I think from how on, I am not washing it unless it's in the laundry basket! haha
thats the rule around here...If wants something washed is must be put in the hamper...I am NOT trecking all over the house to find his things to be washed, and if he tells me "my ball uniform needs washing" and its not in the hamper I don't do it. if he gets upset then I simply say well, you know where its supposed to go...then shrug...sounds mean, but he has only done that once and not since then...
my SO is pretty tidy except he has this thing with piling his clothes on top of the dresserS...and not putting recyclabels where they they should be...
he is super good at helping with clean up after dinner, and the best part, he always says thank you...we have basically made it a must, not that either of us has offically stated that, and there are times when he forgets...I simply walk up to him and say "thanks for helping clean up"...then he says thanks for dinner. lol and if he doesn't i say "you're WELCOME for dinner!" then walk away
CanadianMickey~~ i would simply stop cleaning up after him, and make remarks like , "boy it sure is getting messy in here" or "geeze, I didn't think one man could be so slobbish" lol yeah sounds mean, but he really is treating you like a maid...you are NOT his maid!!!!
My DH is a slob. I always end up cleaning up after him because he works usually 90 hrs. a week. I do the bill paying, laundry, house-work, yard work, take the kids anywhere they need to go, cooking and anything else that gets done. I can always expect to see his dirty socks next to his recliner every single day. The thing that makes me the angriest is how messy he is with his cigarette ashes. He'll put them out in a plate, glass, bottle or can. This drives me nuts. I don't smoke and I think it is nasty. I usually don't ask him to help at all because he works so much and is tired when he's home. I would be too.
My MIL is coming next week and she is a neat freak. I spend many hours cleaning very hard when she comes. I hate it if she comes unannounced. It is hard to keep a perfect home at all times. She lives alone, so she really doesn't understand.
Does anyone else have a SO that lets the dog lick his plate clean? mine does. Another big rant of mine is when DH calls the living room from the computer room to see if me or one of the kids will bring him a glass of coke.
I have to say that anytime I have been sick or had surgery that he did do a decent job of cleaning the house and making sure the food was cooked and the laundry was done.
"You're definitely not the only one! My SO is a stacker and piler. When we first moved in, he had piles and stacks of papers all over this house. He can't bear to throw anything out and is the biggest procrastinator I have ever seen when it comes to filing. He feels that any flat surface--the table, my kitchen counter, the bed, especially the floor!!!--as a place for piles. Before we lived together he had a stack of articles, etc., that was two feet high that he literally moved from one residence to another for years! Honestly--if you've been hanging onto an article for a year and you haven't read it, chances are pretty good you're not going to read it." ~ BlueToBlue
OMG.....My DH is living a double life...WE ARE MARRIED TO THE SAME MAN!!!!
I must be the only lucky one! My husband is brilliant when it comes to housework. On Saturday mornings, when I'm working, he does a heavy-duty deepclean of the entire downstairs, he generally always picks up after himself, if I cook, he tidies the kitchen and if he cooks, I tidy. He's also very helpful with our daughter, who's 2. Best of all, he pitches in with the ironing, bless him.
I am messy by nature, and so is my husband. When I was single, I would pay my youngest sister to come to my appatment and clean for me (She is much younger than I and when I was in college and she was a little kid, she would ask to clean my room for all the change she could find plus $5 - sometimes she made a killing).
When I married me husband we used to have a lot of arguments over each other's messes (I would be annoyed that he had left food packages in the sink, and he would be annoyed that I hadn't closed the shower curtain completely).
In general, my overall standards are much higher than his. And I have a much bigger problem with things like dirty dishes in the living room(him), than a stack of magazines on the coffee table(me).
We finally had to make a chore list, and decide how often things had to be done at a minimum. He hates doing dishes so much he will do anything to get out of them. In fact, in exchange for never having to do dishes, he always does the laundry. It didn't feel like a good trade when I first saw how he did the laundry. First of all, he takes forever, and I am always worried that the neighbors will get violent over how long he occupies the washer and dryer. And he brings the laundry up and leaves it in the baskets, so they get all wrinkled. Finally, I decided that imperfect laundry was better than having to redo it - so I told him to dump the clean laundry on the bed if he didn't have time to fold it. We now usually fold it together.
I still have to remind him to do his chores sometimes. And if he is involved in something, he will usually put it off until he forgets, so I have to remind him again. Surprisingly, if I stay calm, he is happier with "I'm tired of asking, do it right now" than he is with my getting frustrated and just doing it myself (then I get, a whiney "Why'd you do that, I was going to do it.")
Tell him: I'm not your mom! I will not pick up after you! This is your house too, take some responsibility!
Actually, I have a country song by Amber Dotson called "I ain't your momma"
I have had this issue with my husband. Basically, he has to help out or he doesn't get to eat or have clothes to wear or whatever. I have made it VERY clear to him that I am not his maid, and that if he continued to treat me as such, he had 2 options: Pay me what a professional maid makes, or pick up after himself and I'll stick around and be a good wife.
OH, I've also told him that if he leaves anything laying around for more than a day, its gonna get thrown away - that really seemed to get him motivated.
This is not my grandma's era, and I'm not gonna baby my husband. He's not my child, and there is no reason that he cannot take care of his crap.
I stopped worrying about company coming in general. With 10 kids my standard lowered quite a bit as the years went by. I try to keep things reasonably orderly and my mom lives with me now and she was a neat freak. But she doesn't see well anymore so her standards are lowered, too. You can drive yourself nuts if you get too concerned about it. I just do what I can and don't worry about what others think. You just can't please everyone. My daughter who is a potter has an old store with an apartment in the back. She gets lots of dust from the clay. But I think her place has charm even with a little disorder and dust.
