A little housework poll

[ailbhe]

This isn't as carefully thought out as I wanted it to be but I've had a hell of a day and topped it off by cooking us all dinner while watching both children - Emer on my hip, Linnea playing in the kitchen. Then we reached a point where Rob only had to hold Emer for her to have screaming hysterics - we've been working up to that for a couple of weeks now, he has always ignored small babies by default and she's really noticing - and now I've gotten her off to sleep and perhaps I will have an uninterrupted, hot cup of tea.

At least Rob is prepping tomorrow's dinner, which will go in the slow cooker. Tomorrow had better be better than today.

[Poll #852294]

Comments

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

I forget what I answered to the final question, but I do know that I wound up doing more housework than my brother. My least favourite job was the vaccuuming and dusting, which Mum had delegated to me, and which I loathed. I hated the noise of it, the fact that when I'd done it, the carpet still looked like crap, and the repetitive nature of things.

My brother and I also shared the dishes and a lot of the cooking - the rule was that whoever cooked didn't have to do the washing up afterwards, which was a good incentive for both of us to learn how to cook. I tended to be expected to do more of the housework than my brother (I got told I could do all my own ironing when I started high school; he got his ironing done for him by Mum for a lot longer) and I did suspect this was along gender lines, since Mum did tend to default to this. However, we also spent a lot of time being looked after by Dad on the weekends (Mum worked night shift Friday and Saturday nights), so we got the male role model for parenting and housework and similar.

In our current place, Steve and I have a vague arrangement that I'll take care of the downstairs areas, and he'll take care of the upstairs. I tend to cook more often than he does, and I get annoyed by dirty dishes sooner than he does, so I'm the one more likely to do the washing up - although we do have another vague arrangement that if I wash dishes, he dries and puts away. He also tends to take the wheelie bins out, although I'm the one who'll empty the bin under the sink and the box for recyclables into the wheelie bins. Oh, and the garden is mine - he gets to deal with the (non-existent) lawn.