I was talking with a friend at work today about her and her husband struggling to overcome the great debate on chores. It’s just one of those things that we have been talking about for weeks now. She wants to have her husband help her out more around the house. He feels like he’s helping out more than enough and that she’s not seeing the results of what he is doing. Both people in the relationship are just not happy because the other one feels like they are doing more on their and then the other.
This made me think back to my early days of living in a rental house with my brother-in-law went Ben and I first got married. Needless to say about was a crash course on how to handle a crap ton of stuff very early on in life. One of the things that helps me the most was understanding how to communicate with guys, and how communicating with guys is a lot different from communicating with girls.
That’s why it is not our husbands fault they’re not doing chores. But it is ours instead. We seem to think that we can go ahead and just say how we feel and throw out these verbally confusing words full of emotions and feelings and have her husband’s understand this.
Please keep in mind husbands are amazing creatures but they are not mind readers, and it is not their job to become mind readers. Instead it is our job to go ahead and help them understand what we want from them. This clear communication makes a big difference and getting stuff done. It seriously my number one tip to any type of issue or just improvement in general when it comes to a marriage.
If both people are not on the same page and they don’t understand the action steps that are needed to get to the next spot you’re never going to get anywhere. So back to chores. I was living in a house with two guys one was my amazing new husband my other was my amazingly lovable brother-in-law. Needless to say it was a little bit of a bachelor pad and it wasn’t up to my neat free cleaning standards . So we decided to go ahead and implement a chore list and rotating schedule. This way I couldn’t bitch that something wasn’t getting done and everyone was held accountable. The last thing I wanted to do was be a nagging wife my first couple months into the game. I saw how that could backfire and I didn’t want to go down that road.
So what I did is I sat down and I made a list of all the chores I needed to be done in the house on a weekly basis everything from taking out the trash to putting away the laundry to sweeping the floors, ect. What I ended up doing after that is taking this list to the boys and asking who wants to do what and letting the guys have a little bit of saying and what chores they wanted to do. Once all the chores were divided, I took that list and tweaked it a little bit so that it had all of our chores under our names for the week.
Then I took it and posted it in the kitchen, which for us it was the most public place that we all knew what time. I also posted a pen next to it. Some of the reasoning behind this was I wanted to make sure that there could be no excuse as to I didn’t know what chores do I couldn’t find the list my email, or my internet wasnt working, ect. I went old school and it worked. I also made sure to keep a pen next to that list so that whenever anyone created or completed a chore they could go ahead and mark it off, removing the excuse of oh I did that chore but didn’t mark it off because I couldn’t find a pen. This was an excuse free zone and everyone was responsible for their section for the entire week.
The best part about all of this was choosing a we had a discussion about chores and what was realistic and what was me being a little bit crazy. It got all of our issues out on the table. The boys finally understood why it bothered me so much to have things on the dining room table and I was able to understand why they had certain quarks of their own. With everything out on the table, everyone could understand what it would take to keep our home clean. The best part also was that we all were held accountable. If two out of three people did their chores then we could go look at the third person and say hey what happened.
It wasn’t an option for us to go back and do the chore for them. Instead if someone failed to do their chores, we will point it out to them.
Some amazing side effects of having a clean home was that it started developing very clear and strong lines of communication between my husband and I. It wasn’t just my husband and I learning what we wanted to be responsible for, but are also was putting the pressure of having a third person witnessed all of this creation of foundation in our marriage. It is not easy to live with someone regardless of how much you love them.
If I had an issue I couldn’t just hide and talk to Ben about it, I actually had to bring it out to both of the guys in the household is it okay here’s an issue and here’s why. It also gave me a crash course in explaining things to guys. This is why i believe it is not our husbands fault they don’t do chores it is ours. If you’re not explaining to your husband or your boyfriend why something is bothering you and they’re still not getting it it is your duty to continue to figure out how to explain it to them so that they understand you.
When you say “I feel I am cleaning too much and I want you to help me more”. Your husband doesn’t know what to do with that. What he is hearing is I’m feeling overwhelmed and you can’t help me. Instead of saying “I feel overwhelmed when you promise to help me do the dishes and you do not instead you going to play video games. It makes me feel like you are not considering something that you promised me a priority and that hurts my feelings because I feel neglected. It’s making me question your word when you promise to do something for me. If you can’t do the dishes just let me know and we can go from there.”
This is giving your husband very clear action set an action achievable goals. Which is something that they can work with and everyone ends up with better results.
In the comments below, tell me how you and your husband had the chore conversation. How do you divide up house hold duties? What are you working on improving?
