The 15 minutes woman versus the 8 hour man. Who will win?
By onesiobhan
@onesiobhan (1327)
Canada
February 5, 2008 6:10pm CST
The one area where my husband and I have conflict is around the subject of housework. To put it simply, he doesn't do his fair share.
At some point I figured out that part of the problem is that we have very different cleaning styles. When he was living alone he would let his place get horribly messy and then spend an entire day cleaning the place from top to bottom. Whereas my method is to pick up something every time I move from room to room - if I'm going into the kitchen I'll grab the dirty glasses on the coffee table on my way by. I do 15-minute bursts of cleaing several tims a day. That way the place never gets too messy for me to stand it.
Now that we live together, those different cleaning styles are coming into conflict. It never gets messy enough to tip his "This place is a mess, I have to clean it up" button. And it never gets clean enough to stop bugging me. I'll take the glassware into the kitchen only to discover he's opened a package of something and left the discarded wrappers all over the counters. I clean up the kitchen and come back into the living room to find everything that was in his coat spread out over the coffee table. It seems like for every one of my "15-minutes" of cleaning I do, he spends twice as much time making a mess.
And when he does clean something, he leaves the bucket, sponge, mop and cleaning products right where he got done with them - in the middle of the floor.
It's starting to seriously drive me crazy. I don't mind spending hours a day to have a comfortable clean house. I RESENT doing all this work to live in a pigsty. And no matter how often we talk about it, any extra effort he makes wears off in about a week and we're back to normal.
I'm running out of ideas. How do I deal with this?
1 person likes this
2 responses
@brothertuck (1257)
• United States
6 Feb 08
A lot of it is the Men are from Mars Women are from Venus ways
Men are not mentally wired to clean like that. It goes back to when men worked and women stayed at home, even back to the stone age. Men didn't worry about the clean up, until the day was done. Also the convenience of having their tools available was more important then putting them away. To men it's not as important to have everthing clean because they focus on what they are doing and don't really notice what is around. You only clean up when things get in your way.
Women on the other hand tend to see things differenly. They notice the glass. It's more important to put things away and look good then make them available. Clean up is a regular thing. They see the big picture so to say as far as clean up and keeping things organized.
I notice that things are cluttered and a mess around me (divorced male) but until it gets in the way it's not a big deal to me. Most men look at it that way, some are neater and seem better at clean up then others, and some are sloppier, but in general if left on their own they would prefer to bulldoze rather then feather dust.
@onesiobhan (1327)
• Canada
6 Feb 08
I don't think it's as simple as "men and women are differnt". Probably the cleanest person I've ever lived with was male. And I've had previous roommates who were female who were *huge* slobs.
Maybe the answer is to pile all his mess in his way, then he'll feel like dealing with it.
@sommergold315 (54)
• Germany
6 Feb 08
Sorry, but Dear you can do nothing in this situation!
You should think about living with this man before now. And now all your affords to school this man will have no results. You must stop worrying and use your cleaning style.
