March 31, 2021

"Two days ago, I decided to stop doing the dishes. I make all the dinners and I am tired of having to do all the cleaning too. SINCE THEN..."

"... this pile has appeared and at some point they are going to run out of spoons and cups and plates. Who will blink first? Not me."

Tweeted Miss Potkin, with lots of photos (keep scrolling). 

Via Metafilter, where somebody says "So it’s like Wages for Housework, except you get Twitter faves instead of wages, and instead of a deep feminist critique of capitalism, you get a resentful critique of your shitty family?"

104 comments:

tim maguire said...

My family has a simple rule—the cook doesn’t do the dishes. We don’t follow it religiously—sometimes someone’s schedule makes it impractical or the cook just feels like finishing what they started, but as a general rule, it’s fair and easy to follow. Expectations are clear.

DavidUW said...

cook cooks, everyone else cleans.

Shouting Thomas said...

Serving other people graciously and bringing beauty into their lives, particularly to those closest to you, is an art form.

I don’t understand this desire to wallow in ugliness and selfishness.

jaydub said...

Performance art or bored housewife. Most glaring clue is the tweet with the two photos of the evil man's hands making a cup of tea - how does these closeups happen without some type of conversation about why?

Tim said...

Growing up, my older sisters cooked, and me and my brother did the dishes. There was no discussion, we were told that was part of our chores and we did it. Try raising your children. You know, be the authority figure that tells them what to do. A family is not a democracy. This woman is what is wrong with children and young adults today. Establish boundaries and expectations, and hold your children to them.

Doug said...

Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. H

Tom T. said...

Picking up on a post from yesterday, this is a variation of the silent treatment. Instead of learning to communicate effectively, they have all just shut down.

Broadcasting this to the world, though? Wow.

Fernandinande said...

Broadcasting this to the world, though? Wow.

I thought "gosh" instead of "wow", but this failure to wash is national news for some reason, some mysterious reason which might be interesting as well, but which I hope we'll never know.

gilbar said...

and at some point they are going to run out of spoons and cups and plates.

yep! and, AT THAT POINT; they'll wash some dishes...
Here's the Secret Secret...
MOST chores you expect me to do; are chores i Don't think need to be done

gilbar said...

Nearly ALL the chores YOU do, are chores i don't think actually exist

dusting? Come ON man! What IS that?

Wilbur said...

My mother had a special tactical item for making us do the chores we were assigned.

It was called a hardwood yardstick.

Wilbur said...

Or she could just follow the Lisa Douglas dish cleaning method; just chuck them out the kitchen window.

Eleanor said...

We had a rule in our house. Everyone, including the cook who wasn't always the same person, took turns doing the dishes, and it remained your turn until you did them. Jump up from the breakfast table and do the cleanup, and the chore moved to the next person. Leave the dinner dishes in the sink, and you got the breakfast dishes and probably lunch and dinner the next night to do, too. The kids only left the dishes overnight once per kid. I seldom left the house in the morning with dirty dishes waiting, Thwy finally got together and asked Santa for a dishwasher and a garbage disposal. I came from a family with 5 kids. I learned this method from my parents, and I don't remember any issues they ever had with getting any chores done using this method. I remember one time when all of the chores ended up on one of my brother's plates on the same day. That's when we started learning about the Art of the Deal.

Chris said...

My wife cooks, I do the dishes and clean up. It's called respect, love, and sharing. It works.

Temujin said...

That's pretty funny. This happened once at a house I lived in with 3 other guys, uh no...make that 4 other guys, in college in East Lansing back in the 70s. I don't remember how it started. But one or two of us got to thinking that we always end up cleaning up after the other guys. And those one or two of us stopped doing it. Truth is, all of us claimed to be the one or two that did all the cleaning. So the dishes were left piling up. College guys eat a lot of weird stuff, drink a lot of weird stuff. But we were also stubborn. No one would flinch. And no one even talked about it. We went on with our day to day and talked with each other, but the topic of the dishes and other assorted things in the kitchen never came up. One of the guys went out and bought plastic forks and knives just to not cave. There were things piling up that would make hardened surgeons weak-kneed. Fauci would have required a mask to enter our kitchen. Needless to say, any women that entered our house left duly impressed.

