That has a slob for a husband?? We've been married for 3 years, and I swear he married me to be his maid, not his wife, because honestly I feel like that sometimes. I cook, clean, do laundry, do dishes, take care of the bills, etc... Last week I spent the entire week cleaning and organizing our place, and it looked fabulous!!! I was so proud of myself! DH was at work, and I had a meeting that night, so I went to my meeting, came home, and was SO ANGRY! The place was trashed!!! You couldn't even tell that I had spent the entire week cleaning and straightening things.... Dh had come home, tossed his dirty clothes in the living room, boots and shoes everywhere, left towels and junk food garbage everywhere. dirty dishes and junk in the kitchen, and as I walked into the living room, I had popsicle sticks stuck to my feet that were left on the Floor!!!!! I asked him "Did you not notice that I just spent over a week cleaning this place??" His response "Yeah, it looked great!"....I said "I expect you to clean up all this stuff you threw all over the house!"....It's still all laying around the house...4 DAYS LATER!!!!!! It's driving me mental to live in such a pigstye! I feel so embarrassed by how we live like this, and I feel obligated to clean it because it just gets to be too frustrating when I can't walk through the living room because he's such a slob.....

Any tips or advice???

No kids? Just him making all that mess? He should be ASHAMED! Grown man...my DH is too a slob. Not in that totally disrespecting your efforts like yours, thats another thing entirely. Its one thing for my DH to have his office and car be a wreck...I hate it, I do, but these ARE his areas. BUT when we initially moved in together I was constanty preaching "You are not a bachalor anymore and you MUST respect community areas." Then there's the " What kind of example are YOU teaching my eldest son?"....as he would complain of DS 13year old piggishness. This is not JUST laziness...its a respect issue.

I wouldn't call my boyfriend a slob... but he definatly needs some work.

I do all the laundry, simply for the fact that I don't want my stuff ruined. But like this morning, he puts a bag away and leaves the door open, so I close that, and then I go into the bathroom and the shower door stall is wide open, so I close that too, I went into the living room, clothes everywhere, went into the bedroom, more clothes.

I feel like I am always picking up his dirty clothes, dishes, gargbage. Where ever it lands when he is done with it - it stays there - USUALLY! I mean I guess if I left it there he would pick it up sooner or later but I can't stand it! I am far from perfect but we just moved into a new house, where I spent the last week painting, cleaning, unpacking, etc. I haven't sat down and relaxed in over a week (except I sit at work). Last night I cleaned and moved my fish tank (last thing) I came home and all I wanted to do was sit down and do something for me. First I had some cleaning to do and then he starts unpacking and asking me where I wanted stuff, I snapped and said PUT IT BACK IN THE DAMN BOX! I DON'T CARE! and then he got all mad and I was like "I told you I was grumpy and I just wanted to sit down!" So then I go back in the living room and he is gone (sitting on his computer) and there is a half empty box in the middle of the floor, I freaked again! And then he got mad again! I was like PLEASE STOP UNPACKING!

And then on my way to work this morning, the garage door is haning open and the light on (probably from last night) and I clearly asked him to make sure it was closed and locked!

Anyway, I guess I needed to rant too. It sounds like your husband is worse then mine, but it doesn't help that I think I am a bit OCD. But I totally knows how it feels to spend hours cleaning and then in 1/4 of the time you spent cleaning it, it is messy again.

LIKE I MEAN HOW hard is it to put your damn dishes in the dish-washer when you are done? Or garabage in the trash? Or dirty clothes in the hamper? Or close a door when your done? If he doesn't smarten up soon he is getting a talking to because I am going to go nuts soon!

I think from how on, I am not washing it unless it's in the laundry basket! haha

My SO is the same way. This morning, I counted 5 open drawers - just in the course of getting ready in a single morning!

Not to mention my future MIL is coming this weekend (a whole other world of drama...I just love it when people invite themselves to my home without asking, and then tell us they can't tell us exactly when they'll arrive - especially when her new husband has definite alcoholic tendencies and more than a little OCD about keeping a spotlessly immacculate home, and also gets really inappropriate when he drinks....) and I am trying to clean the house so its not a mad scramble on Saturday morning, only to have more stuff thrown around at every turn.

FRUSTRATING. But.....cleaning burns calories. Small consolation, I know, but hey, its something.

Cleaning does burn calories, I think that is why I have been dropping weight really quickly the last couple days. I ate horrible on the weekend but spent the whole time cleaning and painting! I wanna do it again in a couple weeks, haha. I are SOOO horrible and lost more this week then any other week since I started!

My ex-husband was the same way.I was embarrassed about how we lived.I later found out he told people i was too lazy to clean.I agree,this is a respect issue and you need to deal with it now and get him onboard.It is amazing the amount of resentment that will build up over this.I hope he isn't as thoughtless in other areas of your lives.Good luck!!!Don't give up until he makes the change.

Oh I'm so glad I'm not the only one who deals with this sort of problem! I've been battling this with him for the past 3 yrs...it's one of the biggest fights we have! And it's just getting so frustrating and annoying!!!

