so what all DO your med spouses help with?

I was shocked to read that so many people's DHs help with laundry.

Basically, if it's in the house, it's my job. DH does anything outside, and occasionally he'll "cook" (as in, fix us a couple sandwiches or fry some hamburger).

I've been feeling down b/c with two toddlers and a big pregnant belly, our house is almost never clean. But now that I'm reading that so many people's DHs have regular household chores (and that the bed doesn't get made in a lot of people's houses!) I wonder if I'm being too picky.

Do most of you divide your household chores with your spouses? And do you work outside the home? (I kind of feel like the house is my responsibility, since I'm staying home.)

[rainbabies]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

i stay home, but dh does his fair share.

he does dishes, bathes kids, vacuumes, sweeps, mops, bathrooms, mows the lawn, the litter box....

pretty much anything that needs to be done. i'm a lucky girl. dh has no problem chipping in.

[Cumberland]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

He really doesnt have regular chores, but will do anything I ask without complaint- cooking, dishes, folding clothes, etc. We have long ago established that his schedule of getting things done is different from mine. If he had regular jobs like the dishes, he would do them, but it would take two days to get done, laundry-only after he went commando a day or two. Then we would fight, I would do it and get resentful so me asking him to do stuff works well.

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

My dh will generally help out with whatever I ask him to. On occasion he'll offer - last weekend he suggested he take down the clean basket of laundry and fold it while he watched tv. If I weren't so damn pregnant I'd have jumped him right there! He seems to have an aversion to putting laundry away - so I put away mine and the kids, he's responsible for his, but it will often sit in the basket until I'm in need of it and get pissy with him to take care of it.

He's a great help when we have company, and he's not picky about the condition of the house, so if I'm not feeling up to maintaining it - he's not a jerk about it. Every once in a while he'll go on a little tanget about something never being taken care of, but it's always on the back of something else, & just how he chooses to vent. Kind of like the kid that bites when he's tired. :huh:

[Momo]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

DH does 90% of the shopping and the weekend cooking. We share mowing & trash duty. We are blessed in that we have a housekeeper /child-minder extraordinaire.
Now that my foot is broke Dh will have to really step up!

[Vanquisher]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

This is hard to answer. Dh will help with anything and everything I ask him to, when he is HERE. So, yeah, that happens a lot. I couldn't keep up with the yard, so I had to hire out a lawn guy. That's my one and only hired out service.

I pretty much do everything. I keep the house clean. I run all the errands. I do all the cooking. I do all the shopping. I do all the running kids to activities. I make sure the kids are signed up for activities, have their necessary supplies, go to appointments, and generally everything that has to do with anything of that nature. I do all the gift buying for his side and my side of the families. I pay all the bills. I do anything outside that doesn't fall under "lawn guy" duties. I clean the cars. I maintenence the cars. I do car registrations. I research buying things. I am in control of everything - his life, my life, the kids lives. A few weeks ago I scheduled his dentist appointment (first one he's had in years) on a day that I thought he could make it and reminded him two weeks before, a week before, two days before, the day of, and made him set a reminder in his phone.

When dh is here though, he will absolutely do anything I ask him to without complaint. He will go without sleep to help me (as much as possible). He will even let me sleep and not do anything while he cooks, cleans, takes care of the kids, etc. He tries to help me as much as possible, and I try to help him as much as possible. In truth, I come out on the bitchier side of this more often than not. :mydoc:

That's not to say that he never gets down time or gets to have fun, but it is rare. It sucks, but I hope we can both have more time freedom in about, oh, 10 months and 3 weeks?

[migirl]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

DH does all the yardwork, mowing, etc. If it's inside the house, I do it (I also do the grocery shopping, run errands, manage finances, make/keep appointments...). I sort of like doing housework and keeping a tidy house , and since I'm home with the kids I have more opportunity to straighten up and clean here or there than DH does. If I asked him to he would definitely step up and help out, but I feel like his free time at home with us is so limited that I'd rather he play with our kids than scour the bathroom. :huh:

[SuzySunshine]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

DH does all the yardwork and basically anything that needs to be done outside including snow removal, ice, etc. He helps out in the house too when asked but since I'm here a lot more then he is, it is usually me. I don't mind but when he makes more work for me then I mind.

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

DH sometimes does his oun laundry.
He will come to the grocery store with me if I beg. He would go by himself probably but would spend too much.
He helps with the baby.
He claims that he will do things if I ask, but just does not notice that things need to be done But, if I ask him to clean up after dinner, he will load the dishwasher but not wipe the counters or wash the stuff that does not go in the dishwasher, so I might as well do it myself :huh:
He waters the plants, but not always, so I still have to go and check if he has done them each night
So, I do 90% of the stuff at home, and all of the financial stuff.
If he has free time he does fun stuff rather than helps, I am such a pushover. It is easier than fighting.
It has just always been this way with us, whether I am working or not.
BUT, he never, ever complains about what I cook or if the place is a mess. Then I would get mad!

[DCJenn]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

It depends entirely on the call schedule but generally I do all finances, the laundry and I mow the yard. He does the dishes (I call him Dish Boy, which he just loooooves) I have learned that I have to fold the laundry as it's coming out of the dryer or it sits in a pile until I need something. I put away my clothes and dude's clothes, The big dude is responsible for his own undies.

Back when he wore a uniform that required ironing, he did his own as apparently I didn't iron it crisply enough. I do my own ironing.