Finally- the only sane one in the house had enough and took it upon himself to work through the mess and clean things up. He scolded the rest of us (I'm sure while we were passing a joint around, so I'm not sure it had impact). We all thanked him by throwing a party in his honor. And of course, we all helped to clean up after the party. I think.

A few years later I found myself in the restaurant biz, and became obsessive about kitchen cleanliness. So yes, young dogs can still be retrained.

R C Belaire said...

I tried cooking and it was a disaster. So washing the dishes is my more/less permanent job.

Matt Sablan said...

I'm not clicking through. Trust me: The person who likes cleanliness will always blink first. I know, because growing up, I always blinked first.

iowan2 said...

Already on the thread, my first impression from the title, we were continuing yesterday's silent treatment.

This is one of the female/male dynamics that have always caused me to shake my head. I'm supposed to intuitively deduce from silent clues, cues, actions, and emotions what would make my mate happy. Or conversely, know they are upset about something. Could be work, or club, or friend, or her side of the family, or a store clerk. Or, the best, something I did...in her dream.

I do 95% of the cooking 20% of the laundry. 5% of the mowing, 95% house and auto maintenance.

This is the 1st time I created the score card, because I do what I have the time to do in order to have the free time together to have fun.

She could assign everybody chores. Set expectations. She's got resentments because her expectations are not being met. My bet, this is not the only area where non-communication is creating strife.

stevew said...

I'm tossing the BS flag on this tweet. All that mess may or may not be staged (what sort of slob puts their dirty clothes in a neat pile?) but the outrage and passive aggressive behavior is fake, designed to pull in eyes, retweets, and likes.

Shouting Thomas said...

This is 100% a spoiled brat post.

The chores in question only take a few minutes. Really, none of it is a big deal.

I observe the same nonsense in my grandkids. They’ll pout for hours over being asked to simply clean up their mess in the living room, and only concede when somebody gets pissed and screams at them.

What else do they have to to do? Watch Spongebob?

Simply doing the chore would take a few minutes and avoid a lot of anger and confrontation. Everybody’s life would be better.

Then, everybody can return to watching BS on TV and feeding their already enormous gut.

This culture of spoiled brat resentment and jealousy is lousy.

Big Mike said...

Miss Potkin is everything that is wrong with modern women. She decides that doing cooking and cleanup is taking too much out of her. Fair enough. But does she meet with her family to discuss, and so that they can decide how best to allocate the cleanup chores? Nope. The stupid bint just leaves the dirty dishes in the sink. Way to show your family that you respect them!

Leland said...

I got tired of paying the bills for the home only to come home and see dirty dishes and laundry all over the place. I'm going to find another home and residents for it that prefer to live in a clean house.

Actually, in my home, both my wife and I like a clean house, but dishes are an issue. So we go out to eat often and have paper plates and plastic ware to minimize clean up when we cook at home.

rehajm said...

Some cooks are messier than others, like every pot and pan and bowl messy. Here it isn't a fair division of labor.

mikee said...

As a video to watch immediately after "It's Not About the Nail"," try The Magic Coffee Table "."

These two short films explain male/female behavoiors better than most feminist screeds or red pill diatribes.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Every household has its own rules and divisions of chores. BUT the rules need to be made clear to everyone. Not just assumed. Decide early on who does what and make them stick to their chores. Even the kids....especially,the kids!...need to have jobs.

It doesn't take much time to do the chores, like cleaning the kitchen if you do it while you cook. Laundry in the basket instead of all over the house. Pick up after yourself.

Yes. It is frustrating when you are working alone and everyone else is sitting on their asses. But being a drama queen and initiating a stalemate is not the answer.

Communicate with your family once in a while, might work!

In our household we have a division of labor and there are many chores we do together. My husband works hard (physically hard) so the least I can do is to those things that I can and he does those things I can't.

mikee said...

Temujin, I once let a half glass of milk sit where I found it, left by my college apartment roommate on the counter, instead of cleaning it up. A week leter it was a bioweapon blooming with fungus and bacteria that you could smell throughout the entire apartment. I confronted my roomie with it, asked why he didn't clean up after himself, and got the response, "I thought that was your milk." I gently explainedd that (1) No, it was his; and (2) I'd kill him in his sleep if he didn't clean up after himself from then on. He believed me, and we got along fine after that little episode.

