Reply to S/o outsourcing cleaning as a relationship fix

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree, OP. And while everyone will disagree about exactly what has to be done outside of a regular cleaning person, to pretend the answer is “nothing” or “minimal” is still just missing the problem.  And then of course, when you point it out, you get the ole “oh you’re just harping, that’s unnecessary” line which just further denegrates the work that (mostly women) are doing.

We are not particularly clean people. We don’t touch the bathrooms or vacuum between professional cleanings. We don’t make our bed. But still - the kitchen has to be taken care of after dinner each night (clearing the table, putting away leftovers, loading and running the dishwasher, washing pots and pans). The dishwasher has to be unloaded. The trash needs to be taken out on trash day. The mail has to be gotten and dealt with at least occasionally. Even if you send out laundry, it has to be put back in drawers. Even if you order groceries for delivery, the order needs to be placed and the groceries put away. Someone has to cook dinner. The laundry service, house cleaners, and childcare needs to be managed, paid, and communicated with. Kid logistics need to be deal with (scheduling, buying clothes, school stuff, finding camps, managing extracurriculars, etc).

Unless you have the funds to pay for essentially a full time house manager and cook, there is work to be done, and if one person won’t hold up his half it’s totally unfair and unacceptable, IMHO. [/quote]

But none of the people saying outsource are saying the DH should do nothing.  They’re all saying, in essence, if there are 24 hours of housekeeping to be done, outsourcing 12 of it leaves 6 for each parent.  I can sign up to six. My DH can sign up to six. He would never sign up for 12, and I would certainly not do 24 so he could slack off.  But I also wouldn’t add another two hours per week by saying the beds need to be made every day...[/quote]

PP here. If this is the case, then outsourcing is fine advice. And it probably would work for couples where (to stick with your examples) the wife is doing 15 hours of work, the husband is doing [b]seven[/b], and the wife is frustrated both at the imbalance and that stuff is getting missed.

But that’s an example where the husband was already doing about a third of the work. It seems like for most of the situations we hear about on DCUM, the imbalance is much more extreme. 90/10, 80/20. And in those cases, even with outsourcing, the husband needs to step up and do his half. And I would strongly prioritize (and do, when I comment on those threads) a serious conversation with the husband, and marriage counseling if necessary, to get to a place where he understands and accepts that he has to do his half. If as part of that, a mutual decision is made to outsource some stuff, great. But I think what the OP is reacting to is responses to threads about husbands who do nothing or nearly nothing that just say “outsource it.” That is NOT going to solve the problem if the husband still thinks whatever’s left isn’t his problem. [/quote]

Sorry, I mean to say the husband is going 7 hrs of work. [/quote]

I am the poster you’re responding to.  I agree marriages where one spouse is trying to skate by on 10/90 or 20/80 need more than cleaning help, but they need cleaning help because (again using the old numbers) the wife can’t do 24 hours on her own.  For her own sanity and self care she needs to outsource the 12 so she has a shred of energy to figure out what to do with her loser spouse.  [/quote]

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