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Do you still do all the laundry?
June 26, 2012 - 4:01pm
Whether you're in a heterosexual relationship or not, pretty much every cleaning product is advertised for the heterosexual female demographic.
So, we all know this is bullshit. Or is it?
Whether you're in a relationship or not, how traditional is your idea of housework?
I don't vacuum. I rarely dust. The blond guy does that because I'm allergic. We are equally likely to do the grocery shopping, meal planning and tidying up around the house. We share the cooking and the dishes. He's more likely to take out the garbage because he fusses about it more. I'm more likely to do the laundry because I love my clothes and he doesn't really care about his - consequently, he's more likely to be haphazard about it and potentially ruin my stuff. Clothes shopping for the kids is my job, but mainly because I like doing it and he lacks the patience for the fine distinctions a teenage or tween girl will make when trying to make a decision about this shirt vs that shirt.
My eldest daughter currently does most of the laundry, anyway. She gets paid extra on allowance day for doing it and it's a good life skill to have. If we had boys, they'd be learning how to do it, too.
I buy the cheapest laundry detergent I can find, same as with every other cleaning product. I have dust bunnies in the kitchen, and probably in every room here. I do a bit of cleaning once every year, I just don't care what the house looks like. I cut the grass all summer, though, because I like a nice looking property. Inside I could care less about.
This is a funny one, as it is a fairly strict division of labour in our house.
I wash, hang dry and do all the mending. She folds, puts away, and makes sure things wind up in the wash pile before they can stand up on their own,
In our case it is a commercial operation, involving a steady flow of business sheets and towels.
She has been lobbying for a machine dryer. Over my dead body.
(edit)
Laundry soap: borax, washing soda and a small amount of grated bar soap.
I rather enjoy doing the laundry. It's easy, for one thing. And I like my clothes clean and to smell good. So I do most of the laundry. I also do most of the cooking cause I enjoy cooking. I really don't like general cleaning (e.g. the kitchen, bathroom, anything involving scrubbing). And I do all of the outdoor stuff (e.g. mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow, etc.) cause I love being outside.
Not sure who enjoys scrubbing the kitchen or bathroom, Mr. Tea?
Hubby and I are fairly even, with a few deviations. We use wood heat and I have absolutely no desire, nor the strength to chainsaw trees, block them up, split them, etc. I help stack them in the wood shed. So, as he is doing 97% of this job, I do all the laundry. (if he does it, he insists on using the dryer as well, which drives me crazy when the sun and air will do the job!) Cooking, dishes, shopping are 50/50. He does the vacuuming, as apparently if I do it I do not do as thorough of a job.
Child care is even as well, we each get our "nights out". Diaper changing - we both ensure that is 50/50, lol...pretty much down to the last diaper.
I think you can have an equal divying up of house work, without having an equal division of each particular chore. I also think housework is not just laundry and cleaning, but includes all those other things like small repair jobs, yard maintenance, garbage, etc. I absolutely refuse to do things like deal with plugged drains or other "icky" things, so I am fine with doing more of another item.
My biggest beef I think (and I generalize majorly here - so please men feel free to pounce), is that in my experience men simply don't notice things the way women do. Ie, to me the bathroom looks filthy, but hubby doesn't notice. At first I thought this was a cop out, but it is sincere obliviousness. He doesn't mind taking equal turns, but just has to be told. Which, I found the hardest part as the "telling" can be nearly as frustrating as the "doing".
Anyways, my mother is always raving "You are so lucky to have a man like that, your father never once bathed you, changed a diaper, etc.". My father was pretty "that is women's work" old-school, so I made a resolution fairly early-on to never marry a man with that mindset.
I do the laundry. I don't really mind. He will do it but I prefer that he only treat his clothes - mine need a bit more care. I fold, but refuse to sort his socks - too tedious.
Long ago we figured out that a cleaning service would greatly increase our marital happiness. In between visits I dust more than he does, but he does a lot of outside work that I really appreciate since we bought our first house this year.
I'd say that's fair. Though without getting gender specific I can tell you that those things go both ways, at least in our household.
We do have a clear division in some things - but I'd say it is built more on skills. In our case some of them are what one would consider a traditional gender roles; but some are completely reversed.
I have terrible arthritis, and just finished a day of gardening and cutting grass in warm, humid conditions. I'm beat, in a lot of pain, and wish I could just die. But the property looks terrific.
Boom Boom, I had no idea you were so bourgeois ;)
Boom Boom constitutes the whole middle class in Kegaska.
Hahahaha!
