Chillybear posted to the boards about how she and her husband had a different approach to chores:
My husband and I are still “newlyweds” we’ve been married for about a year and 1/2 and have lived together for over 3 years. …
The issue has been dividing up chores and household responsibilities. … He’s never aware of the things that need to be done, and if i ask him to do things I often get home and find them not done and his response is “i forgot” but he had plenty of time to watch the netflix movie that came in the mail. He does do things around the house but they are often not what I feel is a priority. (washing his car, filling the holes the dog dug, etc).
As she explained later: “I think a lot of the problem is that his cleanliness threshold is a lot higher than mine. Pair that with his ability to procrastinate and I end up doing the lion share of chores.”
I love Chillybear’s term, “cleanliness threshold”! Differences in our cleanliness thresholds is something Mrs. Bee and I have struggled with over the years. I literally see the world in a dramatically different way than my wonderful wife. She will look around the house and see it as dirty-bordering-on-filthy. I will look around the house and see it as cluttered but fine. It’s a very different way to see the world, and has driven a lot of our household issues around divvying up the chores.
I was trying to think of a way to explain it to Bee, and came up with this analogy. Imagine that your whole life, you’ve only ever refilled your gas tank when the fuel tank was just above the E. Then you get married, and your spouse starts refilling the fuel tank when it hits 1/4 Empty. Months go by, and you find that you never think about or buy gas. Then one day, your spouse gets upset because she always has to refill and pay for the gas and you never do.
You might be taken aback. The thing is, you did have a system. If the gas tank ever got close to the E, then you would promptly refill it. Your system was working for you, and you got by for years with it. Then someone came by and disrupted your system, and then got mad at you as a result.
This dynamic applied to so many aspects of our domestic life:
* Doing the dishes: I would usually wait until the dishes piled up and then do them all at once.
* Doing the laundry: I used to buy extra packs of underwear just so I wouldn’t have to the laundry more than once a month.
* Toilet: I would scrub the toilet maybe once every 1-2 months. (It would never occur to me to clean the outside of the toilet.)
* Dust: I literally can not see dust. It is invisible to me. I would hire a maid every now and then though, to take care of things like this.
I eventually changed my ways and became a more equal partner in the house. But it was a path fraught with conflict and misunderstandings — not just for me, but for a lot of my fellow life travelers who have low cleanliness thresholds. (There are some people who have high cleanliness thresholds, for whom none of this is an issue. And there are others who refuse to do housework, for which none of this is relevant. This post is for people like me, who just don’t see messiness.)
If you’re in a relationship with someone that has a low cleanliness threshold, there’s one thing I would emphasize. It’s important that each party see the other person’s perspective on the cleanliness threshold as equally valid. I don’t feel like Mrs. Bee’s cleanliness threshold is more valid than my own. She just has a personal preference, and because I love her (and because I want to set a good example for our kids), I’ve learned to adjust.
I see a lot of relationships where there’s a mismatch in cleanliness thresholds. The trouble often starts when the cleaner person starts criticizing the messier person for their inability to conform to a higher cleanliness threshold. This starts a cycle of defensiveness and/or nagging that usually doesn’t end well… or ends with the cleaner person just deciding to do all the chores.
Bee did all the chores for a long time, although we would have a maid come in and help when we could afford it. I would do Bee’s online chores in return, helping build out her websites (like Hellobee!). But eventually that system broke down, as we got busier with two kids. Also, the sheer volume of chores increases dramatically with two kids. It’s hard to watch the kids and maintain the house, especially with two working parents. The house started to slip under even my low cleanliness thresholds.
What worked for me was:
* Letting the mess slide under my cleanliness threshold. Once the gas tank hit E, I re-activated all of my dormant cleaning systems. Once I was cleaning regularly, I started doing the chores more regularly until I was ready to up the frequency of cleaning to match Mrs. Bee’s standards.
* Doing the chores without supervision. I do all the cleaning chores early in the morning, on the days when Charlie wakes up around 5 or 6 am. It’s a lot easier to do chores when you are alone.
* Realizing that I was setting a good example for our kids. I want our kids — especially our son — to see that both mom and dad contribute equally to the household.
