chore lists, communication, and "bothering"

[flea]

mr. flea is away for a couple of nights starting today, so I get another (short) run of being the only adult in the house. The last time this happened (November, I think), I was struck by the fact that, despite complications in person-transport mostly ascribable to my continuing inability to drive a car like a reasonable human being, it was in some ways easier to be the only adult in the house.

A friend noted, when I posted this observation elsewhere, that the energy required to communicate with a partner can be its own burden. Communication with a partner as a possible stressor also comes into play in Sandra Tsing Loh's recent editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24tsingloh.html?ref=opinion). It's not just communication, though - when am the only adult in the house, I HAVE to step up and make everything happen; I have to "bother" to put that energy in. When we're both home, it's too tempting for me to let things slide, hoping mr. flea will pick up the slack, and then when he doesn't read my mind, getting annoyed at him. I am at my lowest ebb of energy in the 4-7pm time slot, and I'm tired, even though my day job is not particularly demanding.

I'm trying to use the current travel event to rethink why some of our evening and weekend routines don't work, and why we have such trouble sharing out the responsibilities for home and child care. An online friend and her husband have a detailed chore chart and system (http://wandsci.blogspot.com/2010/01/housework-logistics.html) that they've managed to continue to make working even through the recent addition of a second child to their household. A chart seems like a good solution for orderly people, and it alleviates the need to spend energy on mundane communication - if it's your night to wash the dishes, I don't even need to think about it.

We've gone through phases in the past of making "housework charts" (even before we had children!) and fell off of them in fairly short order. (I am an orderly list-maker and chart follower; mr. flea is not.) Some of our divisions of labor work for us - I do all the laundry (I LIKE doing laundry) and mr. flea does the trash. Others do not (hello, let me introduce myself - I wash about 80% of the dishes.) Clearly, each of us "bothering" more consistently is a step forward. I want to assess what our routines and patterns are, and appreciate the ones that work. But then we need to think of ways to address some of the ones that don't work.

What works:
menu planning and grocery shopping Sunday mornings
I do laundry; mr. flea does trash

What mostly works:
me entering receipts into Quicken; mr. flea paying online bills (not working - I have to remind him to pay the bills, so it's always on my mind anyway)
I do dishes & supervise homework; mr. flea gives baths and distracts Dillo from interfering in homework
I do school-related extracurricular stuff for Casper; he does Dillo (not working - there's nothing much to do for Dillo, and when there is, I have to ask and remind)

What doesn't work:
I do all housecleaning unless I ask mr. flea to do something. He's gotten wise to the fact that if I am in a bad mood in the weekend, it would behoove him to clean a toilet, but this is a once-every-6-weeks solution - our house needs more attention than that.
I do pretty much any planning of anything (travel, home repairs, medical stuff, summer camp, purchases, etc. unless it only involves mr. flea - like his work travel - or involves a visit to or from his family.) I don't like doing it all myself, but trying to include mr. flea has not worked very well.

Comments

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I wrote much about it at the time, but I was seriously shocked at how easy life was when Joe and Ellie were in Florida. I did take some short cuts that wouldn't fly for every day life (Frisco and I ate dinner in front of the TV every night, I think) but also, the house was totally clean and picked up. A lot of it was just that one kid is so easy to take care of (no fighting or feeding of each other's tiredness and crabbiness) but also, like you mentioned, I was the one who made the mess/wanted dinner/needed clothes and so I didn't mind doing whatever it was because either I messed it up or I wanted it different.

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

Nothing to add ATM except that I agree wholeheartedly with your first 2 paragraphs, and most of the rest.

[zmayhem.livejournal.com]

Sigh. If you ever figure out what works, please let me know. We're going on six years in, and have gotten much better at communicating about nearly everything else, but every damn conversation about this stuff feels like the first one ever.

[wandsci.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Actually, this is a reincarnation of the chores schedule. The original version had more free nights, but that was before Pumpkin decided that only Mommy could get her to sleep. The chores schedule went on hiatus when I was pregnant and too sick and then too tired to do much of anything.

So right now, Hubby is just happy to have me back in the rotation for dishes and/or bath!

There is some hope for changing a non-list person into a list person. When I met Hubby, he wasn't a list person. Now, he writes our weekend to do list more often than I do.

It does help, though, that Hubby tends to think weekends are for chores. In fact, the chores schedule originally came into being because I wanted some non-chores time on the weekends. Hubby went along with the idea at first just to humor me- this was during my extreme sleep deprivation stage, and he had enough sense not to irritate me if he could avoid it. But then he was won over, because it really did decrease the friction over chores and give us at least the illusion of having more free time.

Good luck finding a system that works for you and your husband.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

I always find it interesting to see how other couples juggle domestic duties. My husband and I have had so many bitter arguments about the division of domestic labor. Things are not perfect, but they are much more sorted than they used to be. The two biggest changes we have made are:

- getting a cleaner to come for 2 hours a week. In some ways, I don't feel much cleaning gets done over the 2 hours, and I am always thinking I would rather save the money and do it myself, but rationally I have to admit that the money is definitely worth it, because at least the grittiest of the cleaning (bathroom and kitchen) get done once a week, and M and I ARE NOT FIGHTING ABOUT IT. So yes, it is good. both of us pitch in before the cleaner's arrival and do some lightning tidying up so that she can actually clean.

- M does all the dishes and I do all the laundry. This sounds similar to your laundry/trash division, but I suspect the dishes are more work than the trash! I often come round after him and wipe down surfaces and stuff, because our standards of 'clean' vary a little, but basically, it works for us.

Neither of us is good at organization and schedules, so I can't imagine trying a rota.

The one thing I would still like to sort out is the shopping. We do it online when we are organized enough but most of the time it's last-minute and ad hoc, and I waste a lot of time going to the supermarket on an almost daily basis.

I know what you mean about it being simpler on your own, though. I have felt sheepish before when I catch myself doing tasks without resentment (because M is away for a few days) that I would normally only do with resentment and protest. It's hard for me to find the right balance between making sure the division of labor is essentially fair, and not being petty and nagging and sour.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

I should also say that the laundry is more work than it might be, because we don't have a dryer, and everything has to hung on drying racks in winter or clotheslines in summer.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I hang about 2/3 of the laundry - dryers take tons of electricity. I try to only dry stuff like towels and jeans, that get crunchy on a line.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

That is really impressive; I don't know any Americans who do that. I used a dryer most of the time when I lived in the US but they are less common over here and there is not space in our house for one (believe me, I have contemplated all the possibilities!).

I am happy about using less energy, but since we are space-challenged, it means that we spend winters with clothes constantly draped over radiators and doors, and I get tired of living in a forest of damp laundry.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

When the heat is on full bore, I put my inside rack over the intake vent and things dry very quickly. In summer if it's sunny things also dry fast - the difficulty is humid to rainy summer days, when stuff starts to practically rot it dries so slowly. The dryer is almost used more in summer than winter!