Reply to How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t get why it’s so bad to help with the laundry. It’s not like you don’t know that he’s going to leave the clean laundry in a pile. You “watched” the laundry pile up all day without offering to help?  WTF?  It appears to be some sort of bean counting, and that’s never good for a marriage. Ask yourself “how important is it to ask your spouse to do a task they hate and cause tension in your marriage over it?”  It’s laundry. This isn’t important. Just work as a team. Or you could nag and be miserable, but that doesn’t seem to be working for you.  [/quote]

Serious question (and I’m not OP)
What do I do when we’ve already had this conversation?  Multiple times?  And he’s good about it for about a month, then slips back to previous behavior? And we’ve been married for close to 20 years?  Am I the one who’s just supposed to suck it up ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time?  How does resentment not build?[/quote]

Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.

Duh.[/quote]

I do. But he puts loads in of his stuff and the kids. And just leaves it there. All over the place. On top of the dryer. In random piles. Sitting in the basket for days. Then I have to dump the basket when I need to use it. (We have multiple baskets. He’ll fill them all. So please don’t tell me to buy another basket)[/quote]

OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?!  What an effing nightmare!  How do you even live??[/quote]

You got me!  This entire conversation is about having to dump a basket once. What a fool I am for not just dumping it once and moving on with my life.

Thanks so much. I’ve seen the light. Your wisdom is unparalleled. [/quote]

The entire conversation is actually about your (and your fellow “sufferers”) refusal to accept that you are not, in fact, your spouse’s boss.

Your preferred way of handling household tasks is merely that - your *preference*.  You prefer laundry folded and put away immediately, your spouse prefers to leave clean clothes in baskets.  These two strategies are obviously [b]incompatible[/b], but that does NOT mean that YOU are RIGHT, and HE is WRONG.

Accomplishing housework to an 80% standard implies that the essentials to keep life functioning have been handled (e.g. the clothes are clean even if they are in the dryer, the majority of the dishes are clean even if they’re in the dishwasher, the kids are dressed even if they’re in mismatched socks, etc.)

While there has been a lot of talk of spouses leaving work because they expect their partners to finish it, at no point has anyone provided evidence of this expectation.  It is more likely that your spouses are leaving work that they simply don’t care about.  Meaning they don’t care if YOU do it or not.  So yes, if I clean my house to my own personal “good enough” standards, but my spouse demands “perfection”, then spouse can feel free to “pick up the slack” to make that happen, because I simply don’t give a sh!t about what I see as pointless busywork.  Or, maybe leaving a task to finish later (myself) because right now, I just don’t feel like it.  If spouse decides that it is imperative to complete the task right now! and they finish it rather than wait for me to do it, that’s on them.[/quote]
Come on.

Don’t conflate only finishing 80% of a task with fully finishing something to 80% of standard.

The former is incomplete.

The latter is cutting corner.

And of course with adhd it’s often both, fun!

[/quote]

You will never get it.  Your way is merely a way, not the way.[/quote]

I like everything folded and hung in rainbow order. My husband would be fine getting his clothes off a chair and ironing or tossing in the dryer for a refresh as needed. I'm not right. He's not right. [/quote]

But there's a difference between doing things the way you like them (his way/my way) and doing them acceptably. Some chores are divisible, so you each do your own laundry and get to decide how you want it done.

Then there are chores that affect the whole family and need to be done to a certain standard: If I choose to make a nutritionally balanced meal that everyone will eat, I can decide to make everything from scratch or I can buy a jar of sauce, microwave a bag of vegetables, etc. Likewise, I don't get to decide that my husband's shortcuts mean his dinner didn't count.

But if his way of cleaning up afterwards means he loads the dishwasher and wanders off, that's not cleaning up. The knives need to be washed and put away, the counters need to be clean. The next person who wants to use the kitchen needs to find it in ususable condition. The person who's getting kids dressed in the morning needs clean clothes for the kids, and needs to be able to find them in a logical place, which is to say, paired socks in the sock drawer of the kid whose feet they fit. [/quote]

You're still missing the point. Why can't the knives go in the dishwasher? They can, but you don't want them to. We put our very nice knives into the dishwasher along with our All Clad pots and pans. It's easier and faster and it's fine. Some people would insist on hand washing them. Fine, then they can do that.

Why do the counters need to be cleaned every night? You can wipe up individual spills and do a thorough clean on a lesser basis. My house is generally very clean but I don't obsess about having everything done all the time. Sometimes just a swipe where the sauce spilled and a quick run over the crumbs is fine for that night.

Sure, clothes need to be clean but can the kids wear something more than once? And plenty of people keep a basket of socks that people can grab from to make a pair. Who cares if a first grader's socks match? You do, to answer your question. I also care, but then I'm the one who pairs the socks up (or I used to, now my kids are in charge of their own laundry and I don't care if their pair their socks up or dump them all in a drawer).

How old are your kids? At a very young age their can pair and fold socks. Also, socks aren't like clothes where they maybe fit for a year - they will fit a range of feet, so just buy all your kids the same size white socks. Problem solved.

I want my clothes in rainbow order. I like everything folded how Marie Kondo does it. So I do that for my stuff and I did it for my kids' stuff when they were younger. Now they're in charge of their own clothes (this started around 7). I still wash and sort mostly due to stain treatment but then they get a basket of clean clothes and have to put them away by the end of the day. How they handle their drawers is up to them, although they fold them the same way I always did for them.

Having a crappy husband would suck, I would hate that. Mine is wonderful but I don't know if part of our happiness is that I don't expect him to do things my way all the time. I take over the things I care about (as does he - if it were up to me we'd have Peacock and HBO and Netflix that I would watch on my iPad and that would be so he is in charge of the cable and internet and electronics). We divvy up the things no one likes (trash, etc.). Some of the posters here just seem so insistent on their "rightness" that they can't see the forest through the trees and are miserable because of it. [/quote]

Pp, I think you have a level of cleanliness and housework that is beyond what most people have.  
Wiping up spills and cleaning up crumbs is what I mean by wiping down the counter.  I have no idea what this other thing is that you are talking about.  
In the same vein, sorting clean laundry, putting it in kids rooms, and making sure the kids put it away *is* doing the laundry.  
The things that you are saying people need to be okay with *are* the things that people are okay with.  They are also the things that aren’t done by a lot of men.  [/quote]

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