Of such events are male friendships forged.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

There is a children's book The Man Who Wouldn't Was His Dishes from more than a generation ago.

mikee said...

Even more appropriate, "The Magic Cupboard.

Sebastian said...

"But being a drama queen and initiating a stalemate is not the answer."

Depends on what the question is.

People have different questions.

tommyesq said...

Not hot enough to pull that shit.

I am not Laslo.

Iman said...

In our household at this moment, no one does the dishes. No one does the dishes because we have no kitchen. Kitchen is being re-modeled. Save ME from the tyranny of microwaveable “food” and eating takeout from restaurants!

SeanF said...

The ideal marriage isn't one where both people think, "I'll do 50% of the housework and my spouse will do 50%."

It's one where both people think, "I'll do 80% of the housework and my spouse will do 20%."

Nobody's ever doing too much work that way - you're pretty much always doing less than you expected to.

But it only works if both people are doing it.

Birches said...

Passive aggressive parenting, but especially marriaging will get a family in a very bad place. Just say what you want. It seems as if everyone else seems to be functioning fine, she's the one with the issue.

I can't imagine taking pictures of my husband for the internet to make fun of him and to passive aggressive call him lazy. I bet she calls him her partner. Ha!

Birches said...

What Tom T said. It's another version of the silent treatment.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Being on the same page in regards to cleanliness in the house is also important. As the stories from the guys with messy roommates illustrates. I've lived with slobby roommates too. I thought of murder several times.

When I first met and started dating my husband about 28 years ago, we were both single/divorced people. He was working all the time in his plumbing maintenance business (at that time). I was working all the time at my banking job.

His apartment was always neat,clean and basically tidy. How!? He is a bachelor?!? He paid a cleaning service to come once a week and do the deep cleaning (toilets, shower scrubbing, kitchen sink scrubbed, mopping, dusting, vacuuming, changed the sheets and made the bed once a week). He always did his own laundry once a week at the laundromat (Suds and Scrubs..they had beer!) Did his daily dishes, which weren't much because other than making breakfast, coffee and some scotch glasses, he ate out or had take out.

I was impressed. He CARED about how his living space was. No one had to nag him or force him. Neat, clean, tidy and still lived in with some normal clutter, books, boots by the door etc. I credit his Mom. Love that woman!

Life is good when you are on the same page 😁

gilbar said...

mikee points out, that Some houses JUST CLEAN THEMSELVES...
The Magic Coffee Table"

If clothes and dishes and food and stuff, just keep taking care of themselves...
What's the problem?

Maybe (just Maybe), if our ladies would TAKE THE NAIL OUT OF THEIR HEAD;
they'd realize that you Need to TELL people about things that need to be done

Iman said...

Or conversely, know they are upset about something. Could be work, or club, or friend, or her side of the family, or a store clerk. Or, the best, something I did...in her dream.

Funny stuff! My wife would accuse me of having affairs with female co-workers because she’d dreamed it, so it must be true.

rehajm said...

Life is good when you are on the same page 😁

It's the symbiosis for me. person who doesn't want a pickle/person who wants another pickle. Just bliss...

rehajm said...

I've offered to teach a full credit evening class on how to load the dishwasher. So far no takers....

Big O's Meanings Dictionary said...

housework should be 50|50 - meaning

An equal division of household labor.

Based on the presumption that both partners are working outside the house.

If only one partner works outside the house the rule becomes "housework should be 50|50".

Russell said...

My eyes rolled when it mentioned 'capitalism.' Sometimes not everything is f'ing meta. Sometimes its some shitty people in shitty situations. I can't take anyone seriously who brings 'capitalism' into some family construct as if it means something.

Just an old country lawyer said...

"Please, just tell me, clearly and plainly and unemotionally, just what it is you want and expect of me."

"If you really loved me you would know and I wouldn't have to ask."

Maybe husband and children know exactly what is going on, are tired of her shit and have decided to see just how far this circus can go. So she holds them up to public ridicule. Nobody says nothing to nobody.

You don't have to come from a Georgia trailer park to have a little white trash drama.

No screaming or shots fired, though. I'll give them that. So veddy British, you know.

