Reply to S/o outsourcing cleaning as a relationship fix

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband and I are both bad at cleaning and don't want to do it so we do have cleaners, but it does almost nothing to solve imbalance issues (because I wasn't an obsessive cleaner anyway and never had any intention of doing it myself). I think cleaning is the tip of the iceberg for most people, but it's one of the only things that can actually be outsourced. I can't outsource interacting with my kids' schools/camps/doctors/etc. [/quote]

Yup. I'm actually good at cleaning and enjoy it. I sometimes get frustrated about the fact that I do most of the cleaning, but rarely -- I'm better at it and find it satisfying.

But what happens is that I'm busy doing all the family admin that I'm not good at and really loathe (forms, appointments, etc.) and then fall behind on the cleaning, plus I'm trying to get work done, plus the kids are always "Mom mom mom" all day. So it might come out as "I resent that I'm scrubbing the bathtub while you're watching YouTube videos. But it's not that I want him to scrub the tub, it's that I want him to do one of the 900 other things that need to be done while I'm scrubbing the tub.

The flip side, though, is that doing more cleaning or the low-hanging childcare work is usually the easiest thing for the non-primary parent to pitch in on. Asking my DH to make doctor's appointments is a whole production. I wind up having to teach him a bunch of stuff about how our doctor's office works (which he doesn't retain for some reason) and remind him 16 times and double check the date and make sure it gets in the calendar, etc. But he can do pick up or drop off, or wash the dishes, without my involvement. And that why that's the stuff that couples fight over, even though they really are not the crux of the problem at all.[/quote]

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