How do you and your SO divide the housework?

I’m curious about how other couples share the housecleaning chores. Do you (or did you) have problems working out who should do what? Do you think you have a fair arrangement? Or do you have trade-offs in other areas of your life together?

My guy and I will finally be living together starting next month. Both of us have lived alone for the past eight years. He’ll be moving into my place. It’s a roomy flat, big enough for both of us, and we’ve already shared three stays here together quite comfortably. We have fairly equal levels of tidiness, and that goes a long way toward our compatibility, I believe. :)

However, during those three visits, we were mostly on “vacation mode” so it didn’t really give us a chance to properly work out a day-to-day balanced sharing of housekeeping chores.

A while ago, I said I wanted him to think about what cleaning tasks he’d like to do… and then I didn’t mention it anymore…. just waited for him to reply. Today he decided which chores he wants to be responsible for because he enjoys doing these things. I’ve seen him cleaning at both his place and mine, and he’s good at it.
Here’s his list…
vacuuming, ironing, dishes, windows, trash, and cleaning the bathrooms.

That leaves me with…
laundry, dusting, polishing, kitchen, making the bed, tending the plants, and… oh damn, I'm still stuck with cleaning the litter box. I wish he would’ve volunteered for THAT… oh well.

We enjoy doing the grocery shopping and cooking together. I guess we’ll have to see how that plays out in the long run.

We'll work out once-in-a-while chores as they come along. But altogether this seems like a good beginning for the regular daily/weekly cleaning, doesn’t it? Or am I missing something here…? :confused:

Also, I bet that it'll be mostly the ladies who reply to this thread, so I should probably rephrase my original question...
How does HE share in the housecleaning? ;)

He does trash, yard work, litter boxes, vacuums, dishes, since we got a dishwasher, LOL. Car care, oil changes and stuff. Cooks sometimes. Loves to rearrange furniture, although I've limited him to our bedroom, and the computer room. I got sick of coming home to my living room rearranged, that's MY space.

I've forbidden him from doing any laundry except jeans, towels, and sheets. Care labels are only there for decoration in his eyes, and after having a few hang to dry things ruined, I said hands off women's clothing to him. Mine and my daughter's. I kind of like doing laundry anyway.

It's pretty fair. I hate, hate, hate mowing. He likes it. He hates, hates, hates, washing dishes by hand, so we finally got a dishwasher. We balance each other out pretty well.

not a bad division... BUT!!! how often does he think its need to be done??? ;)

i only work part time...so i "pick up" most of the stuff. if i do overtime, get overwhelmed..husband does whatever i ask to help out.

There is no point buying a dog, when you can bark yourself. ;)

most times in general he does the yard work and outdoorsy stuff. i do most of the indoor since i am at home more.

we don't really have an assigned way of doing things around here. very often he will clean the kitchen or do other things inside. i dunno, we have never discussed it. sometimes he will just get out the vacuum and do that or he may sweep or do a load of laundry.

i offer to do the yard work sometimes but he always says no way.

we have lived together for 13 years and this seems to work for us. we just both pitch in without even saying. i would say that i do the majority in and he does the majority out. but we have never had a rule about that at all. it just sort of works out that way.

He works. I stay at home. soooo......

I do the housework.

We pay someone to do the outside.
We both contribute to the bills.

But he's so super cool, before he left for this last school (he's military) i had cooked a humongous dinner for him and the boys. After dinner, the boys put their plates away and jetted off to their respective rooms to play. I started cleaning up the kitchen...alot to clean as dinner took 2 hours just to cook lol.

Shane looks at me, looks at the dinner table, where i still hadn't gotten everything off of it, walks to the boys end of the house and says..Hey! you guys enjoy the dinner your mama woked so hard on? you did? goooood. come with me.

getting the stuff he wanted took about 3 minutes. 3 minutes which resulted in him and the two oldest ones ON THEIR HANDS AND KNEES scrubbing the dining room floor. :D :D :D

i was floored (pun intended) as they not only did the floor, but they did the table, chairs, pictures, corner tables, curio, and lamps in the dining room.

I have the boys do lil chores, put away dishes, swap out laundry from washer to dryer, clean their rooms, Connor vacuums, John likes to sweep......but Shane doing that, meant alot. It flew all over him that they had sat there and gorged and then ran off after only putting their plates away. Plus, he's taken me out several times for dinner because he says i work too hard keeping the house up.

so... he works, i stay at home. and it WORKS! lol

We both work fulltime and some quarters he goes to school during the evenings full time.

Quarters he goes to school, he still manages to do alot!

We don't really "divide" the housework. We do it together. During the week we pick up the house, keep up with it. We sweep and mop the floors every 3rd night. He always mops, he always changes the litter box.....he does the "dirty" work as he calls it. lol

Laundry is done every night practically. If we see something that needs to be done, we both just do it.