MadisonMan said...

I like washing dishes in the winter because it warms up my hands.

Big Mike said...

As the stories from the guys with messy roommates illustrates. I've lived with slobby roommates too.

When I met my wife she was sharing a house with four other female graduate students. Her room and the bath she shared with one other woman were clean. The rest of that house, I wanted to vomit. I feel for the guys who married any of the other four women. I presume they died of ptomaine poisoning decades ago.

Wendy said...

Let me guess she is a 'feminist' and whining about doing all the housework. For the love of whatever you hold holy, use your voice and tell the family that they are part of the family and they need to step up and contribute to running the household.

I get that sometimes it feels like people take you for granted welcome to life, speak up for yourself. Teach your children how to pitch in, have a family meeting and assign chores, everyone lives in the house so everyone contributes to maintaining the house. It won't be equal all the time but find the balance that works for you. People, in general, will do the bare minimum that is a human quality, there are a couple of choices speak up and say that someone else's minimum is not enough, or just keep quiet and pick up the slack to meet your minimum.

Leland said...

He CARED about how his living space was. No one had to nag him or force him.

But DBQ, all those good men are taken. How can I find a man like that?

at the laundromat (Suds and Scrubs..they had beer!)

I Callahan said...

I don’t understand this desire to wallow in ugliness and selfishness.

Feminism. Have you ever met or seen a happy feminist?

Francisco D said...

DavidUW said...cook cooks, everyone else cleans.

That is how it is on our house.

However, I prefer to clean as I cook because it is easier than cleaning after letting crap pile up.

My wife sometimes feels guilty because I do 90% of the cooking and laundry. She thinks I am spoiling her. LOL!

CStanley said...

"Wash the plate not because it is dirty nor because you are told to wash it, but because you love the person who will use it next.”~St. Teresa of Calcutta

tcrosse said...

A useful rule is that the first person at the dinner table to look at their phone has to do the dishes.

Sam L. said...

Wife and I have a deal: She cooks; I wash. I cook; she washes.

Oso Negro said...

@ Tommyesq - no onlyfans page for her, I guess?

Chris N said...

Twitter’s business model and algorithm encourages unknown people to be loud.

This amplifies truly obnoxious and sometimes truly crazy people and makes some of them very popular. It can keep them popular for years.

It’s one of many reasons why you shouldn’t respect anything else the mgmt says about civil discourse and even decent journalism.

Howard said...

It's all fake... she lives in a Potkin Village.

Mark said...

While we are on the subject -- there is a right way to clean dishes and a wrong way. And if I am doing the dishes, you damn well better NOT put your dirty dishes in my sink. If you put them in the sink, someone else needs to take them out of the damn sink in order to use the sink to clean them. The sink is not a storage area. Rinse the damn dish off and put it on the counter. And you damn well better not put your crap-encrusted plate in my clean soapy dishwater, thereby contaminating everything in there.

Jerry said...

I do the dishes, because my lovely bride just piles them into the dishwasher without regard for whether the spray can actually hit the dirty parts. She cooks because she LIKES it, and it destresses her from a long day at work.

Twitter's a drug. It really reinforces destructive behavior.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

My father was left home alone for several days back in the 1970s. When we returned home, there was one plate, one spoon, one fork, and one knife waiting to be washed in the kitchen sink. We assume he washed them between meals, but we don’t actually know.

Chris N said...

It’s also what gets eyeballs and every media outlet follows, to some degree, because it’s popular.

Aside from the technology, of course, which is new.

You can control your attention, but you’re also running an iterative process with algorithms and data collection which can come to ‘know’ enough about your attention and behavior to predict a good amount of future attention and behavior. This is highly predictive of mental states and some actual thoughts.

Newspapers amplify TV does it. Althouse does it, too, of course. Just more respectfully. It’s a lot harder to start conversations and give people a voice and a sense of ownership without some button-pushing.

Joe Smith said...

We are redoing the kitchen and have no dishwasher other than me.

We've been using paper plates and plastic utensils when we can but the dishes still pile up.

I do them at least every other day...but mostly every night before bed.

Will get my back-ordered dishwasher in a week and a half.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Mark: While we are on the subject -- there is a right way to clean dishes and a wrong way.