Are you the only one??? Are you kidding??? Hahahahahahaha....

Nope, honey you are NOT the only one. My husband is quite slobby himself. But we have a deal. We both work, so we're both bringing in the money. We don't keep separate accounts, it's OUR money. I take care of the bill paying.
He has his own bathroom & I have mine. He washes his own clothes & I wash mine. He takes care of the yard work, washing the cars, etc, and I take care of most of the regular-duty housework (dishes, tidying up the living room, etc.). I make him do the floors!

We have to share these things because #1 I ain't nobody's maid! #2, it is his house too! so he's equally responsible for the cleaning/upkeep of it! #3 - if he didn't help out, I'd have to beat him to death or shoot him I tell him "Your legs ain't broke & your hands work just fine - get busy bubba!"
It's very important that couples share the housework. If he just WON'T, you need to get medieval on his buttocks! There are times when I just don't feel like washing dishes, and I ask him to do them. Sometimes he does; sometimes he doesn't There are times when I just get so damn tired of seeing his dirty clothes NOT in the hamper, I just pick them all up & throw them out on the back deck. There are times when I clean HIS bathroom, because it's the bathroom that guests use when visiting. And there are times when he cooks me dinner, just because.

So it sounds to me like you need to have a long sit-down talk with your hubby. Don't do it when you're mad about the issue; do it when you two are eating dinner or something. Make "I" statements as opposed to "you"

"I really get angry when you leave your dirty clothes around."
instead of
"You just throw your clothes around, & it pisses me off."

Girl ... ya gotta whip him into shape!

People treat you the way you allow them to. He has been getting away with this for too long. Set some boundaries & don't give in.

My dh had a maid all his young life, so he didn't learn the basics of regular household maintenance. I knew what I was getting so it wasn't a surprise to me that he wasn't a very good housekeeper. Today is our 15th wedding anniversary.

It's been a long, hard struggle. I still do almost all of the housework, but we have developed a division of labor that, while not 100% equitable, is satisfactory. But it's taken A LOT of work and A LOT of struggle to get here. I had to boycott doing his laundry for a while. I had to significantly lower my standards. I also occasionally still feel disrespected. But then I try to focus on the fact that he works long hours, does all the bill paying, takes care of the yard, takes care of the animals, etc.

There is a huge difference between not being helpful with the housework and just throwing stuff on the floor,including garbage.

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.

Shortly after we moved in to our current house, we had central heating installed. It ended up being big fiasco and when all was said and done, we couldn't find the warranty or the instruction booklet. We'd had to have the installers out several times to fix problems and my SO was 100% CONVINCED that they had taken the warranty and instructions with them on one of their visits. I was pretty sure that the paperwork was in one of his many stacks that he had all over the house, but of course I couldn't say anything because the stacks are a very very sensitive topic. Two or three years later, he comes to me with a sheepish expression on his face and says that the workers must have snuck back into our house and replaced the furnace paperwork while we were sleeping--LOL. Turns out it was in one of his stacks after all. It was a good lesson and definitely helped with his sensitivity when I criticize over the stacks.

One thing that has helped is hiring a cleaning person to come in every two weeks. For one thing, I don't do the cleaning any more (woo-hoo--so worth every penny I spend on it). But, also, the cleaning people do a better job when the place is picked up, so I made a deal with my SO that if I paid for a cleaning person, he had to keep his stacks of paper confined to the office. So far, this has worked really well. He likes that the house gets cleaned every two weeks and I can deal with the stacks if they are confined to one room of the house. The day before the cleaning people come, we both go through the house a pick our stuff that we haven't put away.

Also, the passage of time has helped as well. I've mellowed as we've lived here longer. The fact is, there are lots of things I do that irritate him that he has learned to tolerate. And it's not like he doesn't do anything around here. He does take care of pretty much all the yardwork and take out the garbage. I feel like yardwork is a fair trade-off for cooking, but sometimes I have to remind myself of this. And he would cook if I asked him to, but since I am counting calories, I'd rather be responsible for our meals.

I solved the laundry problem with separate laundry hampers. I don't do his laundry, only my own laundry. If his laundry never gets washed, what do I care? Luckily he doesn't leave it laying around, but if he did, I'd probably just throw it into his hamper. I do end up doing the towels and sheets (I swear, did he never wash his towels when he lived alone?), but you have to pick your battles.

We do still struggle over the dishes, but he'll do them within 24 hours if I ignore them. The problem is that I sometimes have trouble ignoring them for 24 hours.

- Barbara

My husband is lazy too, kinda... he watches the kids destroy the house, while I am right behind them cleaning up. my 9 year old unstacks the dishwasher everyday and if my husband doesn't restack it, I do when I get home from work. I do laundry, my 9 year old clears the table and mows the yard. I do most general maintnence on the house. when I want something done I do it right away, or if the job is to big for me and my husband has already had a month to do it. I call his friends and ask them to bring their tools out with them when they come out to play saturday night poker. then it get's done and they give him **** all night.

Granted that hasn't convinced him to do it himself but I got it done and I got to have fun listening to his friends tease him about it.