We had been stepping over it for DAYS (two). My daughter and my husband had each mentioned its falling – and finally, I was able to swoop in and do The Job That Only I Could Do! I applied two circles of masking tape to the back of the fallen artwork and pressed the art firmly into the cupboard/gallery space. Voila! Fixed! Alas, no one was around to see my heroic act. No doubt they will throw me a parade when they notice that the hall is now clear of artwork and the art is once again properly displayed!
Okay, okay. I tend to get irritated and snarky when I tackle the household work that Only I Can Do. But when I really think about it, I KNOW there are many jobs that Only My Husband Can Do. So it’s not like it’s a one-sided thing. It still rankles, though, because it FEELS like I am overloaded with tasks that could so easily be shared by one/both additional members of the family.
When I begin to feel put upon and beleaguered, it helps me to list all the things that my husband DOES do. And, once I have regained my sense of equilibrium, I can think about how fascinating it is, that housework can be divided in so many ways. There are the things that we both do – laundry, dishes, caring for the human – and the things that one of us does FAR more often, but not always, and then there are the things that one of does so often that I am going to say “always,” even if there have been very, very, veryvery rare exceptions.
Like cooking. I make dinner almost every night. On the nights I don’t make dinner, we go out or fend for ourselves with leftovers/cereal. But that’s not to say my husband doesn’t EVER cook. He does, but it is (now) very very rare. So I would feel comfortable putting “cooking” on the “Only Me” list.
A similar task on my husband’s side of the list would be sorting mail. I do it very occasionally, but really, I think of it as His Task. If he were to get fed up and shout at me that he hates sorting the mail and I never ever do it, I would have to concede the point. “Never ever” except for maybe twice a year doesn’t count as a shared task.
The things Only My Husband Does are really his and his alone. He is the financial supporter of our household. My freelance income is so vanishingly small next to his that it doesn’t really count; if he expired suddenly, I could not support our family on what I currently make from freelance work. (Aside: This is a hard topic for me. I know many, MANY people make it work, but for me, I always feel… inferior. Like the lesser contributor. Maybe if I had more children I would feel less so? I don’t know. But I feel hateful for feeling frustrated by all the work I DO have, which is menial and so EASY compared to what my husband does each day. He finds CANCER. He improves people’s QUALITY OF LIFE. He works SO HARD. And yet I STILL get frustrated and Oh Woe Is Me and feeling I’m-the-only-one-who-does-anything-around-here-grumbly. I don’t have any Soothing Thoughts or Coping Mechanisms to apply to this mental difficulty, I just wanted to note it.)
He pays all the bills. I have offered, but (to my great relief) I have never once taken over this task. He also researches Big Purchases – washer and dryer, new car, new whatever. The only time I’ve ever taken up that mantle is with the window situation, which proves that a) I am fully capable of researching major home expenses and b) I hate it.
Tasks that are firmly in the Only Me column include bafflingly simple things like making sure Carla’s rest blanket and pillowcase (and, in the winter, snow clothing) are laundered over the weekend and folded in her backpack by Monday. Occasionally going through her backpack and removing crumpled artwork, rocks, leaves, sticks, plastic “gems,” contraband toys she smuggled to school from home and forgot about, and so much dirt. Washing/filling her water bottle each day. Making sure that the guest bathroom hand towel gets changed/laundered on a regular basis. Wiping down the counters. Replacing the toilet paper (how, just, statistically, does this always fall to me?). Periodically cleaning out the fridge. Decorating for holidays (aside from some help with the Christmas tree). Planning/hosting/attending playdates. Making probably 99% of appointments and other phone calls. Managing our social calendar. It feels like ALL of these are dumb/frivolous which makes me cranky.
I am primarily the grocery shopper, but sometimes my husband will do it. My husband is primarily the person who researches and makes plane reservations, but sometimes I will do it (if FORCED to). The trash used to be primarily his job, but he made some frustrated noises about that a year or so ago and so I do it more than he does on an even split. Most mornings, I make Carla breakfast, but my husband takes over probably on average once a week. School stuff overwhelmingly falls to me, but my husband joins in on drop-offs/conferences/pickups when he can; okay, upon reflection “school stuff” probably belongs in the Only Me category. We split bedtime duties (teeth brushing supervision, reading, tucking in) although I help with clothing choices more often than not. I made my husband promise, when we decided to have a baby, that he’d take care of vomit; he’s been pretty good keeping up his end of the bargain, although I’ve been on Vom Cleanup twice in the past year which is an acceleration of my duties that I’m not comfortable with. We both participate in giving gifts to other family members, although I am most definitely the initiator. I’d say we refill the kitchen soap dispenser about evenly.