As I was taught to do dishes by my Mother and Grandmother....way before a dishwasher existed in our house

First: Glasses and crystal. Immediately dry to avoid water spots
Second: Silverware...yes. Actual silver. Ditto the drying to avoid water spots
Third: Plates, bowls etc
LAST: Pots and pans Change the water with new really hot water if needed.

This avoids grease on the glasses and silver.

Someone would wash and another person dry at the same time. Dishes were a two person job.

Chris N said...

We use illegal migrant children to wash our dishes.

We throw ‘em out when we’re done (the dishes and the children).

Mark said...

LAST: Pots and pans Change the water with new really hot water if needed.
Someone would wash and another person dry at the same time.


Actually, these should be started first. And by first, I mean before you eat. It takes only a few seconds to rinse those out and set them aside to clean later. While the cook is cooking, the cleaner should be there grabbing the dirty pots and pans and prepping them.

Bob Smith said...

My guess is that in most American homes washing the dishes consists of rinsing off the big chunks, loading the dishwasher, and pressing the go button I’ve never seen a problem with doing the dishes. Sink full of dirty dishes? Somebody is lazy, and being allowed to be so.

Joe Smith said...

"My family has a simple rule—the cook doesn’t do the dishes. We don’t follow it religiously.."

My good friend is a priest. He lives in a house with other priests.

They have the same rule, but they follow it religiously.

Dude1394 said...

I always do the dishes, wife cooks. But she has always overestimated the work. If she stopped I would probably just eat out every day.

traditionalguy said...

Dishwashers predated birth control pills in making women FREE people.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

You'll get a tweet that's 10 times as angry when her husband finally does the dishes.

Kate said...

Everyone has already beautifully stated what I came here to say!

rcocean said...

Liberal women always seem to have a thing about doing house work. As if manual labor - as opposed to talking and writing - is somehow unimportant. Usually wives/Husbands work out a division of labor. My wife understands that I'm willing to accept a much higher level of dirt and disorder than she is. So, she takes care of the cleaning inside and also the dishes. I help out with the cooking and do all the outdoors stuff.

BTW, how many women want to mow the lawn and take out the trash while their husbands do the dishes or vacuum?

Yancey Ward said...

So, ladybugs in the UK are ladybirds?

rcocean said...

BTW, i rented a room from a liberal woman while in college. God, what a pig. Of course, I never said anything. But her bathroom was always full of clothes drying (she was too cheap for a dry cleaner), and the living room was a mess with cigarette ash all over. No wonder she was divorced. But she made up with it with good looks. Haha. Fooled you. She was 5-2 tall, and 4 feet wide.

That's probably the one woman I've lived with that was so slovenly, even I was upset.

Yancey Ward said...

From what I can tell, she spends far too much time on Twitter.

SGT Ted said...

"a deep feminist critique of capitalism,..."

There's no such thing. Theres only neo-Marxist whining about how the world should cater to women and their sensibilities, absent the pedestal Patriarchy had provided.

PM said...

Two weeks ago, dishwasher failed.
I had no business attempting, but I took it apart, de-cruded, reassembled - works.
Dumb luck, but wife thinks I'm the bomb.

SGT Ted said...

"I'm a failure as a parent. I can't even teach my children how to do basic household chores." isn't a good look.

Yancey Ward said...

I did find one other thing on her twitter to agree with- having "Line of Duty" back is great!

Scott M said...

This is a constant battle in my house. My mom was stay-home until I was 14 and the house was always in great shape. Still, my brothers and I had to adhere to a rotating schedule of cleaning the kitchen after dinner. My wife was essentially raised by reformed hippies and by that I mean they were hippies until they were in their mid-thirties and one did night school to become an ER doc and one became a kitchen/bath contractor. But...while they were raising their kids...bedlam.

So my wife's take on things is that she and I work full-time, the kids are in school, and we don't have a maid (shocker). Chores are done four hours every Saturday morning. My take on it has always been, but is especially so now with me working from home for the past year, that I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN PSUEDO-SQUALOR DURING THE WEEK. If I don't ride herd on the kids, and the wife to some extent, the dishes simply don't get done.

