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Domestic chores…what do you do?

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Today I have bought and cooked Sunday lunch and dinner, replaced a toilet seat with much effing and jeffing.

All done to the soundtrack of a second ODI victory for England vs WI and a couple of glasses of wine.

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  2. I do pretty much all the cooking chez Ainsley (just me and the GLW now the sprogs have all got partners and live away from home). Also anything remotely resembling DIY or electronic./gadgety. In return the washing gets dealt with, which I regard as a good deal.

    My cooking background noise is mainly BBC radio comedies via BBC Sounds

  3. It varies. I like to think I pull my weight more since retirement but what they say seems true, I really don’t much notice cobwebs or dusty surfaces. Today I shopped, mowed the lawn and did some ironing. (Ben de La Cour accompanied me for the last, nice and loud, in the kitchen, with his forthcoming release, New Roses, sufficiently to “get” his new direction.)
    Mrs Path cooked tea tonight, and jolly good it was too: sea bass with a broccoli/spinach/asparagus orzo side.

  4. I generally cook (frankly, I’m better at it) and usually the ironing. DIY is sort of shared, but I do the electrical stuff and any woodworking etc. We share the shopping. Mrs. T is on top of the finances (just as well) and is a fantastic gardener – it is currently 9.15 and she is still out there, and will be until dark. I cut the grass when allowed.

  5. Keeping the living room, kitchen and entrance lobby floors clean is my early morning task every day. I sweep them with a broom, then Swiffer dust them and then wash them with a mop. Because dogs. On alternate days I shop and cook what I’ve bought for lunch. Often risotto, sometimes pasta, always vegetarian. On the days I don’t cook, I do the washing up. I don’t know how to operate the dishwasher.

    My chores are not soundtracked.

  7. I cook evening meals as we both eat mostly independently during the day. Most shopping and all DIY as well as organising car services and mundane stuff like washer bottles, tyre pressures. I occasionally do some laundry but my wife does more as well as most cleaning. She has high standards and we settled into this routine a few years ago when she realised that complaining about me not doing something was counterproductive so we just do stuff we either like or at least don’t mind doing. She does the garden as I have no interest in it and would happily put it all down to grass and just mow it every two weeks. She also does household bills as she’s around a lot more than me and very organised.

  8. I do most of it. I wfh while The Light has a train and bus commute so that’s the trade off.

    I do all the cooking (trust me, it’s best that way) except for breakfast in bed which is brought to me at the weekend, the general cleaning and laundry. The previous owner of our house left a dishwasher so that’s one chore out of the way. She does the vacuuming as it just wouldn’t get done if it was down to me and most of the gardening for the same reason. She also drives, which I don’t, so anything requiring the car is her department. We do the weekly big shop together.

    Today, seeing as you ask, she was working. I find it much easier to get housework done without her uncanny ability to be standing exactly wherever I need to be. I cleaned the bathroom, tidied the living room including wiping down the plantation shutters, picked up some groceries while having a walk around town plus a couple of new cushions for the sofa from a charity shop, and made pizza (using a sourdough starter than I brought to life a couple of months ago) for when she got home. I also ‘fixed’ the mantle clock I bought in another chazza yesterday. The only thing wrong with it was the pendulum weight was missing. I improvised with a supermarket trolly token on a short chain, removing links until the time keeping was more or less right (I think. Time, literally, will tell.) I was also called to aid of a neighbour who has very limited strength in her arms and who’s cat had taken a funny turn and needed to be lifted into his basket for a trip to the vets. Put like that it seems like a packed day but I also feel like I’ve spent most of it on here, doing crosswords and watching telly.

    I know, I know, she’s lucky to have me.

  9. I do the day-to-day house maintenance – vacuuming, clothes and dish washer, pots and pans etc. Mrs Moles does the strategic projects – such as getting the floorboards in the top floor sanded and varnished – and the bathroom. Cooking split out evenly. She has the garden, I have the allotment. Big shop (yes we still do that once a week) also split.

  10. I can’t cook to save my life, but I’m a dab hand at just about everything else. I do my share of the washing, all the dusting and hoovering, everything garden related and all the DIY. I also ‘organise’ the weekly Sainsbury’s shop, which involves pressing some buttons online and being friendly to the delivery driver. I also sort out all the bills and finances, and arrange any house maintenance issues.

    I’m available on Wednesdays and Fridays for a small fee.

  11. A good deal of it. Mrs Beezer is semi-invalid, has been for a while and will be for another while until a couple of significant operations are arranged, had and recovered from.

