I know I have written about this before, but at some point in the past few years, I asked my husband if he would please unload the dishwasher on the weekend. It’s not that unloading the dishes is difficult, or time-consuming – in fact, it takes about five minutes, tops, which is exactly the amount of time it takes to steep my favorite black tea. So unloading the dishwasher allows me to feel efficient while also making that five minutes pass by more quickly than it would if I were just staring at the tea bags suffusing the water with their sweet, sweet caffeinated elixir. It’s just that it feels like such drudgery when I do it every single day without stop.
He agreed and for the most part he unloads the dishwasher on weekends without me having to ask. He usually waits until far, far later in the day to unload it than I would choose to – I hate the sight of used dishes piling up beside the sink – but that’s a preference on my part, so I keep my lips zipped.
On weekends that he is on call, I unload the dishwasher. And sometimes I will unload it just because it’s easier to do so than not: This morning, I needed butter for my breakfast, but the butter dish was in the dishwasher. To get it out, I needed to move a bowl and a wine glass – which I wasn’t going to lift out of the rack to free the butter dish and then replace in the dishwasher – and the blade of the blender. And if I was removing the blade of the blender, I might as well put it IN the blender and put the blender away, and by then I had some momentum going so I just did the whole thing.
When my husband unloads the dishwasher on weekends, I always make a point to thank him. But when I unload the dishwasher on weekends, he never seems to notice. (Once, I unloaded half of the dishwasher – my rationale being that I was unloading dishes that he never seems to know where to put; I end up putting them away anyway – and rather than saying, oh hey, awesome, I have less to unload now, he complained that I did the easy part. Sigh.)
It’s not that I necessarily want or need to be thanked. I do it on weekdays and don’t think anything of it. But on the weekends, it’s HIS job, and I feel like I’m doing him a favor. And it would be nice if he at least made note of the favor.
But maybe he thinks it’s odd that I thank him for unloading the dishes at all. Maybe he thinks that there is no need to express gratitude for the completion of routine chores. In general, I guess I agree? It can be highly irritating when someone goes around pointing out all the tasks they have completed, seemingly expecting praise, without acknowledging that others are also going around completing household tasks without naming every single one. We should not have to thank each other every time someone refills the water pitcher or empties the trash or pays the bills or feeds the child.
Then again, I find it bolstering when my husband does express gratitude for something I’ve done. He says “thank you for making dinner” most nights when I cook, which conveys “even if I don’t like this meal, I understand that it required planning and energy and I appreciate those things.” That’s a welcome message. When I put out the trash cans and he thanks me for doing so, I feel better about doing it than all the times I put them out and he says nothing.
Then today I had a realization: He probably feels that “unloading the dishwasher” is MY job, and he’s doing ME a favor… not that it’s a joint job that belongs to me on weekdays and to him on weekends.
I will note that when I initially typed out the first sentence of this post, I wrote “if he would please unload the dishwasher for me on the weekend,” so one can understand how he could arrive at this conclusion.
It’s not a huge deal. It doesn’t make me mad or want to rend my garments or anything. But I do wonder if there is any way to change that perception of task ownership.
This is a tricky one because people tend to have assigned tasks in a marriage. It made me think about the things Phil does that I don’t comment on, like dealing with the trash. I wonder if part of the issue is that much of what you do feels unseen/unappreciated? I have thought about getting that book, Fair Play, by Eve Rodsky. I think there is an exercise in the book where you discuss who all does what in the house. With your husband working as a physician, his work is more obvious and is associated with a paycheck. But you do a lot too which is less glamorous but very necessary. It makes me think of a llama llama book where mama stops doing all the stuff she does for the family and the house is a disaster. (Side note – where is her partner? Is she a single mom?)
Another thing this post makes me think of is a comment I got when I talked about how I feel guilty at times when I go for a run on mornings when my husband gets up with the kids. I think it was Jenny who said she was told to ‘strive to be generous, not equal’ in a marriage or something to that effect. So I have thought about that, too, but then both partners need that goal or things can feel very uneven fast!!
Llama is single mom, which is great for me so my son can see other single mom families in books.
Task ownership! Yes. My husband always thanks me for making dinner and when he or the boys clean up, I always thank them. I try to thank my husband when he does jobs that I don’t even know need to be done (mostly vehicle or exterior house stuff). But it is tricky, for sure. I thank whoever unloads the dishwasher, but no one thanks me for that. No one thanks me for most household tasks, now that I’m thinking about it. Well, my older son thanks me for doing his laundry when that happens, so that’s nice, but STILL.
I just read Lisa’s comment above and I agree – we do tend to have assigned tasks, and how did this happen? Like when my husband asks “did WE send a card to his mother for her birthday.” Yes, WE DID.
Yes! I try to be generous in my thanks for things my husband does and honestly, I think it’s catching on with my husband. He actually noticed when I cleaned the shower and was effusive in his appreciation.