When I became unable to work any longer (I'm on disability for fibromyalgia, and degenerative disc disease and arthritis), we moved to the same town where my in-laws live. It's a beautiful area and the cost of living is much lower. My husband was working to support us, often long hours, so we agreed then that I would take care of all the house chores I could manage, and my husband would do the rest.
My MIL visited one day (my husband and I had both cleaned for her visit - it was clean and tidy, but apparently not up to her standards). She looked around the apartment, and offered to "help" me clean our apartment. It was offered in a friendly manner, so I smiled and told her that I would call her if there was anything David and I couldn't handle. Inside I was seething.
I have to give my husband credit. The minute she left, I was going to tell him how offended I had been at her suggestion, but he beat me to it. He said that he would work even more overtime to pay a cleaning service if I
wanted, but his mother would come and clean for us over his dead body.
Her house and yard could be featured in a magazine. She cleans like a madwoman, does the landscaping, etc., while taking care of two dogs and a nearly invalid husband (he has vascular disease, kidney diseas, MS, and recently had a leg amputated. She takes him to dialysis three times a week, bathes him, and takes care of his wounds). I don't think she ever sits down. She isn't in the best of health herself, as she's had a hip and wrist joint replaced, and is having her other hip replaced soon).
They recently sold their house, and during the four months it was on the market, she washed the walls three times! She sweeps mops the floor of the garage, it is so clean you could live in it. She had a fit when the realtor wanted to show the house at the last minute, as she wouldn't have time to clean. I was there when she got the call, and I told her all she had to do was put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher (we were eating breakfast) and put away the medications on the kitchen counter (she puts her husband's meds in all these tiny little glass bowls with post-it notes for him on when to take them and whether he needs to take them with food... She does it because he wants to be in control of his meds, and in general be as independent as possible = not that she lets him. She's one of those people addicted to taking care of others - whether they WANT it or not)
Okay, so I don't really have this problem...DH is not a slob, but DS#1 is. DH#1 was to an extent though. Everyday he came home from work his boots and stinky socks came off and were left in the living room. Now this was a man who complained if the kids had a toy in the floor. I got so tired of asking him to put his stinky socks in the dirty clothes and then picking them up myself so I left them there to see how long they would sit there. One week...before *he* picked them up. And he never left them there again. So, what I would do, and I know this is easier said than done. I would not pick up, or clean up anything after your DH. Whatever he messes up leave it. If his clothes aren't in the *dirty* clothes hamper, don't do them. Go on strike for as long as you feel you can take it and when you've had enough...tell him you are hiring a maid/cleaning service to come clean the house at *his* expense. And if he doesn't like it then to start cleaning up after his self.
Sweeps and mops the garage?! Yikes! I sweep our garage at times because I don't want the dirt tracked in to the house but mop it? Don't think so. I used to be anal about having a clean house and everything was in it's place, etc. and learned to let things go over the years. DH and kids would go outdoors after dinner and I would never go until the dishes were done...I learned they could wait. I am not as anal as back then but I do like the house a certain way as well as the yard. I do do a lot of the yard work also. DH likes it too which I am thankful for, a clean house and yard that is. I wish I could learn to let the lawn go some because it is a lot of work, lol.
You're definitely not the only one! My SO is a stacker and piler. When we first moved in, he had piles and stacks of papers all over this house. He can't bear to throw anything out and is the biggest procrastinator I have ever seen when it comes to filing. He feels that any flat surface--the table, my kitchen counter, the bed, especially the floor!!!--as a place for piles. Before we lived together he had a stack of articles, etc., that was two feet high that he literally moved from one residence to another for years! Honestly--if you've been hanging onto an article for a year and you haven't read it, chances are pretty good you're not going to read it.
I printed your post and made hubby read it. LOL! To his "It'll be worth something on Ebay" comment, I've taken to responding "Only if you PUT it on Ebay." As for the articles though, he'd read them all, and when someone was talking about something back around 2000, he said he'd read about that in the June 1996 issue of Yahoo, went to one of the many stacks, located the appropriate mag and article. Don't ask me how. But I still wanted those stacks gone. It took moving in a rush and having to store our things when we moved in to take care of his ailing parents to get him to FINALLY toss that stuff out. That and...all my nagging.
I am a firm believer that EVERYONE in the house is entitled to their own personal "STACK"~ Mine is on my ottoman...er....OK! I have 2..one by my coffee pot, my wife has one in her office and the kids each have one in their bedrooms.
I also believe ~ and try very hard to enforce it ~ that the stacks don't get higer than about 6 inches and that they are gone through and cleaned out at least every two weeks.
I don't have a husband.... just a live-in boyfriend.
I always clean up after him. He cooks - uses every dish in the house (but the food is worth my having to clean up after him!)
I do his laundry, wash his dishes, put things in the hamper, trash, sink, etc for him, take out the trash, clean cat litter boxes - basically anything that needs to be done around here for both of us and my one daughter who is still at home. She's 9 - she'll help without arguing with anything I ask of her, so no kid complaints on housework either- YET.
I guess I was a single mom (of 3) so long I'm used to doing a lot of stuff! It really doesn't bother me. I get the cleaning done the way I like it, and he never complains if I don't feel like doing anything. I work 38-45 hours a week & he works more like 60 or 70, so I feel like I should be doing it moreso than him anyway.
He does mow the lawn about 3 times a month, does that make it better???
We have it this way because it works for us though.... If your situation is not working for you & making you unhappy with him, then you need to have (another) talk with him so he can get his butt in gear! Perhaps deciding (even putting in writing) which of you is supposed to do what (and when/how often) regarding housework is needed. Then he'll have no excuse!