    I do all the housework and cleaning, bar the laundry, and about 75% of the cooking. I’m quite good at both. I enjoy the latter much more than the former. After doing the former for so long I don’t really mind anymore. I have my routine and my method and tend to auto-pilot through it, thinking of nicer things for when we’re both better. (I’m waiting for an op on my L4 lumbar disk after a bad old do last year).

  14. I do most cooking and home maintenance activities. We both clean (with help from the robot vacuum and occasional cleaners).

    Lady Podicle does virtually all laundry and household finances/admin work, for which I am eternally grateful.

    • Talking of robots doing chores, I really liked this video of two robots putting away the groceries, just because of the first comment below it: “When you ask your two stoned roommates to put away the groceries.”

  16. I work a five day week. My wife and three young kids are usually asleep by 10pm. I stick on music – usually Tom Dunne’s evening show or Late Date on RTE (from 11) or Spotify or old minidisc compilations. At this point I have the often massive task of restoring the sitting room/kitchen to order just so the kids can wreck it again tomorrow. This involves filling the dishwasher and hand washing the rest. The floor is usually full of Lego that has to back into the correct set, Pokémon cards, dinosaurs, drawings, crayons and multitudes of Beanos and other comics, books that need to go back on the shelf. It takes a while. I do a lot of the cooking at weekends.

    I do bath nights including hair washing. I do household maintenance including fixing the washing machine and dishwasher. Yesterday I replaced wooden slats in our youngest’s bed.

    I do the big shop every weekend and put it all away. I pay all the bills and keep the car going. I do some but not all painting. I assemble IKEA stuff and a huge trampoline (single handedly) and, to be sung to the tune of You Were Always on my Mind (thanks Viz) … “I always did the bins, yes I always did the bins”.

    In spite of all of the above, if you heard my wife, you’d swear I do nothing. I’ll get my reward in the next life.

  17. I’ve got all the bases covered. I do a lot of the cooking, most of the washing, vacuuming, cleaning, maintenance, ironing, dusting, shopping, finances etc. I work from home 2-3 days a week, something my wife can’t do being a teacher. The kids help out a bit, and it all seems to get done, mostly, sort of. The one thing I often forget to do is water the garden, although Sydney’s had about a month’s worth of rain in a few days, so that’s sorted.

  18. I am in charge of buying the groceries and cooking our meals. I do my laundry, she does hers.

    And that’s about it. Cleaners come in periodically, and that’s all the chores we have. There are some benefits to living in government-provided housing with no grass or flowers in the backyard.

  19. I do nearly all the food shopping and cooking while Mrs thep is at work down in the shed. I’m a bit of a messy cook so I tend to clean up afterwards.

    Mrs thep simply doesn’t understand the concept of down time. Five minutes before work? I know, I’ll mow the lawn. I would do more washing than I do if she didn’t insist on doing it all. the. bloody. time while I’m idly pondering the day ahead*…sometimes I’m at risk of ending up in the washing machine myself if I don’t get the jimjams off quick enough. I often sort and fold the washing though, I’m not a complete slob. We have a lovely cleaner come once a fortnight, and I get involved in what we call Tanya-ing.

    After frequent failures to meet her high standards (her ex is a builder) I’ve handed over pretty much all DIY to her. In any case my thoughtful attitude to such tasks – it’s important not to rush into these things, I find – drives her nuts. Likewise gardening.

    *In the immortal words of Tom Lehrer, I like to get all my shillying done in the morning so I have the afternoon free for shallying.

  20. I do all the washing and most of the cooking, especially now that Mrs M is having treatment for cancer. Since her diagnosis we’ve had a lot of donations in terms of frozen food and promises of same (my daughter has organised a whole schedule of food deliveries from friends next month when I am busy with work every day). Someone also gave us $ as a “voucher” for cleaning so our cleaning person comes once a week now instead of once a month (Mrs M used to do most of it the rest of the time)

  21. Everything bar the dusting and polishing, which I leave to the dusting fairy. Undoubtedly, some of these ‘everythings’ don’t happen as frequently as they would if there were someone else in the house. Life’s too short.
    But cooking is something I don’t stint on.

  22. Since I retired and as my wife is still working i do most of food shopping and the cooking and I quite like it . We have cleaners who come in to do a big clean every two weeks so I try and do the rest ( obviously very badly ) in between. I do try and do DYI but honestly I’m hopeless at it so now we have to someone capable come in . As for the garden well lets just say in the 3 years since retirement I have come to the conclusion I can kill anything in the garden. We are currently trying to make it maintenance free as possible. My wife does all the financial stuff as she just loves a spreadsheet. As for today we have done a couple of hours in the garden, run the hoover round as the cleaners are due in ( don’t ask ) cooked a lovely chicken roast whilst watching Simon Yates win the Giro then started a new series on Netflix called Dept Q which is very good so far .

