greenbaby

Since I’ve become a SAHM/WAHM, I’ve become more aware of the division of cleaning tasks in our household. Everybody (including my husband) says that staying home with a baby is a full time job. And yet, it seems that he and I both accept that now that I’m home I should do the lion’s share of the cleaning. This means that our house is slowly spiraling into an abyss of dirt. I have no time and no idea exactly where my time is going. When Pookie gets home at the end of the day and asks what Sweet Pea and I did today, I often have no ready answer, because looking back on the day I have no idea where all the time went and how we spent it.
The real problem, as I determined last night while I was cleaning the kitchen and folding laundry, is that my dear husband still lives as though he is a bachelor. He doesn’t expect me to pick up after him. In fact, he’s often surprised to find me picking up after him, and he assures me that he was going to do “that” (fill in any cleaning task). The problem as I see it is that he doesn’t realize that leaving dirty dishes in the living room, pulling a towel out of the middle of the pile and leaving the rest of the towels in a heap, or leaving tools and hardware scattered around the house, might affect other people in the household. In our bedroom we have “his and her” closets. “His” tends to look as though it is vomiting clothes. I put my foot down concerning Sweet Pea’s closet. I noticed soon after she was born that any time Pookie dressed her, her closet resembled a miniature version of his own. He stopped leaving her closet in this state after I told him that he could keep his closet however he liked, but he would not ingrain messiness in our daughter.
I could put my foot down about other things, too, but the problem is that Pookie is not doing any of this with intent. It seems as though he never learned how to pick up after himself. He was raised in a fairly messy household and I really think that he does not notice the same things I do. For two weeks after Sweet Pea was born Pookie insisted that I not lift a finger other than nursing Sweet Pea. I sat back and cringed only a little as the house I had so carefully cleaned in the last weeks of my pregnancy slowly became dirtier. Towards the end of those two weeks, when Pookie was going to go back to work, I walked into the kitchen and noticed that it looked very nice. I commented on this to Pookie and he said, “I wiped off the counters. I couldn’t figure out how you always got the kitchen to look so nice, then I realized that I wasn’t wiping down the counters.” That explained so much to me.
Bottom line, I need to pick my battles regarding housework. My dilemma? Which battles to pick…

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