Arguing about chores and housework every damn week

I feel like my husband and I are constantly bickering about housework all week, but we just came to a massive blow argument this afternoon, which isn't like us at all, we rarely have big arguments. I'm a SAHM, I tidy as I go and keep a relatively clean home. Everything is in its place, everything gets wiped down, the dishes are done and the laundry is done, the meals are prepped and cooked and cleaned up afterwards. However my husband is SO fucking nit-picky about everything, and he needs the house to be deep-cleaned every few days. He will do it, he doesn't ask me to, but he will sigh and moan the whole time and say that it should have been done through the week. He says he's tired of having to tidy the whole house every weekend. I really need to stress that our house *is* tidy. But tidy to him means wiping bloody skirtings, washing the dining chairs (????) mad things that realistically I'd do once on a blue moon because I don't have the time nor do I care. But he cares. He cares SO much about how we present ourselves and what our house looks like for anyone who might see. Especially his damn parents, it's like he's forever trying to prove something to them, but that's a whole different issue. My problem is he is completely blind to everything I do on a day-to-day, like the 5 times I've had to clean food off the floor, the unloading and reloading the dishwasher with a baby swinging off my legs, buying, preparing and cooking every single one of our meals, driving back and forth from baby classes, organising and tidying toys every night, the 15 minute tidying spree I do when baby naps before I then get my shower and actually eat something for the first time that day. I don't think he understands that I'm not home all day to just clean and that I have other tasks to do that don't involve cleaning. It's like he expects every minute I'm not tending to baby cleaning and tidying. It's actually impossible. And it would NEVER be to his standard either, even if I did tidy 24/7. If we're both doing a clean, like we were today, he will redo bits I've just done. It's infuriating. I left a singular breadcrum on the countertop after wiping everything down and he redid them all. It drives me mad. He also didn't spend any time with baby at all today, because he spend an hour mopping every crevice of the kitchen and dining room, then when I asked if he could watch baby so I could hang the laundry to dry, he said he would, but then as soon as I went upstairs I could hear baby fall over and cry, I went down and my husband hadn't been watching him because he was back in the kitchen wiping down the cabinet doors?? It's genuinely concerning me but it's also driving me insane. I can't relax every day unless the house is spotless, which is never is because we actually live in our home, but it's like he can't accept that a family home would look even a little bit lived in.
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I think he’s being a bit extreme wiping the skirting boards every week, bloody hell I don’t even do it once a month 😅 do you think he’s got some kind of OCD

It sounds like he has some kind of OCD have you mentioned that to him he might need to get advice about it as that sounds quite severe to me especially what you said about one crumb? I’d have to set boundaries it’s your home as well to love how you please as long as your being tidy as you go I don’t see an issue! If my partner ever says anything to me I just hand him the stuff and say fix it then or offer to just start doing just mine and babies washing and doing our dishes etc and he can do everything of his for himself and he soon shuts up 😂 at the end of the day your house is a home not a show home it sounds to me like he needs advice to deal with this urge to always clean!

@Paige @Anneliese I have mentioned it to him, and he's agreed he probably does have some sort of OCD, but he would never go get help for something like that. I don't want to diagnose him but if I were to guess I think he does have OCD, he's so particular about everything. I can watch him spend a 20-30 minutes meticulously combing each hair on his head into place every morning, and he doesn't have particularly long hair or anything.. He will not leave the house without doing certain things, he is stereotypically neat/tidy, has impeccable hygiene, he's so obsessive with his oral hygiene, every time we're in a shop I need to pull him away from buying another tube of toothpaste, because we always have about 4 or 5 in the bathroom unit already. The cushions on the sofa need to be in a certain order, that drives me mad.. I could go on and on. I've lived with it for somany years that it's just what I'm used to but with baby in our lives now it has really started to grind on me because I can't keep up anymore 😮‍💨

I feel like he could do with a dose of your life. Could you go away for 24-48 hours and leave him with little one. So he could get a taste of how tough it is for you and how his extreme cleaning routine is not possible while looking after a toddler.

Stop doing the chores so he sees what exactly you do

Get a cleaner, seriously. Me and my husband were bickering like mad over housework as he claimed to do more of it in response to when i said he needed to do more childcare. I went back to work full time so with the money i haven't dropped by not dropping days/hours i justified getting a cleaner and the bickering was stopped in its tracks. I'm getting loads more help with baby too. Much MUCH fairer all round for me.

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