Reply to Cluttered house and stressed out spouse

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]House Rule - If it bugs you enough to feel the need to say something about it, it bugs you enough to clean something up.

If your DH is bothered, he should be in charge of picking a 15 minute chunk of time every evening for decluttering for the whole family. He has to do all the mental load of planning, getting everyone to participate, leading from the front, making it fun, and supervise, evaluating and adjusting. When is it? Who does what? What items become regular declutter items? Which areas of the house?

Very uncool to criticize you.  You are not the master maid or house fairy. [/quote]

While I agree the DH in this case is going about it wrong, I disagree with this rule because it creates a dynamic where the person most “bothered” by mess winds up cleaning up other people’s messes.

What happens when the meat spouse goes into the kitchen to prepare a meal and discovers the messy spouse has left paperwork, half the groceries, and their dishes from lunch on the counter? They can’t say “hey babe, can you come clear this off so I can get dinner started?” Since only they are bothered?

There has to be some baseline agreement on keeping shared areas reasonably clean and uncluttered. Especially when the clutter obstructs other activities. You can’t just dump all the cleaning/organizing on the person who cares most about because this creates huge inequities in who maintains order in the house.[/quote]

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