He And His Wife Made A Deal That She Could Stay Home If She Took Care Of The House While He Worked, And He’s Furious That She’s Not Holding Up Her End Of The Bargain
One year ago, this 31-year-old man’s wife, 32, was struggling with her job search, so they came to an agreement.
Since his wife couldn’t obtain a position in her chosen field, they decided that he could keep working full-time while she took care of the cleaning, laundry, and dishes. She agreed with this idea and said that she would be the one responsible for the household chores because she wasn’t working.
Their small house has two bedrooms and one bathroom, and they don’t utilize their guest room too often.
He and his wife don’t have children, and they have a cat and a dog.
“So, general home maintenance becomes basically: dishes, laundry, dusting, sweeping/mopping, cleaning up after the pets, and some miscellaneous tasks,” he said.
From his perspective, it’s not a big deal if she doesn’t do the dishes until the dishwasher is full. But once that happened, he acknowledged that she should start the dishwasher and then put all the dishes away once they were clean.
He has the same opinion when it comes to laundry. Once the dirty clothes hamper is full, that’s a clear indication that it’s time to do the laundry and put everything away once the laundry is done in the dryer.
The same logic can be applied to dusting. When she can see dust on surfaces, it’s time for her to do some dusting.
He clarified that he’s not careless or outrageously messy. He doesn’t, for example, just throw garbage on the floor and wait for his wife to clean up after him. When he’s done eating, he rinses out his dishes and puts them either in the sink or right in the dishwasher. He throws all his trash away and cleans up his messes if he spills food or beverages.
Photo 108124681 – © Viktoriia Hnatiuk – Dreamstime.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Unfortunately, when he reminds her of the cleaning that she hasn’t done, she gets irritated. Once the house becomes even dirtier, they start fighting about it.
A couple of nights ago, an argument began about this, and he lost his cool.
His wife repeatedly assured him that cleaning an entire house is difficult and takes tons of time.
“When I asked her what she cleaned that day, she told me that she put the dishwasher on. I said, ‘Great, so you took the 45 seconds to take the few dishes out of the sink, put them in the mostly full dishwasher, turned it on, and then didn’t put them away? And then you called it a day?'” he explained.
In response to this, his wife said that this belittled the amount of work she put into cleaning.
He asked her what work she was referring to, adding that it would take her roughly one hour each day to keep up with the household chores.
Then, he told her that she chooses to wait a week when the cleaning will take an entire day to get done and that she tells him it’s not fair to expect her to clean all day. He pointed out that she was to blame for allowing the house to get that dirty in the first place, requiring more in-depth cleaning.
As the fight continued, he asked his wife when she mopped or swept the floors last, and she said that she hadn’t done so in two weeks. He then questioned when she last did any dusting, and she said that she had no idea.
After that, she told him that it wasn’t fair for her to be expected to do all the cleaning while he can be on his computer or playing games after he came home from work.
She told him that since they both contribute to the house getting dirty, they both should be responsible for cleaning, too.
“This is when I got mad and was yelling. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I know I called her lazy and said something to the effect of, ‘You want me to work an eight-hour day so you can sit at home and do nothing and then share the cleaning responsibilities when I get home? Get out of here,'” he shared.
On the previous occasion that he and his wife had this same argument, they in-depth cleaned the house together. They did this so that she had a deeply cleaned house to keep up with, and she couldn’t attempt to shift the responsibility onto him.
During this fight, his wife brought this up, but he rejected her request to do it again. He said that he wasn’t doing any cleaning until the house was immaculate.
Upon reflection, he thinks that if his wife kept up with cleaning on a daily basis, it would only take her about two hours each day. If she did this, she’d still have enough free time to play games, watch a show on Netflix, or invite friends over to hang out.
What would you do if you were in his shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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