On Saturdays, its routine, we clean the entire house, which isn't bad, cause we've kept up with it during the week. Stuff like mopping and polishing the hardwood floors and vacuming and steam cleaning the carpets....stuff you just don't have time for during the weekdays.

I can't stand a dirty kitchen or dishes undone, so my kitchen is always clean. As is the bathrooms.

We both love to cook together.

Our daughter helps out by doing things I ask and upkeeps her room and bathroom.

Jerm does mow the grass as I get eaten up by something in the grass, or have some allergic reaction to it.....but we both love gardening.

Our family life is great, cause we enjoy being together and doing things together, even stinkin' housework....lol

Sora

I work and he does most of the housework.
He cooks, cleans the kitchen, does the dishes (though we have a dishwasher), he vacumes and keeps the livingroom tidy, same with the bathroom (which isn't and easy job living with 2, sometimes 3 women) he does most of the laundry except from nicer fabrics, nice undies and bras and such and he takes out the garbage.
I wash floors, the dusting, windows and the cat litter.. he only pours sand over "it" when I'm not around to get rid of the smell...

We never talked of who would do what, but I did tell him from the beginning that I expected that he'd take care of most of the work at home since I was the only one that worked. He does a pretty good job at it, but he likes to cut some corners every now and then and I'm a little bit of a perfectionist :o

When he starts to work I think we will have to sit down and deside who will do what, cause he really like to spoil me and I'm afraid that he will try to do just as much then as now.
Often when I get up to do something, he pushes me back into the couch and does it insted. I must admit that I love getting spoiled, cause I sure wasn't before we met... then I had to do EVERYTHING, even when I was living with the dad of the youngest.
He didn't even know how to screw a scew :(

sora...you guys for hire????????
steam cleaning carpets?
polishing hardwood??
routine for saturday?????

ARGH!!! if i get to it 2x a year!

I am a picky neatnick and my husband is a happy slob! :D But he loves me and tries to make me happy so he's learning to live by my standards; he's even starting to understand that if we keep the place clean, it's a LOT easier to clean up than it is when the place is a mess. I really do think the force will be with him someday!

As any parent can tell you, it's harder to get kids to form good cleaning habits than it is to just do it yourself... which means dh is exhausted after making sure that the kids have done their chores correctly and doing his own housework himself.

When I get home, I need a little down time; then we have dinner, hang out with the kids and before bed, the teenagers help the younger two with bathing/getting ready for bed while I clean the living room one more time and Tim does a final run through the kitchen.

I just sleep better when the house is clean!

adam is extremely fast, what takes me an hour to clean he can do in less than half the time, its a little unsettling, he is like a little bull plowing thru things to get things done, period.

maybe its army mentality, i am not sure, but sometimes i feel i little left behind, i told him this and he says its not a worry for him, so i shouldnt care.

he is very neat, which i like, he is very organized and i am a bit scattered, i admire his organization.

i will not however ALLOW him to do the laundry.

NOOOOOOOOO way.

lately he is learning to cook, he wants to save more money.

housecleaning is a big deal for me, he makes it look super easy.

Robin is a neatnik, my kids and I are messy slobs. We have pets too, who don't clean up after themselves! Poor Robin is in constant Hell!

We never did divide chores...but as years went on, I noticed that dinner is mostly made by me, the bathroom is ALWAYS cleaned by me, the kitchen is always cleaned by me, and the dishes are always done by me.

Robin makes the bed (sometimes before I'm done sleeping in it!), does all the yardwork (somehow I don't get around to it), most of the laundry (I hate laundry) and does a lot of "organizing". I have to be careful, because sometimes his "organizing" turns into throwing some of my stuff away! He thinks he can sneak it past me, so I have to be on my toes! Did I mention the kids and I are packrats too?

Oh, and why is it that I'm the only one capable of changing the toilet paper roll? Is there something in male genetics that impairs them from completing this task?

We do, on occassion, cook together, which is great fun, but we also criticize eachother's cooking techniques the whole time. Still, the meal always turns out well. Robin's on a "baking" kick lately, so the kitchen gets messed up with bread pans and mixing bowls. He SAYS he'll clean it up, but I get tired of waiting and just do it myself.

I guess through living together for so long, we just kind of naturally took over the chores we didn't mind, and let the other have the ones we liked doing the least.

Usually, our tasks are fairly well-balanced.

I prepare the meals, he does the dishes. We share the laundry chores. He mows, I edge. He's Mr. Fix-It and I generate the Honey-Do list. ;)

We both tend to straighten up as we go. We both ensure the dogs are watered and fed.

A housekeeper comes in every other week and takes care of changing bed linens & towels, and does general cleaning (bathrooms, dusting, etc.).