It is so very easy, in a marriage, to feel like you are doing ALL THE WORK. Especially, I might (with great bias) add, if you are in the homemaker role. I am reminded of my mother’s wise words, that in a marriage, you must give more than 50%.That’s just part of it. It SUCKS sometimes. But, for one thing, maybe you aren’t giving 51%. Or maybe you aren’t seeing the invisible things that make up your partner’s 51%. Surely, there are many times when you are only able to give 30%, or 10% or even 0%, and your spouse makes up the difference. And probably there are YEARS when one person is giving 70% and the other is giving 30% and that can still be a fair and good way to split things up. There are so many ways to make a marriage work. But I know feeling malevolent and resentful because I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES DISHES AROUND HERE AND NO ONE APPRECIATES IT is not the key to longterm happiness. Not that I’ve FOUND the key to longterm happiness; I am just muddling through, day by day. I just know that listing out all the things that my husband does helps when I am feeling like my More Than 50% is endless and unmatched really, truly helps.
I would be very interested to know the things that Only You do in your household, and, likewise, the things that Only Your Spouse does as well. And, if you have it, the key to longterm happiness.
Only I…can change the toilet paper roll. With great power comes great responsibility.
Dave takes care of the yard — I have never mowed a yard in my life. I have pushed the mower a couple rows and that’s about it. I do all the bills and financial stuff. If I expired tomorrow, he would have a hard time figuring out how I do the checkbook, even though I show him periodically. He feeds the cats and the outside birds.
Actual housework is shared, although he generally does laundry (we both fold) and I generally cook. He is my sous chef if I request it, he does after-dinner dishes, we both do other dishes throughout the day.
Things are so even that I am really never resentful. We met in 1998 (married in 2002) when I was a single mom working full time, and he was horrified by how much I had to do, so he made it his mission to do as much as possible to take the weight off my shoulders.
Not to be maudlin, but he has liver cancer now and when he was first diagnosed, I lost my mind for a while. Then I started thinking of all the things he does that I have NO IDEA how to do, so I made him start showing me: What do I do if there’s a leak? (I know where the water shut-offs are now.) What if I lose the internet – which is the router, which is the modem? Our phone is captioned (I’m deaf, he’s hard of hearing) so I had him show me how to deal with the phone if it needs to be restarted — those kinds of things. I have a notebook now, and I make him show me these things he always does on his own, and I make notes on how to do them.
Although he’s feeling well and handling chemo, I’m not blind to the mortality rate of his cancer. You’d be surprised the things people do that you don’t realize, until you start to picture your life alone, yikes!!
Oh Suzanne. I could have written this whole entire post! I feel so seen. There are many things that Only I Can Do, and to ward off resentment I remind myself that there are many things that fall into my husband’s category. But oh! Why are my things so very tedious and menial? My biggest example – and this is a weird thing to say because Only I Cook and Only I Clean The House and Only I Grocery Shop and Only I Deal Exclusively With The School and Children’s Health and Education With The Exception Of Eyewear Purchases – where was I? Oh yes, my weird example. Only I take the toilet roll to the recycle bin. Everyone changes the toilet paper when it’s empty. But then they leave the empty roll on the countertop, never to make it to the recycle bin, which everyone passes by myriad times a day. What is up with that? So weird. It is not hard. Why do I do it?
My husband is so absolutely uninvolved with school stuff that he doesn’t know their teachers’ names or homerooms or even what time they start school. It is ALL ME. I mean, he works so much more than I do, so it’s not a thing, really. And it’s something I like to be involved in.
Circling back, how hard is it to exit the bathroom and take the toilet roll to the recycle bin that is IN OUR HOUSE.
Anyway, great post. I like how balanced you are, and your discussion of a happy marriage. It’s true, we need to compromise and balance things, and sometimes you do give more than 50%. All good. BUT WHY THE TOILET PAPER ROLL WHEN YOU ARE SO GOOD WITH CHANGING IT????
