Anonymous
08/21/2024 16:23
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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?
Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.
Duh.
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)
OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??
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.
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 incompatible, 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.
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!
You will never get it. Your way is merely a way, not the way.
+1
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anonymous
08/21/2024 15:44
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
ADHD
Anonymous
08/21/2024 14:03
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
[quote=Anonymous
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.
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.
Do you understand that PP's problem isn't that the counters aren't spit-and-polished every day at sundown. It's that the counters aren't cleaned AT ALL because whoever was in charge of kitchen cleanup didn't think counters are included. To give you the picture, ALL the crumbs and spills are still there. Untouched. You can't seriously be arguing that it's acceptable to leave it like this.
Anonymous
08/21/2024 11:49
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
The task shouldn’t be “laundry”. Break it up into smaller tasks and try to do more things simultaneously for motivation (not always realistic of course). He collects the laundry you run it. You fold and he puts away. He clears the dishes, you load the dishwasher. He buys the seed, you water. You are each doing fifty percent but the tasks are broken up so less likely he doesn’t complete.
Anonymous
08/21/2024 11:42
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I can be guilty of this. I do think ADHD is something I struggle with but can mostly manage. I wish I could say why my brain does it. It's like. I know the laundry needs to be switched over but I just end up doing something else and keep saying "I'll do it later". The difference is that I know it drives DH crazy so I make a real effort to follow through on everything. I make a lot of lists. For whatever reason physically crossing things off helps me. I also make myself stop and say "no, bring the glass to the kitchen when you stand up. Don't say you'll do it later"
Tell me more about the ADHD part. Is this an ADHD thing? Is it procrastination or is it resistance to being told what to do? I'm genuinely curious because DH has ADHD and is medicated for it. It helps him be successful at work but does nothing for him at home.
This is how you know it’s not ADHD. Do you really think his medication is formulated to only be effective when he is in the office?
That is kind of the issue with ADHD, the brain can engage to do interesting or new or rewarding tasks but can’t engage to do mundane, routine, uninteresting tasks. Difficulty getting basic housework done is a hallmark sign of ADHD. Starting and finishing tasks are both hard. I am no saying he has it, just clarifying that it is completely normal to struggle differently at home and at work.
Completely normal with adhd to struggle differently at home vs at work, and misconceptions like PP’s are unfortunately common.
Not to mention that if the husband is on stimulants and takes it in the morning, then yes it would work during the workday but wear off by the time he is back at the house. Adding a booster or even a long lasting non stimulant might help.
Anonymous
08/21/2024 10:50
Subject: Re:How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
look into ADD, does he lose things and have a poor sense of direction?
Anonymous
08/19/2024 14:19
Subject: Re:How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
My husband is like this and I just had to reframe my thinking. He took out the trash but did not put a new bag in the trashcan. That used to frustrate me. Now I’m glad the only task left for me is to pit in the new bag as opposed to both taking the trash out and putting in that new bad. I mean if he is doing 80% of 20% of household tasks, that sucks. But if he is doing 80% of say 70% of household tasks, that’s more than 50% of the total. That may well be where DH and I are if you take out the hard to quantify mental load. I also read something like for couples who each do approximately half, they both tend to feel like they do way more than that. So really think about what all he does. I choose to just be happy with all of the things DH does, even if he isn’t “finishing” a task in my mind.
Anonymous
08/15/2024 14:37
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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?
Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.
Duh.
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)
OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??
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.
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 incompatible, 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.
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!
You will never get it. Your way is merely a way, not the way.
+1
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.
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.
Please provide the official document detailing universally accepted standards of “acceptable” for every household chore. Because if you can’t, you are once again just listing… wait for it… your PREFERENCE.
How are so many of you this dense?
+1000
Anonymous
08/15/2024 14:37
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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?
Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.
Duh.
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)
OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??
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.
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 incompatible, 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.
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!
You will never get it. Your way is merely a way, not the way.
+1
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.
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.
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.
Anonymous
08/15/2024 14:20
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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?
Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.
Duh.
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)
OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??
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.
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 incompatible, 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.
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!
You will never get it. Your way is merely a way, not the way.
+1
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.
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.
Please provide the official document detailing universally accepted standards of “acceptable” for every household chore. Because if you can’t, you are once again just listing… wait for it… your PREFERENCE.
How are so many of you this dense?
If the way your spouse does things makes your life harder, then it's not a preference. How are YOU this dense?
I mean, I guess two utter slobs could find each other and not care, together, about cleanliness or keeping things in working order or whatever. I believe this is the arrangement Gene Weingarten described in a column about his girlfriend, and it's pretty clear that one of the reasons his wife left him was that she got tired of living with his chaos. I'm sure he saw himself as a down-to-earth, carefree mensch who didn't get hung up on the little things. Meanwhile she called the repair guys as needed and made sure the kids were registered for camp. It's wearing.
But just to be clear, I prefer that our house is maintained, our children get nutritious meals, get a certain amount of social interaction, have what they need for school, and are more or less clean most of the time.
https://www.swistle.com/2009/10/20/hismy-way-vs-rightwrong-way/
Anonymous
08/15/2024 12:28
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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?
Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.
Duh.
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)
OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??
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.
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 incompatible, 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.
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!
You will never get it. Your way is merely a way, not the way.
+1
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.
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.
Please provide the official document detailing universally accepted standards of “acceptable” for every household chore. Because if you can’t, you are once again just listing… wait for it… your PREFERENCE.
How are so many of you this dense?
Anonymous
08/15/2024 12:25
Subject: How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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?
Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.
Duh.
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)
OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??
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.
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 incompatible, 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.
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!
You will never get it. Your way is merely a way, not the way.
+1
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.
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.