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Oates MoM Anwser Partner

We had this question submitted via Facebook Messenger from a mum who has asked for advice. Have you experienced the same thing with your partner and made it work? Please share your tips below!


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  • At the beginning of our marriage we had an open conversation about this and he does ever since


  • Next time he offers tell him, great, but please do it before you go to the loungeroom and fall asleep.


  • neither does mine. however, he does other stuff around the house. If you want him to do washing up, maybe just ask him?


  • How about not washing any of his dishes and serving up his meals on disposable plates until he decided to help.


  • I don’t mind doing the dishes, cooking or doing the washing, but I hate vacuuming, dusting and cleaning the bathrooms etc. So my partner and I decided early on to just have allocated tasks. So then there is never a question of ‘whose turn is it to do the dishes’ and so we have less arguments about household tasks.


  • Talk to him is the only way to get things done.


  • I have a partner who doesn’t even offer to wash up. He does nothing around the house, claiming “I work 5 days a week!” But even when he was unemployed, he did nothing. He has days off, holidays, extended leave in 2020 cos his work closed for 3 months due to covid and still does nothing. 33 years together and there’s housework jobs I know he’s NEVER done. Yet when the kids were young, I worked, looked after the kids and still did all the housework. He recently adopted a puppy that I didn’t agree to get, then left me to look after it and train it. I’m so over it, I’m thinking of leaving him :(


  • Husband here! When it comes specifically to the kitchen, my wife does the mass majority of the cooking. So when it comes to dishes we (kids & I) together clear the dinner table and pack the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen. It has become a routine and sometimes the kids do more than I do, or I do more than them, but in the end we take responsibility for it. We eat together every evening at the dining table. In my opinion, if the family sits around in front of the tv eating, then I think that is where the problem starts.


  • Explain to him how it makes you feel and maybe come up with some compromise. It’s about teamwork.


  • Leave it for him to do, if you keep doing it, he can keep making empty promises


  • Wake them up so they can do what they have promised.
    Failing that, wash up your own stuff and put it away somewhere where it cant be found by the lazybones. If lazybones cant find any clean cups or plates etc to use, they will have to wash up their dirty dishes. It’s a long game but it may be the only way they get the hint. Or you could set their alarm to wake them up half an hour earlier the following morning, so they can do the dishes then. Doing the dishes yourself will not solve the problem, but make a precedent.


  • I’m very lucky to have a hubby that cooks on my 3 work nights and cleans up. His new favourite toy is the Air Fryer, that only he uses, and it’s so easy to clean.


  • My husband has never done the dishes or cleaned the lounge table, but he does the cooking for which I am grateful and some other chores around the house and outside occasionally Sometime we have to look at the positives and not the negatives of what our husbands do help with.


  • Mine just sits on the couch and doesn’t offer…


  • At least he says that he is going to do it, hahah. My partner puts his dishes ON TOP of the dishwasher, and it drives me batty. We have a two drawer dishwasher, and he is so tall that he hates using the second one, so I try to have the top one empty for him… but he doesn’t often even check anymore! He is a much better stacker than me, too.


  • My late husband never offered to do the dishes but made sure our boys did it instead. Then he decided I needed an actual dishwasher so he bought me a 2 drawer dishwasher. He’s since passed away and my son now enjoys washing up and the dishwasher doesn’t get used as often as I like.


  • At the moment my husband is eager to give that job to our teenagers who like a little extra cash. And boy do we need to chase our teenagers !


  • Just use the dishwasher – get the kids to help putting the items in and you’ll find your husband will just have to oversee that its correctly out into the dishwasher – Washing up problem solved!


  • Actually my husband is pretty good, although he DOES sometimes say he’s going to do something, and then leaves it for so long that it makes me crazy. So I start doing it myself, and he usually then instantly chases me off and does it.


  • Unfortunately my husband is exactly the same and he made some pretty swooping promises to me about all the cleaning he would do. What works for him is that I need to ask him to do specific tasks like clean the kids bedroom without me getting angry and yelling. He will do it but not promptly.


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