We both vacuum which in a house with two dogs (one long-haired) and two cats, we would suffocate in the fur if it wasn't dealt with a few times a week.

We both go grocery shopping and now that I have the delivery service, it's been great.

I don't allow him to use power tools or anything sharp because he has no sense of where he is in the time-space continuum. (and he wonders why I don't want him to get a motorcycle.) (and oddly enough Nikolai has the same problem. Some day they're both going to fall off the porch and I'll find them in a heap in the yard.)

I do the bathrooms because he doesn't see bathroom grime. If he does see it, it clearly doesn't have the same impact as it does me.

During intern year, residency, fellowship and while studying for the boards, he did jack shit most of the time. I found this board shortly after a temper tantrum that involved me cleaning the cat pan for the 1000th time while he played his space alien killing computer game in his underwear.

Jenn

[alison]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

I do 90% of the bills and intend to still have dh do some of them. I don't want to take over, just because he messed up, because I think he still needs to stay involved (even if it means there will be more screw-ups in our future. )

I do all the cooking, almost all of the grocery shopping, laundry, dry cleaning.

He does ALL the tidying, picks up after me, makes the bed, dishes (pre-wash, load, unloading). He has to yell at me to soak my dishes (he hates American dishwashers - in Germany, you don't have to soak nor pre-wash, really!)

We both: fold laundry (I dump it on the bed, and we don't get to sleep unless it gets put away *snicker*), wash the car, share the duty of deep cleaning like crazy people before relatives come to visit, and work on his chief stuff.

Call me old-fashioned, but if he didn't keep up with his end of the tasks, I would probably do them myself (he doesn't know this! Shhhhh!). He's the one working more hours at a more strenuous job, and I'm home earlier and more often than he is.

[alison]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

And my personal favorite: I make him a lunch everyday!

(I have a feeling this might get mentioned in his graduation roast next year!)

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

He does most of the food prep and food shopping.
We both do laundry - I separate and fold, he carries it up and down the stairs [we don't have a washer/dryer in our apartment and that just sucks!]

Our master bedroom is in a chronic state of mess. If I could get DH to simply clean up after himself, I would be happy. He could never hide from a serial killer... all they would have to do is follow the path of left on lights in abandoned rooms, the coffee cups, the random dirty sock, and they would find him inside of 5 minutes.

Lily - substitute "our apartment" for "our master bedroom" and you have my DH!!

If there is a clean surface area, my husband thinks that is great place to put a glass, ripped up journals, scraps of paper, clothes, mail, whatever. He has no problem living in mess. He also would not care if I ever cleaned, however I am a neat freak so I do all the cleaning.

Absent that though, he is great about sharing household responsibilities. I think that has to do with being a bachelor for so long.

[peggyfromwastate]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

It... depends.

What I've found is that he doesn't really enjoy his chores, and he very cleverly has put most of them off onto the kids. I'm not sure how this happened, but it's not unusual to find Steven lugging 25 lbs of laundry (Steven weighs about 45 lbs) up 3 flights of stairs while DH is sitting there, ready to give him a quarter. But, when the laundry baskets are filled and ready and I remember to ask him, I'll ask him and with an exagerrated "Don't I always take care of you?" he'll go down and bring the laundry up for me... I actually DO the laundry, fold, sort, and put away. It's sort of "my thing".

Another one of his chores was to clean the table and placemats after dinner (this also somehow got put on the kids' chore lists and so he rarely has to do it, and if he does he's often able to find a quarter to convince someone else to do it), and to "do the dishes" (he's given this chore to Kate 4 days/week). He will not ever get out of sweeping the floor duties, but he only has to do it once a day. He empties the dishwasher in the morning before work.

He does the outside stuff, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to hire someone to actually plant some grass or something in our back yard so that DH has something to mow... Our "yard" takes him all of 15 minutes to mow.

He does the car registration stuff, the car maintenance (but I need to be there for transportation anyway), and he calls any customer service person (like CC companies) b/c I just can't handle talking to them. He does bath when he's here (50% of the time maybe), and he does bedtime for Luke and I suspect for all 3 once baby arrives (unless he can hire out to Kate which he'll probably do... but she charges more than a quarter so...).

All in all, he'll pitch in, sometimes with not my favorite attitude/effort, but he's got like... 3 hours of "free time" a week? When he's home he really wants to just "hang out" and mostly that's fine. He doesn't spend enough time with the kids anyway, and so I'd hate to have him scrubbing bathrooms or something while I had to do bath-time! (Shudder.)

I don't know... I hope it changes after residency and fellowship, but... I have my doubts.

[JaneDoe]

Re: so what all DO your med spouses help with?

When he is home, Dh definitely does his share with the kids. He bathes them, helps them to bed, changes diapers, helps with meals, etc. His main job around the house, however, is changing the cat's litter box. He started doing this when I was pregnant with dd and he hasn't stopped. He used to do the yard work, but not to my satisfaction. Now, we have yard service and we're both happier. He changes the air filter in the furnace. That is pretty much what my Dh does around the house.

Boy, when I type it out it doesn't seem like he does much around the house. However, he is really good about helping out when I ask him to do something specific. I think he would defend himself here by saying that he would do more, but I am too critical of the way he does things. For example, he doesn't clean up the kitchen very well, he can't fold laundry, he doesn't make the beds, he's pretty much oblivious to any mess in the house. So, I tend to take care of it.