There are other aspects of this like sorting socks...oh fucking hell don't get me started on sorting socks (me: sort the damned socks and put them away / her: here's a basket of clean socks...find a match and go). My contention is that it's our job to raise functional adults that have to go out into the world and NOT be murdered by their first roommates. She doesn't seem to care about that much.

I'm no neat freak, I just don't want clutter and a dirty kitchen every time I walk in there.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

SGT Ted said...

"I'm a failure as a parent. I can't even teach my children how to do basic household chores." isn't a good look.

But if she does that then she loses a lot of opportunity for those sweet, sweet moments of self-righteous outrage like the one in her tweet.

h said...

I wash and wax and vacuum our cars every week. It takes me hours. I like having a clean shiny car. My wife NEVER helps or volunteers. This is so unfair.

Joe Smith said...

"There are other aspects of this like sorting socks...oh fucking hell don't get me started on sorting socks..."

A few years back I started buying the same brand/color socks at Costco.

When they get a hole in the bottom they get tossed.

Every sock matches every other sock.

Problem solved.

Joe Smith said...

"I wash and wax and vacuum our cars every week."

'Such a clean machine...'

Mr. Forward said...

I knew a pair of bachelor brothers who had bought all the dishware from a large restaurant that went bankrupt. They had hundreds of dirty dishes stacked floor to ceiling filling most of the kitchen. May have been their version of the silent treatment.

Gahrie said...

This is the type of thing that makes living alone so attractive.

effinayright said...

Wymyn who complain about division of housework often quietly ignore all that "icky" or "hard" stuff their husbands do, like wiring up the house computer network; figuring out the controls and commands to be used with home electronics; dealing with a leaky faucet or toilet; making sure regular auto oil changes get done; wrestling with income tax returns; mowing the lawn and applying fertilizer/weed killers; going up a ladder to clean gutters; hauling heavy trash bins out to the curb, and so on.

Myself, aside from giving birth and nursing our kids, I have done EVERYTHING that needs doing around the house.( OK, I've never used a sewing machine, but I hand-sewed a bear costume for my first kid's school play.)**

Thing is, I grew up in a military family with four sisters, where there was no such thing as "women's work." *Everyone* chipped in.

(Ironically, the Old Man was terribly unhandy at fixing things: I learned my first "bad" swear words listening to him wrestle with uncooperative power tools.)

Early in our marriage my wife and I used to argue about who does what, but over time she has "got with the program". Yes, there's a rough division of labor, but we get things done.

Perhaps Ms. Potkin will take stock of *all* the chores and tasks her hubby performs to see if there's really a lack of equity. Maybe she could negotiate a swap---"How 'bout you washing the dishes, and I'll be responsible for getting the trash to the street for pickup?"

It's an idea SO CRAZY, it just might work!

Now, maybe her hubby *is* a lazy lout. But that's a "marriage problem", not a "capitalism problem."

**(Oh, and did I mention that I'm the far better cook?)

n.n said...

Keep women appointed, available, and taxable.

Feminists and masculinists are a dueling duo.

n.n said...

watching BS on TV and feeding their already enormous gut

covid-cdc-study-finds-roughly-78percent-of-people-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese
via: market-ticker.org

Now we know why America was especially hard hit.

JPS said...

"It's all fake... she lives in a Potkin Village."

Nicely done, Howard!

Bob Smith said...

And if you pulled dry chain in a wood products factory loading the dishwasher holds no terrors for you. It’s Easy.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

wholelottasplainin',

Wymyn who complain about division of housework often quietly ignore all that "icky" or "hard" stuff their husbands do, like wiring up the house computer network; figuring out the controls and commands to be used with home electronics; dealing with a leaky faucet or toilet; making sure regular auto oil changes get done; wrestling with income tax returns; mowing the lawn and applying fertilizer/weed killers; going up a ladder to clean gutters; hauling heavy trash bins out to the curb, and so on.

This! It's like that around here: My husband has installed and configured every electronic device in this house; he's plunged the toilet (at least until I figured out how to do it myself); he unclogs the drains; he's caught and fixed miscellaneous stuff, like the winter it got so cold that the condensation runoff from the furnace froze at the outlet in the house wall and then backed up into the garage and thence through to the hallway ceiling below; he handles literally everything to do with the car.

