Chores

Man...you guys sure do love reading about sex stuff, huh? You little devils, you.
So let's talk about more sexy stuff....CHORES!!

For those of you that are living with someone in a space that requires upkeep: ie - a single family home, townhouse, condo, apartment...basically anybody that lives somewhere other than their parent's basement - tell me, how do you divvy up the chores?

When you shacked up with your roommate, lover, husband, wife, whoever....did you sit down and talk about who does what or did it all just kind of fall into place?

this isn't my house, btw. They should just burn this place down and start over.

For me, ever since moving into our big boy house, the idea of chores has been split into indoor/outdoor and has fallen into a very 1950's gender based role....to a degree.

For instance:
I have never once in my entire life used a lawnmower....not that I intended for it to be that way, but my Dad always did it or had my brother do it, and my husband must have been raised the same way because I have never had to look at, repair, fill with gas, move, or ride on a lawnmower that wasn't for fun.
(wait....you guys went on lawnmower rides for fun as kids, right? Or is that a total hillbilly move?)
I have also never weed wacked, trimmed bushes (other than my own....bazinga), or taken out the trash (ok, that's a lie, I have done that a couple times based on scheduling conflicts with hubbies work. I'm not a fan considering our driveway is a mile long. I know...first world problems.)

My upkeep with the house tends to stay indoors. Although, it does fluctuate with the season.
I am weird about maintaining our windows because they are fancy and new. So when the seasons change, I take it upon myself to clean both the inside and outside of them.
We also mutually clean the pool area, do our own laundry, and take turns cleaning up cat vomit. Yep, we live the life of luxury.
And I also murder bugs and spiders that creep to close to my home (or lurk behind the toilet. That shit was real folks, and I nearly had a heart attack in the process)

Having a house with carpet now has become a major chore in an of itself. With three furry pets and a dirty shoed husband running amuck, I have to vacuum weekly.
I also have to annihilate pet accidents weekly when they break out of their rooms and steam vac more than I am willing to admit.
I also dust, detail, and disinfect most things weekly.

So Mark handles the outside, but he also handles a few things inside as well. As has always been the case. For whatever reason, apparently I don't "load the dishes correctly" because "shoving dishes into every crevice of the dishwasher before the door shuts" isn't effective.
I will do the dishes from time to time, like when Mark works crazy hours, but for the most part, he does them all day every day.
Until it gets to a point where a pile of dishes has fallen out of a cabinet and he flips. the fuck. out.
"I can't live like this!" he shouts from the kitchen, "I am FED UP with dishes."
Dishes people. Dishes. We are about to go postal about dishes.
Fine. I come in to see what all the fuss is about.
"Everything is in a weird place and there are too many of everything. How can we go through so many dishes every day."
I reply, "Mark, what is the bigger picture...what are you really pissed about? Do you want me to trade off with you? I would be happy to give up steam cleaning the carpets."
Round and round we go, about dishes.
Man- marriage is fun sometimes.

Obviously chores suck. That's why they are called chores.
I hate fighting about dumb things. I didn't want to partake but kept getting sucked in. And the night ended with both of us going to bed early because clearly we were both exhausted and were getting pissy.

For the record, everything is fine now. I do agree our cabinets are un-organized. It's hard to know how things should be until you have lived with it for a while. So this morning, I reorganized the cabinets, making them functional for the time being until I stumble over a pile of money and we renovate.

Mark left me a pile of post-it notes on the bathroom mirror as he left before I got up this morning, with a grammatically incorrect, yet sweet, apology note and some scribbling about the dogs.

That my friends, is real love.

~*~

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