When we were (I was) writing thank you notes for our bridal shower presents, I had my husband sign his own name. And ever since then, I am happy to write and address all correspondence, but he has to sign his own name. He knows when we’ve sent something. Presumably.
For me, it’s clear that I will notice when things need to be done before my husband does. It sucks that part of the load I carry is to note that the garbage is full, the stairs need to vacuumed, and there’s a layer of dust under the microwave while my husband goes about without even noticing, but it’s how it is. If I think it’s something he needs to help with or even do on his own, it has to be me who asks. (The number of times I’ve had to ask him to take out the trash while I’m cooking is not small.) Yes, it’s unfair. But it’s also not really something my husband can help because it seems like he honestly doesn’t notice. So I try not to get hepped up about it because when I ask him to do things, he (usually) does them cheerfully.
B and I had a misunderstanding about task assignment recently. Sometime in the past 6 month to a year we moved the litter box from the basement to a landing near the kitchen when it got hard for X to manage a whole flight of stairs. We had been alternating months on litter box duty and I noticed on her months it didn’t seem to be getting done very often. Finally, I asked her about it and she said she didn’t think we were alternating any more because the box was more visible now so we were just cleaning on an ad hoc basis, which is practice turned out to be much less frequently than when it was an assigned duty (at least on the even-numbered months– I was still doing it every day during the odd-numbered months). We resolved the issue shortly before the cat died.
My late husband and I had an unspoken rule that I took care of inside tasks/cleaning and he did any repair or big inside jobs and outside work like gardening and painting. He also did the grocery shopping. I like to mow the lawn so I did that. If I mostly did a job, it was considered mine and vice-versa. I don’t mind unloading the dishwasher but I’m slapdash about loading it which drives my son-in-law and my boyfriend crazy. They’re much more systematic!
We were just talking about this the other day. I was irritated since I usually always clean all of the bathrooms without being asked. “But why don’t you just ask me to clean the bathroom” he said yesterday? ” I am happy to do it.” BUT, why do I have to ask you? Do you need to ask me to clean them? No. I just clean them… 😒
Yes, it seems we all take on certain tasks in marriage – whether we like them or not. But, I also think, (particularly, the longer you are together) that it is imperative to thank each other for the tasks that get done. I mean, honestly, no matter how the tasks get divvyed up, it all needs to be done – and appreciated by the one not doing that certain task.
But as to Kari’s point – WHY should I have to ask for assistance? Case in point, last week The Husband was slightly irritated that the pants he wanted to wear hadn’t been washed. I pointed out that I spent the majority of that week in the office and hadn’t had time. He dropped it pretty quickly, but why didn’t he take the initiative to start a load of laundry that week? Because that’s *my* task, so it never even crossed his mind to think about it. *sigh*
Interesting food for thought! I definitely think there are things/chores that get done and are taken for granted…. there are certain chores that we have “talked about and actively divvied up”, but there are still a lot of things that were never talked about and taken for granted. Unfortunately, I think it’s still somewhat “learned” behavior (that women “automatically” take on more of the mental load and that husbands often say “you just had to ask”, but these things will only change over time when we openly talk about and try to change them.)
We have a similar thing going– although we run the dishwasher 3 times a day (lol). Ben unloads it before bed, but I cannot quiiiiite relinquish the whole task because he just sort of leaves stuff in the sink if it’s wet or if he doesn’t know exactly where to put it, and I have to deal with it anyway. Also! I do think of it as doing me a favor as opposed to just a chore that is his Why is this? Such a great issue to ponder…
I can so relate! There is an undercurrent of annoyance that can build with repetitive home management tasks. My solution for the dishwasher has been to assign our 11-year old as the official emptier in our house. I often do help her, but it has made life much easier to have her as the primary lead on this. I mostly just hate emptying the cutlery, and she doesn’t mind so I tend to stack plates and put things away on high shelves.
My husband never, ever touches anything in the bathrooms and while he will sometimes sweep or vacuum he never mops. He also NEVER cuts the kids fingernails or changes/washes sheets and remakes the beds. I feel like I sometimes do just about everything – I handle car repairs if he’s not home, deal with contractors etc. I have no line in the sand. But even without saying it out loud, he definitely has some lines drawn (namely: scrubbing toilets/showers/cutting nails/washing sheets).
This is another great post. I think that we often get into a pattern of who is in charge off what around the house. I have certain things that I always do; laundry, garbage/recycling, paying bills, managing household repairs (making calls, not doing said repairs, etc) And he goes to work and runs our business way more than I’m involved in it.
He also helps with dinner cleanup and will empty the dishwasher if he gets to it before I do. Like you, I always feel compelled to say thank you when he does one of ‘my’ jobs. I belive it would only be a problem if one of you felt like you were pulling more of the household weight.
Yep: “He probably feels that ‘unloading the dishwasher’ is MY job, and he’s doing ME a favor…” Have had similar experiences with my husband so I now make a point of inviting him to do any chore at any time. Somehow giving that command/permission has gotten him onboard with the it is US living here.