    • Just finished Dept Q. Absolutely brilliant. Forget the lazy “Slough Horses” copycatting comments, it is nothing like it, bar a similar concept ( from a Danish author who wrote the books ahead of Mick Herron writing his, btw)
      And, if it lags around episode 5 or 6, it then throws an absolute belter out to regain any lost admiration and more.

      • I’m two episodes in and it’s holding my interest. I’m also catching up on series two of Severance so it’s going to have to be pretty exceptional to win out in the idling away my time stakes.

  24. Weekly food shop, and regular purchase of bottled water (the family love it, but it is a schlepp getting it up 66 stairs/3 floors). The washing up. I cook a few times a week – Thurs/Fri/Sat lunch when WFH and some Sunday lunches, plus Friday night pancakes. Garbage disposal. Some homework support and bedtime story reading (the Tintin canon at the moment). My own clothes (not trusted to do anyone else’s).
    I don’t do my fair share, I think A full time job leaves me quite tired at the end of the day, but I should try to pull my weight more.

      • Food is bought as needed. There’s a nice deli cum greengrocer 200m from our door. The butcher is 20 minutes walk. Hate supermarket shopping but it’s a short walk away when there is no other option.

      • “I could never be organised enough in my head to think that far in advance”.

        I tell you, it does my head in every Saturday morning, trying to think of all the essentials we have run out of, as well as thinking of meal ideas for the next few days.

        The route goes – conventional supermarket -> organic bakery -> organic street market (meat stall then fruit/veg stalls) -> organic supermarket -> conventional street market (fish stall & cheese stall). It’s a tour of Bonn every time.

        Bonn is littered with many many food shops, restaurants and takeaway opportunities, so that weekly food shop is supplemented by intersessional purchases, but without the big shop our busy lives would be (even more) chaotic.

      • I used to do a weekly shop with my ex. We would go through almost every conceivable item in the store for what seemed like hours spend $3-400 on food and then come home and order a pizza ….

        • I take photos of what’s in the fridge/larder before we do the weekly shop, which prevents us from buying duplicates/waste/cost.

          The Man in the Cloud must be looking at my photos and thinking “this bloke really is more dull than he lets on”.

  25. I like to think that I do about half of the cleaning/tidying, but the reality is that Mrs H works from home so probably does more than her share because she is around all the time. I will tend to do the “heavy/dirty/nasty” jobs, such as carting garden waste to the tip, bins, that sort of thing. I do pretty much all of the dog walking, including the daily 6.30am trudge and the late night one. Cooking is split, but I’d say that she does the functional day-to-day kind of stuff. When I do it, it has to be an event and take hours, during which everyone else clears the kitchen so that I can produce a work of art.

    I heard on a podcast recently that someone says that the secret to a lasting marriage is that one partner deals with all the small things and one deals with the big. In our case, Mrs H deals with all the small things and I deal with the big. She is so successful at the small matters that there are never any big ones for me to handle. Works perfectly!

  26. I do some of the shopping, some of the washing, some of the cooking, some of the admin. I cut the grass and do occasional unskilled work in the garden. I also do low-level DIY. Not sure I pull my weight but think I’m moving in the right direction.

  27. Mrs F works long hours in the office and about a week abroad each month, and I work from home when I absolutely have to.

    With four working adults in the house, two of them on shifts, there’s always a wash in the machine to be pegged out or something in the sink.

    I’m also the practical one – Mrs F literally can’t wire a plug.

    So I do it all during the week, Mrs F cooks at the weekends, the Offsprings clean the bathrooms and put the Hoover round once a week.

    • When we moved house I disconnected the old electric cooker. I switched it off at the wall switch, switched off the fuse, used a voltage testing screwdriver … yet when I turned around The Light was standing behind me with a big wooden stick because she was still worried that I was going to electrocute myself. She isn’t one of nature’s DIYers.

  28. I do most of the non-creative stuff in the house and garden while my wife does most of the cooking and proper gardening. I am to DIY what King Herod was to childcare so if it’s more complicated than putting a few screws in then we ‘get a man in’.

  29. I do the big food shop, most of the house cleaning (Mrs looks after the bathroom), and the ironing (she has an aversion to it). Mrs does the laundry and most of the gardening. We both cook, depending on who finds it easier to fit into their day.
    We’re both pretty good at getting on with things, but we both find reasons not to unload the dishwasher. For some reason it’s a bigger pain in the rear end than the larger jobs.

