Member-only story
The New New
How I Got My Husband to Do His Share of the Housework
Yes, men are helping out around the house more—but women are still stuck with most of the planning
My Mother’s Day was defined by a blue Rubbermaid storage tub sitting ominously in the middle of my closet. It had been there for days. My husband had brought it down because it contained the gift bags and tissue paper necessary to wrap his mother’s gift and mine.
The gift he needed to wrap for me? A necklace I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. For Mother’s Day, I had requested just one thing: a housecleaning service. The gift, for me, was not so much the cleaning itself but the fact that, for once, I would not be in charge of the household office work. I would not have to make calls, get multiple quotes, research and vet each service, arrange payment, and schedule the appointment. The real gift I wanted was to be relieved of the emotional labor of a single task that had been nagging at the back of my mind.
The day before Mother’s Day, my husband called a single service, decided it was too expensive, and vowed to clean the bathrooms himself. What I had really wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation or call four or five more services — do the emotional labor I would have done if the job had fallen to me.
Instead, after presenting me with the necklace, he stole away to deep-clean the bathrooms, leaving me to care for our children as the rest of the house fell into total disarray. In his mind, he was doing what I had most wanted — giving me sparkling bathrooms without me having to do it myself. Which is why he was frustrated when I ungratefully passed by, not looking at his handiwork as I put away his shoes, shirt, and socks that had been left on the floor. That was when I stumbled, again, over the Rubbermaid storage tub and reached my breaking point.
It was time for the pendulum to swing into his corner, and I told him so in no uncertain terms.
For days, it had impeded me every time I needed to toss clothes in the hamper or pick out something to wear. It was shoved, kicked, rolled onto its side, but it wasn’t put…
