5 "Man Chores" That Will Get Him To Do Housework
Advice on how to divide housework. First tip? Get him to do man chores!
In today's piece "13 Male Habits The World Could Do Without," number 13 includes "pleaning," defined as "cleaning something so poorly we're prompted to say, 'Man, this was a piss-poor cleaning.'"
Love Buzz is quite familiar with this phenomenon: man says he'll clean his mess in the kitchen. Man spends some time with Windex and paper towels and proclaims said room spotless. When you go in five minutes later to retrieve the hummus from the fridge you find grease on the stove, crumbs on the floor, and pieces of… something, stuck the counter. When questioned, man says, "It looks clean to me!"
According to Simon Oaks, author of Will Marry for Food, Sex and Laundry, men aren't wired for certain chores. He cites the (made-up) proverb: "Give a man a clean kitchen and he'll make a mess of the place after one meal. Teach a man to clean a kitchen and you'll probably have to clean up after him anyway." Read "Chores for Two: Why Men Don't Pitch In"
So how do you handle housework when one of you is a repeat pleaning offender? Oaks devotes a whole chapter of his book to this; here are a few highlights.
1. Ask him do "man chores." These include things that are dangerous (climbing a ladder to clean the gutters), require tools (pruning the bushes with a chain saw) or have obvious results (putting up shelves. Bonus here, since he can use a power drill.) If he does some heavy lifting (literally and metaphorically) you might feel better about doing the more detail-oriented tasks. Read "Advice on Divvying up Household Chores"
2. Trick him into helping out. You've split the tasks and still find yourself doing more? Turn regular old housework into a man chore. Let him choose a replacement for your new vacuum—one that has three speeds and detachable parts. Or ask him to clean the bathroom using dangerous chemicals.
Discussion
I think this is a pretty good idea, but my concern would be, what if you wanted to reverse the roles? My wife barely does any housework. I know she wasn't really raised to do housework, her mother is a self proclaimed pack-rat with an aversion to cleaning. On my days off I average 6-10 loads of dishes, 4-8 loads of laundry, and a couple hours of serious house cleaning.
I don't mind, I was raised by my grandparents, and was often told, "If you want clean clothes, you better learn to do laundry!" The same with dishes and cooking.
I really don't mind doing housework, it gives me time to relax sometimes, and plan how I will do the next chore.
Except, with my wife, she claims she's worn out for the day after one load of dishes, or done for the week after one load of laundry. Tells me she cleaned the apartment, but when I come home, it looks worse than when I left. I've taken to taking pictures of the place before I leave, and show them to her when I come home, to let her know I can tell that little to nothing has been done.
I wouldn't have a problem with it, but she tells her friends how she does so much, complains that I never help enough, or make worse messes than her. Until our son told on her, and told her friends and family that it was in fact me doing most, if not all of the work.
It also doesn't help that we are expecting our second child soon. She uses that as an excuse to not do housework, but I remind her that the doctor insisted on her getting up and doing something, either housework, or walking around outside, preferably both.
I gave up recently, and did no housework for two weeks. That resulted in a visit from school officials, and social services. And I was to blame, apparently. Even with my son telling them how much I did, and how little his mother did, I was told if I wanted to keep our son, and apartment, *I* had to get up and do more.
Two days later, they came back because one of my wife's friends contacted them and told them about how they had known her for years and knew she rarely did housework, and how whenever they visited, I was the one doing the cleaning while she let garbage, dishes and papers pile up on her side of the bed, and by her chair.
So they recommended parenting classes for her, and would send someone over to supervises her while she does housework, at least half an hour a day to start, then after a week, an hour a day.
That lasted two weeks, then the worker quit because my wife was too much trouble, and needed way too much motivation and praise to do simple tasks, such as picking up the plate she just used and putting it in the sink...
Sounds to me like you'll end up doing all the boring, dirty chores that have to be done over and over and over again while your husband gets the fun once a month jobs. And then you can help him do the yard work!
For us what has worked best is having different responsibilities - you do the laundry, I'll take care of shopping. Whoever is in doing something is in charge of it. They do it their way.
A simple schedule can work to - you cook tonight, I'll cook tomorrow.
I'm not sure what to do about pleaning. One option is to be in charge of different rooms in the house. Then if one person isn't really cleaning, their room will start to look bad.
I loved the article "Man Chores...." and it was not only factual but humorous as well. However, I would like to add a new and brilliant idea. Share the chores??? Oh, yes! My husband and I share the rain gutter cleaning at our house because it is so much fun now that we have our new "gutter cleaning tool." He thought I just bought him a new "hot tool" but he soon found out that we both love it and fight over who gets to use it first!
We share the job, get it done in half the time and the time we saved, we share with each other at the beach. Find more time to spend together for those other chores and a lot more time left to get a sun tan for two!
Send your man to get his "hot" new tool on-line. It's called the "Gutter Clutter Buster." And, have fun together and both of you will never have to fight over who is going to drag that clumsy ladder again and put a big ole' smile on his face and yours.
cjkay
As the inventor of the Gutter Clutter Buster , I just had to post a thank you for posting such nice things about my newly invented, American made, patent pending, "hot new tool". cjkay is right about how easy the job is with this tool and it does seem to make it a lot easier to get the man in your life up off the couch when he doesn't have to fight the ladder and handle that nasty, slimy junk in the gutter. Of course if you ladies try this innovative way of cleaning the rain gutters, you may want to do this job yourselves and get the hubby to clean the toilets. Please visit our web site at www.gutterclutterbuster.com and read the testimonials on the contact page. This really will be on of the best tool you ever add to your household.
Thanks again and God bless you all,
Robert Kay, President
Gutter Clutter Buster,LLC.
sales@gutterclutterbuster.com
