said "what is this for" (probably ready to be offended that I would make him a chore list) and I told him a friend in the neighborhood had a good handyman, but I wanted to be sure if I was going to call him I didn't accidentally leave off something from the list. "What?? I can do all of this!" "I know, but you're really busy and it's bugging me. This way it all gets done at once." He woke up early the next day and started punching it out.

I don't consider this manipulative because I would have cheerfully paid the handyman and not held it against DH. I just wanted it done. And he was right, he could do it all. He just didn't have any particular timeline in mind when he announced that about each task.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH is the same way. It gets old.

I’ve started looking into hiring a handyman- we can afford it. I don’t plan to check with DH first- I know once the work is done (if he even notices) he will be glad. He just wont ever take the initiative.

That's my husband, too. I hire what we can afford to hire out.

Op, make a list. Leave it on the fridge or somewhere he will see it. Tell him you need him to do those things. You shouldn't have to, but some people have no initiative.

DP here. Lists didn't work for me, I tried.

Early in our marriage I assigned him the tasks I knew he would manage well because he cared. This includes bill paying, investing, setting up the 529's. He HATES to waste or lose money so will remember these things on his own. But he has no problem using a filthy, nasty toilet or seeing a laundry basket overflowing with dirty laundry. He has never bought a stitch of children's clothing in 15 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m back in the dating world. I only consider for serious dating those men who live alone, have groceries in their kitchen, meal plan at least part of the week, bathrooms look clean enough, their home appears to be in a relatively well maintained state, and I can get some indication that they care for their physical health (make medical and dental appts). Never again.

Scheduling a dentist is impossible. You can’t possibly exclude people for that.

I wish I could go to the dentist. They have lost their minds with self importance. None of the good ones take new patients, or if they do, they schedule like a year out. I have no idea what I’ll be doing on Sept 1 2024. If you cancel that appointment in June, make sure you are available 12 months later.

I even had a dentist cancel for me their own reasons, offered me 1 time to reschedule, on the “reschedule day” that they chose, and it didn’t work for me, so the next opportunity was months away.

Then I learned more about dentists and understood they just want to make as much money with as little effort as possible and like 50-75% of their stuff is totally unnecessary/exaggerated.

I know I need to go back, but it requires my life to revolve around a dentists’ schedule. It’s absurd.

Where are you living? On the North pole or Kodiak, Alaska. I just called my dentist in Tysons Corner, VA and got an appt a week later. It is not that hard.