* Thinking about chores as a way to express my love. Acts of Service aren’t really my love language, but Mrs. Bee took the test and it came up high on her love language list. So when I’m doing the chores, I think about how much I love my wife and how this will hopefully show her in some small way how I feel.
* Taking responsibility for each chore. It helped that I was in charge of the chores, instead of doing stuff off of a honey-do list administered by someone else.
In any case, every household is different and this is what worked for us.
I’d love to hear from other mismatched couples out there: does one of you have a higher cleanliness threshold than the other? How do you guys deal with it?
Household Chores part 2 of 5
1. 9 Ways to become a more equal partner in household chores by Mr. Bee2. The Cleanliness Threshold or: How I Learned To Stop Being Messy and Love Chores by Mr. Bee
3. Chore Schedule by printables
4. Home Management Binder by Mrs. Bee
5. Chore Swap: swapping chores for the weekend by Mr. Bee
kiwi / 506 posts
Lol our problem is that we’re fairly well matched – we both hate chores and are chronically lazy, but love a clean house. So we usually wind up both feeling fairly frustrated by the state of the place! We’re both fine at big spring clean type efforts, its the endlessness of the every day stuff that defeats me in particular. It’s just never done!
clementine / 914 posts
@aunt pol: agreed! Though pregnancy has made DH and I more aware of our surroundings and slip into our assigned chores more. He does laundry, cat boxes, and all the yard work. I typically do the kitchen/cooking/dishes. We are both laid back about the house but are really growing to despise clutter more and more!
GOLD / pomegranate / 3849 posts
DH totally has dust blinders too Mr. Bee. I’m far neater than hubs and have to REALLY work on not nagging. We’ve set up google alerts for the weekly cleanups but I still struggle with the clutter that I come home to everyday (DH works from home). It drives me bonkers to leave a clean kitchen in the morning and come home to dishes in the sink and wrappers on the counter.
hostess / pineapple / 12856 posts
DH gets major props for changing his ways and moving up to my cleanliness threshold. Cleaning isn’t our issue. Ours is that he slow to do home projects that need to get done and you can’t hire people to do every single project – it’s just not economical once you own a house so I just have to wait until he gets motivated to tackle the tasks.
blogger / cantaloupe / 5125 posts
Oh this is a great post and Mr. Bee I love the Gaz comparison. I will have to explain my husband just that. We don’t communicate equally (as proven in our marriage courses) and his and my cleanliness threashold is clearly not the same.
Cleaning for me includes putting stuff away in the respected places, where my husband is just throw it in a place no one sees. This apart many other issues. Oh…. I can’t wait to have this convo with him. Ha… tonight might be a good night, seeing the cleaning ladies are coming to clean the whole house.
guest
This is my problem too, although my husband is much neater and tidier than I am. We have lived together for 6 years, and this is still THE THING we argue over. With a child everything became harder, and I found him doing most of the work. Its not that I won’t clean, or don’t clean, my trigger for when to clean is different.
The sad thing is, its almost always the person with lower standards that ends up having to adjust to the new higher standards.
We still struggle with this, but I have found myself cleaning/picking up more frequently. Bear in mind this has taken years for me to get to more similar threshold has my husband.
GOLD / nectarine / 2361 posts
DH actually helps out with a lot of the chores, but my issue is that he doesn’t clean to my standards. Like when he does dishes, there’ll always be 1 or 2 still sitting in the sink. I never understand why he does that. I used to nitpick at how he cleans, but then I feel bad because he is helping out after all. I don’t want to discourage him. So now I just do a run through after he’s done and finish off anything that’s left behind.
pear / 1601 posts
My husband is definitely cleaner than he used to be since meeting me 9 years ago; but he’s still more organized than “clean” though. He also doesn’t find the need to vacuum or dust once a week which bothers me to no end b/c we do have a small dog, but I’ve sort of let it go since having our first child almost 3 years ago. Granted, our dog isn’t a shedding dog but still… she’s still a dog. I don’t think he will ever clean to my standards but I do appreciate that he helps out when he does. He is responsible for ALL dishes at night now and on the weekends when he’s home. I used to do pretty much everything b/c I stayed at home while preggers with our first child, but I have since let him take over some responsibilities even if he doesn’t do it when I’d like it to be done. As long as it gets done I’m okay with it. I’m just too pregnant right now and too tired to deal with it. Probably not a long term solution for us but it works for now. I’m sure once #2 comes along we’ll have to revisit our household responsibilities again.