  30. Id like to say it’s a very balanced split of duties. But I’m not truly convinced it is (and Mrs D certainly wouldn’t agree).
    * Washing-up and dishwasher – my domain, accompanied by a soundtrack of choice
    * Vaccuming – Robot Vacuum (Wilf) takes care of the downstairs, rest of it is my doing
    * Doggy feeding and exercising (which often equates to “letting them run round the garden for a while”) – me
    * Mowing the lawn/gardening – mostly me, but got a Robot Lawnmower (Maureen) and I’m now obsessed by the lawn and it’s divots.
    * Cooking – shared, but if it wasn’t for Mrs Ds prowess in the kitchen, I would be surviving on the diet of a 9 year old.
    * Cleaning – I do bits, but mostly Mrs D. I’m not very good at cleaning, and she only ends up doing it again anyway (because it’s not up to he exacting standards)
    Shopping – total shared experience (even if I am told to remove most of the stuff I try and sneak in the trolley)
    DIY = GSETDIIOFIU (aka Get Someone Else To Do It, I’ll Only F**k It Up)

  31. Well, for the 40 years that have passed since I moved into my first flat at 17, I’ve lived alone and done everything myself. The cleaning, the cooking and baking, the DIY, the shopping, the gardening (of a balcony), the washing up, the laundry, recycling, putting together lots of IKEA furniture, paying the bills and managing the paperwork, the sewing; all of it, all of the time.
    Add a physically tough full-time job to that, and in later years helping aged parents, plus an auto-immune disease, and there’s no wonder that I today find myself fairly broke, riddled with aches and pains, constantly tired, unable to work for the moment due to a busted knee, and living in a flat that is not as tidy and clean as it perhaps ought to be, but I’ve quit worrying about dust and half-finished DIY projects.

    I’m frankly amazed that I’ve managed to take care of everything as well as I have, considering that my circumstances haven’t been the best and that I find most of these tasks unbearable!
    But I certainly look forward to retirement…unfortunately I’ve got at lest ten years left to work, if I want to be able to pay my bills once I do retire.
    But I’m still the happiest, most satisfied person I know. I’ve never been one to worry, I’ve never been bored for a single moment of my life, and I do what I want to do without anybody telling me what I should be doing. Life’s pretty good, as long as I don’t mind the occasional dust bunnies!

  35. Hanging up clothes on a clothes horse to dry. It takes ages as each separate sock is unfolded, every t shirt turned the right way round and straightened to avoid creases. It demands attention and patience.

  36. Walking the dog is 90% me but Mrs BC has been doing more of that recently.
    We have a rota for loading and unloading the dishwasher but I tend to do it quite a bit (e.g. when I feel sorry for my 19 y.o. who works/studies long hours).
    I mow the lawns, do the weeding and in the summer maintain an outdoor swimming pool. During winter, the pool shows neglect resembling Chernobyl’s surrounding residential areas.
    Mrs BC does the laundry but I do the ironing – which is just my work shirts anyway.

    We have a robovac that we are pretty happy with, replacing the thunderingly useless and expensive Dyson. The Dyson is still used for the stairs because it can just about manage to do that without an existential crisis which leads to an entire internal organ transplant. If I can limit its use to about five minutes, it’ll also just about keep its charge (if I don’t put in on MAX). If it runs out of power, it takes 350 billion years to replenish itself.

    Our house is by no means a show home, but I have given up panicking when we get a surprise visitor. When the children were smaller, most of the house was a bomb site – it’s a lot better now. For those that are currently in the throes of that time of your life, don’t worry, it will pass. People say that they miss the noise and chaos when the kids grow up. I don’t.

      • I might be exaggerating a bit. Honestly, I have never had such a needy household appliance. If the filter needs cleaning you can wash it under the tap but it needs to be completely, utterly, bone dry. In other words several hours in the sun or at least a day on the bench. How often does this need to happen? At least once a week.

          • It’s the big purple bit at the top, about the size of a man’s fist. Even if I did have a second one, I will doubtless have to take it all apart and put it all together again several times to get stuff out of its nooks and crannies. By “stuff” I mean anything that’s bigger than a grain of sand.

            I’m not a fan. It’s only still there because it’s handy to grab for the occasional mishap. The robovac does the hard yards.

  37. I generally do most of the cooking as I’m a professional bum (having early retired). I tend to do most of the food shopping also, as I tend to wander down to the supermarket/ shops as needed rather than a weekly shop.

    Cleaning is generally done by the robots, and my better half does the bathrooms (her standards are way higher than mine). Laundry is generally whoever decides has run out of clothes first, so will load up the washing machine. Ironing is pretty much non existent (unless it’s a really special occasion).

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