I can't say we have much "yardwork," as there's no lawn to speak of. (At least, there wasn't, though after we finish removing all the downed branches from our horrific ice storm last month, there may well be now). I have attempted to plant some bulbs, very badly if I may say so, among the rockery. But he prunes the privet and the ivy, and hauls out the leafblower whenever it's needed.

The trash bins, I confess, I do handle myself most of the time. But he does the litterboxes :-) Laundry we split, more or less.

I'm an anomaly here, though, in that I both cook and clean up afterwards. Apart from the odd "bachelor meal" (microwave lasagna or ravioli or ziti, mostly), I don't think he's cooked anything in thirty years. So I do all the cooking, b/c I like it. And cleanup is pretty easy anyway; we just run through a lot of dishwashing pods. It seems a fair division of labor, given that he is also the one who makes (almost) all the money.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Added:

Perhaps Ms. Potkin will take stock of *all* the chores and tasks her hubby performs to see if there's really a lack of equity.

She calls herself "Miss Potkin" on Twitter, so unless it's a literary reference or something, as opposed to her actual name, married or maiden, I'd say she doesn't respect her husband enough to ask him about "equity" anyway. Me, I'm Ms. Thomson or Ms. Dulak, depending on context (e.g., to the state of OR, I'm Dulak; to American Record Guide, I'm Thomson). I use both -- unhyphenated -- whenever I can, like here.

Mark said...

he's plunged the toilet (at least until I figured out how to do it myself)

MDT -- helpful hint:

Get rid of the low-flow toilet. Get an old one with a big honking tank of water so that the waste will actually go down the drains. The only places I've ever seen the need for a plunger is in those bathrooms with the "new" low-flows. Certainly, I've never had one or needed one in my bathrooms (which all have had pre-fascist toilets).

Jaq said...

Sounds like a point she should have made to her family years ago instead of embarrassing herself on Twitter.

Jaq said...

"Perhaps Ms. Potkin will take stock of *all* the chores and tasks her hubby performs to see if there's really a lack of equity.”

I remember reading a study on this where they discounted the husband’s chores because he ‘enjoyed’ them, so they were really recreation. In other words, only traditional women’s work counted as chores.

ALP said...

Learn to 'cook clean' FFS. That is what we do - find moments in the cooking process to clean up as we cook. By the time the meal is done - so are the dishes.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

tim in vermont,

I remember reading a study on this where they discounted the husband’s chores because he ‘enjoyed’ them, so they were really recreation. In other words, only traditional women’s work counted as chores.

That's ridiculous. It only counts as work if you hate doing it? What a recipe for irritation and resentment.

ALP said...

Comedian Wanda Sykes had a funny bit about this issue, in the context of her former marriage. She, as the wife, simply refuses to do them any more. Husband refuses to do dishes; they pile up and run out of clean dishes.

Husband starts eating his meals with a toothpick off a napkin, muttering "bitch this is how I lived before I met you..."

Scott M said...

A few years back I started buying the same brand/color socks at Costco.

When they get a hole in the bottom they get tossed.

Every sock matches every other sock.

Problem solved.


Negative, Ghostrider. There are five humans living here and, these days, three of them have roughly similarly-sized feet. That equals a huge basket of mismatched socks that one must paw through.

I solved it by starting with what you mentioned...I bought a big package of white socks for day to day and another of black for more dressy occasions. But if I stopped there, same problem. What did in the second step is to do my own laundry, completely separately from the rest of the family (which my wife does). So sorting my own socks is a snap.

Here's the rub though. When my wife is in a hurry or can't find a clean pair of white socks, GUESS WHERE SHE GOES? Yep, my neatly put-away stacks of socks in my drawer. I've been stewing about that one for a couple years, but have yet figured out a way to effectively torpedo her for it. Plus I'm kinda fond of her.

JAORE said...

Growing up I was cautioned to not air your dirty laundry in public.

Guess dirty dishes are OK.

What a world.

Rusty said...

If the smell don't bother you, fill yer boots.

effinayright said...

Here's a guy with the right attitude. Be sure to watch it to the end.

https://kapwi.ng/c/ynn5F4Vz

Iman said...
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Freeman Hunt said...

Tell someone to do it. Then you don't have to wait two days.

n.n said...
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n.n said...

We're not merely adults. Reconcile.