Same here – there are things that I do and things that he does. And – before I go on a rant – Lord, only knows how many things I do/don’t do that grind on his nerves BUT:
I am also the only one who knows how to change the toilet paper roll – and following Nicole’s statement – am also the only one who will place the empty in a recycle can which is located IN our bathroom!
It also appears I’m the only one who knows how to refill the soap dispensers and, if I don’t do it quickly enough, I will sometimes find that he has switched the dispensers and put his empty one on my side of the sink. The last time he did that, I switched them back without refilling.
Ninety-nine percent of the other things that fall to me alone *usually* don’t irritate me as much as those above.
Now, I do have to say that The Husband recently looked at me and said, “I don’t know what I am going to do if something were to happen to you; I wouldn’t know how to take care of xyz.” Same goes for me, I would be completely at a loss for certain tasks.
Your mother’s words are indeed very wise and very true. I wish I had the keys to long term happiness – sadly, I do not. But I’m working on it.
I don’t do vomit…..Now my girls are 23 and 19 but when they were small he handled 99.99999 percent of all vomit and I’m forever grateful…..I do all the cooking, grocery shopping, general cleaning, bill paying, he mows the grass, fixes/puts together stuff, mops floors and cleans bathtubs…..I’ve found it’s the small mundane things that make a relationship stay happy…..I know my husband hates the cold so before he started working from home full time I would go out and warm up his car in the mornings….it took almost zero effort but he was so appreciative it makes me smile just thinking about it…..He knows I love back rubs so he does that for me almost every night…..While I handled the day to day school stuff he never missed a conference or play/recital and one year took his lunch hour to be a reading buddy to a class of 3rd graders 🙂 I’m so very lucky!!!
Well Coach is the bread winner and he works VERY LONG HOURS, and he does the lawn. He usually takes out the garbage. On the mornings when he is home he unloads the dishwasher – sometimes. And now that I babysit in our home during the school year, he takes kids to their ortho appointments during the day if I plan them around times that work for him.
I do almost all of the housework, the groceries, the cooking (but in nice weather he will grill and me not knowing how to grill turns out to not be such a bad thing), the bills, the schools stuff (he has attended conferences maybe twice and our oldest is almost 21), the doctor appointments, and almost anything that has to do with the kids (haircuts, clothes, friend invites, mudroom clean out, school supplies, etc), I put him thru physical therapy school when we were first married.
I really hate that he doesn’t clean out the garage, because I end up doing it. He tries, but he gets rid of nothing and just shuffles shit around and puts it back in -often without even sweeping out the inside of the garage. He is handy, but he is too busy to do things like finish the basement – which he did about 6 years ago. It took him 3 years, and there are still some last minute touches that aren’t finished. This bugs me.
It also bugs me that he continues to take more classes and gets more degrees and I don’t ‘get a turn’. I’d like to finish my manuscript and see if I can get it published (pipe dream, obviously), but when do I get a chance to do that when I have a pretty damn full plate.
Oh, and he does not shop for anything or anyone (including me) for Christmas. He does not address a card or update the address list. That’s all me. I find that exhausting.
Oh, and following with the above commenters’ trend: he does change toilet paper, but when soap runs out – he adds a little bit of water to the hand-soap dispenser. This makes me positively nuts! I used to put his laundry in his drawers for him, but I stopped doing that around the time we had our 6th kid. Now his laundry just gets stacked on his dresser and he almost never puts it away. He will fold the occasional load of laundry – especially if he comes home and senses that I am ticked off that it is late at night and I have done too much for everyone else.
I am (almost always) the cook, except when I am feeling poorly. He is the dinner table dish clearer, and occasionally even the dishwasher loader, although most regularly he just leaves them in the sink for the dishwasher fairy. I am the fridge cleaner-outer, he is the trash taker-outer. I am 100% the only one who wipes the countertops, due to being the only one who is bothered by gross sticky patches and crumbs everywhere. He makes and refills my drinks for me without me having to ask. I am primarily the grocery shopper because I find it relaxing and he gets pissed off at people who leave their carts in the middle of the aisles. He always brings the bags in from the car though. You’re right! It does make me feel better and less irritable to list things out like this- I will have to remember this for the future when I am reminded that I am the only one who bothers to recycle…
I read once that a marriage is equal in terms of chores if both parties *feel* like they are doing 60%. I took away from that that running a house/family is MUCH harder than we realise!