Division of labor

Take a moment and think about the last time you had fun cleaning the house.  I don't mean sarcastically; I mean, when was the last time you truly enjoyed cleaning the house?  Remember the thrill you felt while you were vacuuming?  What about the sheer bliss of scrubbing the bathroom?  Not to mention the thing you found under the refrigerator (was it breathing?), wasn't that exciting?  All these fun memories that never occurred.

Let us really think about cleaning... If you aren't already cringing, you should be.  Cleaning is boring and infuriating.  On the long list of things you could be doing, it is probably at the bottom - next to flossing your eye-sockets - in terms of desire.  This is perfectly normal and healthy attitude. 

Now, I am going to let you in on a secret.  Your significant other feels largely the same as you do when it comes to cleaning.  They don't like it either.  Really!  They do not see pink fluffy bunnies all over, nor do they hear happy music when they think of cleaning.  They think about strangling you with the sock they just picked up off the bookcase where it seemed like a good place to rest it for a moment while you took off the other one.  Sadly, however, you forgot to take it along with its mate to place them both in the hamper.  Now you have a sad sock-family and an angry Significant Other (SO from here on).

With so much to do at home and so much to do at work, it can often be overwhelming to think about it all.  Once you start, you rapidly become disinclined to work on it because you see there is no way you can get it all done in one day.  This is especially true if you are working on it by yourself.  So we come to our next bit of advice: Divide the labor.

To be clear, I do not mean that one of you should take all the home chores and one should do all the money earning.  It also should not be about trying to find an even amount of work.  Equality is a moving target.  A particular responsibility can be easy to work with until something changes.  The trick is to break each item down to its simplest actions and then look at what can be done and where some logical break points are.  For example: I really used to hate doing laundry.  When I helped my wife with it though, it wasn't so bad.  So what changed?  Well, I found that it wasn't laundry as a whole that I hated.  I was okay with running the loads down, checking pockets, applying stain stuff to any stains, sorting and running loads, swapping to the dryer, and bringing it all back up.  I loathed folding and hanging.  When my wife and I worked together on it though, she usually watched tv and folded while I ran the loads up and down.  Suddenly the work was not quite as bad!  I ran the loads around which saved her from knee pain from the evil stairs.  She folded and put items on hangars which meant no hangar shaped wall dents.  Then I would hang the clothes and put away the folded items (unless she got to it first). 

Try your best to identify what household chore most annoys your significant other and then see if it is something you can do instead or something you can assist with.  Once you have identified something to help with, and a way to help, then do it.  The trick here is to try not to think about how much you hate it as well.  Think about how much of a relief it will be to them when they realize they don't have to do that part.