clementine / 903 posts
I’ve been reading all the comments since this post went live. Since it was my board posting that inspired the discussion i felt that i should comment
@Mr. Bee: Thank you for posting this I think you hit the nail on the head with the gas analogy.
Over the weekend, I had a discussion with my husband and told him some of the suggestions that were given. We have since made a chore calender that gets posted each week along with our meal plan. And the chores are assigned to each person. We are also looking into hiring a cleaning service to do monthly deep cleans so that WE don’t have to spend my one day off that week cleaning and we can enjoy the day together.
admin / papaya / 11186 posts
@Chillybear: Thanks for being so open with your thoughts on the boards!
That’s wonderful that you guys had a discussion about this stuff. Please keep us posted!!
cherry / 198 posts
My husband told me that it helped him when I helped to verbally retrain his definition of the concept of a “mess,” that that really helped him grasp what it was that I was asking for in our living conditions. Like I’d say “Can you please clean up the mess in the hallway,” and he’d say “What mess?” thinking that there must be some pile of trash that the dog got into, and would be confused when all it was was the toolbox contents spread all over the floor where he left them when he was searching for a screwdriver. When I said “That mess, the tools all over the floor” he kind of had a lightbulb like “Oh, we consider that to be a mess? Okay.” We did that several times with similar situations, and now he has a much better understanding of where my threshold of cleanliness is. He has made a big effort to adapt to my level, which I very much appreciate.
GOLD / cantaloupe / 5787 posts
i think i have a higher threshold than my hubby, so he’s always getting upset with me. even though i think he makes most of the mess and i’m always feeling like i’m cleaning up after him. problem is, he won’t clean. he’ll wait for me to, so that’s why he blows up when he can’t take it anymore. that’s why we hired a cleaner to help out once a week.
persimmon / 1253 posts
My cleanliness threshold isn’t high but my husband’s is very low. It’s funny ’cause guests will often ask, “how do you keep the house so clean?” while my husband sees every little thing that is out of place,….sigh. Over the years, I have just learned to keep the house just under his cleanliness threshold because I love him and can see that a messy house (by his standards) does make him uncomfortable…..that, and to avoid arguments. I figure that he can’t really change how he sees the rooms but I can be a bit more diligent in picking up.
BTW, that gas analogy is right on, lol.
GOLD / pear / 1905 posts
We didn’t move in together until over a year of dating, but at the 6 month mark DH was basically living with me. He went to his apartment only 1-2 times per week and I would do all the cleaning on those days. It didn’t take long for me to start feeling resentful, but once I brought it up to DH I found out he had no idea I had been doing all the work and cleaning had just never occurred to him. We then divided up the chores based on our preferences and have never looked back.
The key, like you said, is that we each ‘own’ our chores. I never tell him the floors are looking dirty and need to be vacuumed. Even if I feel that way. And instead of telling him the trash needs to be taken out, I’ll just do it myself if it smells (although it’s very rare since he takes it out almost every day). And he’s taken such ownership over the dishes that if I step in and try to help it actually backfires because he wants them done a certain way and will usually rewash things. Every aspect of the chore from purchasing supplies to doing it on a regular basis is done by whoever ‘owns’ the chore.
It made for a funny visit to the Oreck store when we bought our $600 vacuum. The salesguy was so confused and kept trying to sell the vacuums to me, meanwhile my DH was the only one paying attention and asking questions.
blogger / pomegranate / 3139 posts
Our general threshold is relatively the same. The conflict comes with the little quirks — Papa Y thinks a crusty ring of toothpaste at the mouth of the tube is the end of the world, while I can’t fathom how he thinks it’s cool to leave his toenail clippings on the floor. Ew.