Do you think your spouse is great at taking care of the house?

I’m a female, he’s male, and he’s your “typical guy” when it comes to chores he does the bare minimum for the most part. Because of this, I give him the living room, dining room (which we never use), and vacuuming and he does just fine. He does a great job on yard work, however, do he does all of that.

He’s got some laziness in him, but so do I. I don’t know why I’d “lose respect” for someone for not cleaning to my standards. It’s just the way he is, and I pretty much accept it.

“not cleaning to my standards” is a very important part of this equation. I had a Female roommate and our deal was to clean when it looked dirty. For us this meant two totally different things. I never thought anything looked dirty and she thought she was doing all the cleaning. And I am a clean freak with common areas. Just not as much as she was.

Yes.

@livelaughlove21 It is not laziness, it stems from what my wife calls “Male Pattern Blindness”; the inability to actually see dust or clutter.

I have to say that my wife does an excellent job both in the chores that she does and the job she does keeping me up to her standards.

If it were not for her, you would probably be able to see me on Hoarders.

Yes, he is. Far better than me.

What spouse? When he was here, he was great.

Haha. No. I have accepted that I have to do more cleaning to keep things at an acceptable level. I mostly don’t care. But when I take dishes out of the cupboard that have food crusted on them it does gross me out. So it’s better when I do the dishes myself.

I am a woman.

@livelaughlove21 To answer your question about respect, I think my husband loses some respect for me not doing my job well, since my job right now is taking care of the house and it is not as organized as he would like. When I worked it was much less of an issue. I recently saw an old Dr. Phil episode where the husband was retired and now taking care of the household chores is his total responisbility, which he doesn’t do well. His wife is ready to leave him. She stated that the house being a mess reflects on her it a friend or family member sees it. She also said that she feels like her husband not keeping the house clean is like him saying he doesn’t care enough about her, because it bothers her.

It is funny how it reflects on the female when a house is dirty. I think cleaning a home is a job a hard one too. If one has it as a full time job then it has no office hours so you could go on all day and night.

It is unpaid too, so all round pretty fruitless occupation. Perhaps it feels that way to you at the moment @JLeslie ?

@LornaLove I’m not saying it is very bad right now in my relationship. I was just curious how the experience is for other people. I think part of the reason it weighs on me is because I do feel like I am being less productive than I should be, so part of is it in my own head for sure.

We are backwards. My husband is the one who keeps the house cleaner than I do. If he is out of town for a few days I have to do a mad dash an hour before he comes home. I’m the one who drops my clothes wherever I happen to be. In fact, I tripped over the jeans I wore last night in the living room this morning.
Hubby says the house reflect on HIM! I just say I have a higher filth tolerance.
I think we have been good for each other. He’s not quite so anal and I have really cleaned up my act since we’ve been together.

We don’t live together, yet, but I did stay with her for a month. She is the messiest person that I’ve even come in contact with. ;) At the other end of the spectrum, I am a bit a neat freak. She said to me, ‘you have to say, today we’re going to clean and that you want me to do such and such”. I’m cool with that now. I used to shake my head, at, first though (“What the fuck? I don’t get you!).

I’d use to get into her car (passenger side) and complain about the cds and dirty coffee cups on the floorboards. Now, I don’t care. I just push that shit over with my feet. lol

I am female. My partner lived alone for 8 years before I moved in. He is a very clean person. However, he doesn’t do any housework anymore. When I moved in, I told him that he doesn’t ever need to do any cleaning, that I will do it, always. Sometimes I ask him to hoover the stairs carpet and he does it better than I do.

@Headhurts Curious, did you use to be on Fluther under a different name? Your photo looks familiar.

@Mama_Cakes Yes I did

@Mama_Cakes Although I don’t remember putting my own picture on, obviously I did.

Dibley?

@Mama_Cakes That’s right, wow that was about 4 years ago, I think.

Thought so!

Female & Female. We both clean, but the wife is much better at it. Plus, she is a teacher. When she is off for Summer, she does almost all the chores. I really appreciate her.

@Mama Cakes Ew.

@tinyfaery tmi. lol sorry!

My husband and I both hate housecleaning. When we were able to afford it, we had a maid service come every two weeks, and considered it the best money we’d ever spent. So there’s no respect issue involved, but there definitely was one in my first marriage.

My ex-husband used to be the biggest slob I knew, but somehow he became a pretty big neat freak over the years and I never did. When I was a stay-at-home mom, he expected a lot more out of me than I was capable of doing, and he did lose some respect for me because of it. For me, it was a successful day if I got the kids dressed and off to school, and fed them. That wasn’t quite enough, from his perspective. ;)

@Judi That’s not backwards.

One year around Christmas when we lived in Elk Grove (outside Sacramento) my dad came home drunk. He started giving my mom shit about the house being dirty. It escalated and he put a chisel through the tv. My sister called the cops.

I wish this was a joke.

The cops came and told my mom if she would be a better wife this wouldn’t happen. They blamed my mom and left.

Yesterday one of my sons’ former friends made the paper. He was arrested for choking his live-in girlfriend because he was unhappy that she had not cleaned the house Sunday when he was at work.

Funny, I never thought of him as a neatfreak.

Wow. Those last two stories are crazy.

@Judi In my experience men tend to be neater than women. It’s not true in the house I grew up in, but when I was a realtor and also a landlord, men almost always had less stuff and had everything in its place.

@JLeslie, that has been my experience too with young people in the apartments anyway. I guess I was just thinking about the historical stereotypes.

@Judi Got it.

I should clarify I was mostly talking about men or women who live alone, when you can easily tell the apartment is lived in by a man or woman.

I have a friend, not a very close friend, who is dating a guy who is very neat freakish and she is very messy. They are going to move in together and she said, “it’s a good thing, because it will force me to keep things clean.” I didn’t say anything, but I think she will wind up miserable. They are too extreme in different directions and because of the traditional roles I think men have much less tolerance for women who are messy.

By the way, I do that last minute quick clean up all the time before my husband gets home.

@JLeslie it is not just men or women who live alone. I find it is also true in general when you have two guys living together and two women. When I have to go into an apartment for repairs or whatever, it is almost always the apartment of the women that is the bigger mess. Men tend to stack up empty beer cans and liquour bottles in the kitchen but the ladies have stuff scattered and piled on every flat, and even semi-flat, surface of the apartment.
BUT, on the final clean it is one of two extremes with the men. They either do an extremely thorough cleaning or just walk out and leave it whereas the women will always clean up before leaving sometimes not the greatest job but they will make an effort.

@rojo I think men tend to be better at picking up than actually scrubbing something. So, at first glance they are more tidy. Men also have more time generally and less stuff. Women probably typrically take twice as long in the morning to get ready for work and they use double the amount of products, hell, probably ten times the products men do. Just to do my makeup I use about 9 different makeup items. Clothing we generally have more choices to deal with, and then add in hair, etc. Men shave their face, I’ll give them that, but women shave their legs. Women can skip it some days, so that is a little break, but legs, underarms and bikini takes a lot of time in the shower.