I'm retired and my wife is not. I make sure that she does not have to do anything around the house when she comes home. I have always done the laundry in my relationships. That started when I was married the first time and we used laundromats. My wife would get hit on if she went by herself and it seemed like a real big waste of time to have two of us sitting watching the dryer go around and around so I started doing the laundry by myself.
I do have someone who comes in weekly to do the heavy cleaning because I have a bad back and arthritis in my knees and cannot bend over to do things like properly wash floors or clean a toilet.
In retrospect it has always been about who had the time to do the chores. When I worked construction I was unemployed in the winter so I always did all the chores then but when I worked camp jobs It was nice to come home and not have to do any housework. Mind you unlike most of the guys in camps I never brought dirty clothes home I always did my own laundry in camp.
I do most of the laundry. I only work part-time from home and he works a few days on 24/7 type work, so it's just easier for me to do it. He will put in his own loads if he needs something right away or he messes up something really bad so there is no expectation that it's always my job. He irons though. His clothes tend to need ironing more then mine so he takes care of that which is good because he is much, much better at it then I am. If he's home and I pull a load out of the dryer we'll just both fold it together.
I do most of the daily type cleaning but it's again more that I am home more then he is so it just makes sense from a logistical view rather then a view based on gender expectation. He's capable of cleaning and has no problems doing it. If I go away it's clean when I get back. Sometimes even more clean then I keep it. lol When he's home we work on bigger jobs together and he'll vaccumm or sweep. Both of us do yard work.
I also do most of the cooking but that's more because I enjoy doing it. On the days that I don't feel like it he'll whip something up. And if we both are 'blah' about it, we'll have an 'on your own day' or get take-out.
Laundry, like cooking, is best done by those who do it best. Works with us. Mostly
We do the laundry together or one of us goes to the laundromat by oursel;ves. Cleaning is pretty split tho she does vacuuming (cuz I hate it) and I do the bathrooms (cuz she hates it) and everything else tends to be a joint effort, tho I do outside stuff and she tends to compensate with dishes
When my son was a teenager and we would go away I always knew when he had his buddies in because the place was spotless when we would get home. That was being a smart lad because therefore we never complained about him having friends in when we went away for weekends.
The pic at #13 reminded me of how the professional cooking field was re-invented by Auguste Escoffier with a military hierarchical structure, and that it is mostly dominated by men. Escoffier's innovation was technical; his cooking style was based on that of Marie Antoine Careme.
Now of course we have Gordon Ramsay and Iron Chef. A friend of mine who is in the profession says that it rivals the music industry for substance abuse problems (makes sense).
Same thing for making and fixing clothes. When it is in the home very few men know where to begin with a serger or sewing machine. But the moment it becomes tailoring it is more the domain of men, and in fashion design most of the rock stars are men.
I can't think of an equivalent when it comes to laundry and other house work (though there is Mr. Clean), but I am sure if toilet scrubbing, childcare and personal care ever became lucrative and sexy that would get taken over too.
Friends in the industry tell me that the Gordon Ramsday style of chef leadership is the norm and in fact hes mild compared to a lot of the others.
It's so unsexy that even professional marketers wouldn't possibly make it marketable to anyone other than domestic drudges -- mostly women, whether professional or domestic.
I dunno my hubby thinks it's pretty sexy when I clean in my underwear..... ;)
Oops! wrong forum
Ms. C. does the laundry; I do most of the cooking.
I'm back to doing the laundry and cleaning. I had help for a week, but now I'm doing it myself again - maybe once a month, instead of once a year. I hope I can control the dust bunnies - how the heck do they build up so fast?
The mechanical dishwasher does our dishes. We both perform the load and unload bits of the operation as the need arises. Ditto for laundry, where mostly we load, unload and fold our own. Communal towels and linen folding is first come first served. I'm exclusively in charge of the garbage and recycle department, which comes with its own office out back, and where Mondays at 0630 are especially bright and cheerful. I'm handy with mop and broom at need, am the only ironer in a house that requires ironing five days per week in the morning, and I can sew a pretty mean stitch when required. The kitchen itself is always a work in progress, but of the four + dog in the household, two of us at least chip in to keep everything from being buried under.
Yesterday I swept and steam-mopped the downstairs floors. Who knew they were a lovely golden wood-grain? Hell, I thought we had wall-to-wall carpeting.
We herded the wild girls downstairs to help us clear up the basement. There was a lot of griping, but that slowed after I explained that they could make decisions about their stuff or *I* could make the decisions for them [cue ominous chord].
We got rid of a ton of stuff that we don't love enough to move and wound up with a much more functional space.
That's always a great incentive. We're still stuck with plastic doll houses and My Little Ponies from the 80s. I think we need to be more hard core. That, or sell the house and rent a massive waste bin for all the crap that we won't be taking with us.