Income keeps going up but husband doesn’t want to outsource any chores

[gembeldolar]

My husband and I are high income. I came from a middle class background, he’s from a lower-middle class background. We’ve been together over five years, married with a one year old.

Moved into a much bigger house last year and with that have more chores. Laundry. Cleaning. Lawn care. Dishes. It’s nonstop.

He refuses to hire out any of this work. His mom’s a cleaning lady and he keeps saying he’d quit running (he ran 1000 miles last year) before hiring someone to clean our house. Ok but that’s never happening so … why even act like it’s an option?

Generally I just pick away at some things during the week and we clean the house deeply before we have parties a few times a year. That means our floors get washed max once a month. Bathrooms cleaned 1-2 x a month. And it takes so much time and exhausts him to do. He spends hours and hours on lawn care. Our house isn’t messy but I hate spending so much time on this.

If we spent 5% of our take home pay on a cleaner and lawn care we’d get so much time an energy back but he still has this mindset like we make as much as we did five years ago. I just got a huge promotion and I feel like I can’t do anything to make my life easier.

Any thoughts?

 

[monkeym24]

@gembeldolar I would tell him that this is really important to you - It’s not about just getting out of chores because you don’t like them, it’s about recognizing that there are only 24 hours in a day and if you spend 3 hours a day cleaning, that’s 3 hours you can’t be spending time with your child or exercising or talking with your husband - the things you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) outsource!

He may not want to hire a cleaning service, but why should you have to sacrifice your very limited free time cleaning when you want to hire the service?

I’d divide up the chores (for example, you are in charge of weekly vacuum, dust, kitchen, and bathrooms, and he is in charge of all exterior cleaning and landscaping). Then tell him you will be hiring a cleaning service to cover yours and that you support him whether he decides to do his tasks himself or outsource them.

 

[ansem]

@monkeym24 This is exactly the mindset that I'm using to keep myself from overworking myself -- if I'm not getting paid more money to offset the stress elsewhere in my life, I'm not taking on more stress.

And if you do take on more stress to increase your income, I think it's well worth it to use that financial capacity to give yourself more time, energy, and mental capacity in your personal life. You're not paying for services to be lazy, you're paying for services so that you can feel like you're thriving.

I can tell you that we've struggled to maintain our house for the last four years and no one has come to give us a gold medal for it. The only recognition I get is from my husband and the fancy little "ding" my cleaning app does when I mark it complete. In fact, what we've gotten is guilt-trips from people because we don't also have the capacity to be responsible for all outings and get-togethers.

 

[gembeldolar]

@ansem Yes seriously I feel like the savings are honestly not that significant for us. I ask him why are we breaking our backs when we could be enjoying life more. We’re not 20 something’s anymore!

 

[gembeldolar]

@monkeym24 Very interesting suggestion, thank you for sharing!

 

[paparazi257]

@gembeldolar Why does it get to be his decision alone? If you can afford it and he refuses then sounds like he just volunteered to do the lions share of what the cleaning lady would do.

 

[gembeldolar]

@paparazi257 Yes that’s what it would seem like!

He already does a lot. Right now I wouldn’t say that I’m doing a lot more for our household than he is. But I feel like part of why we work hard is to enjoy life

 

[sherry4glorifythelord]

@gembeldolar Sure, but if he's doing a chore, it means you are watching the kids (depending on their age). Instead, you could do something fun as a family or one could watch the kids and the other relax.
What I mean is that no matter what, it falls on you even if you are not doing the chore

 

[alt124]

@gembeldolar I understand his sentiment. My husband and I are pretty high income and it took us a looooonnnng time before we decided to spend money on a cleaner. We still are super thrifty compared to our friends, I go grocery shopping (no deliveries), I cook 85% of our meals and never do food deliveries. I sometimes feel poor but it’s a choice because we choose to sock away the money instead of spending freely. Lifestyle creep is scary to me.

Socioeconomic class is a mentality, most people are on the other side, they spend more than they should. My husband and I both feel that we were raised with certain values and it is less about money than work ethic. We are taught to put in some elbow grease. We will spend money to go on vacations but we try to get the best value whenever possible. We fly coach, we don’t stay at the fanciest resorts, but we will spend money because it’s worth it to us.

We don’t outsource easily. However, when you only have a small amount of time and don’t enjoy cleaning, it’s well worth it to hire someone. We only have someone come once a month to deep clean whereas most of our friends have cleaners that come every week. I would say start with lawn care first, it must be weird for your husband to have a cleaner when his mom did that for a living.

 

[savedbygrace_777]

@gembeldolar Is the income combined? Like a joint account? Just hire the cleaners without his approval.

 

[karaka1]

@gembeldolar Lawn care is even easier to outsource than house cleaning. Unless he legit enjoys the work, it’s just such an easy decision. Maybe he’d be more willing if you hired a neighborhood kid rather than a company?

 

[gembeldolar]

@karaka1 Yes next time we have an outdoor project I’m going to push on sourcing the neighborhood!