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

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gembeldolar

New member
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?
 
@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.
 
@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. 🙃
 
@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 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.
 
@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
 
@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
 
@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.
 
@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 Have a cleaner come as a surprise! Seriously, I was such a stick in the mud when it came to hiring a house cleaner but after the first session, I was HOOKED.
 
@johnprin My husband was skeptical too! The first session deep clean, he called me to say he's eating his afternoon snack in the basement so he doesn't get crumbs anywhere 😂

He loves them just as much as I do, and now understands how much time we get back outsourcing the cleaning, and how less stressed I am.
 
@gembeldolar OP, I very much understand and relate to this situation, and respect that you want to come to a consensus with him instead of just doing what you want. I've actually experienced this dilemma a lot as well, and at the moment we haven't hired anyone. My husband does a lot around the house too, but I get frustrated, because when something like the plumbing breaks, he'd rather be frugal and fix it himself than hire someone to repair it (which means he's going to spend weeks on that project and then be too tired to do something else around the house I need him to do).

I also feel like having someone help us out with the cleaning around the house would help us out a lot, but this is something he feels resistant to agree to, because he's such a frugal person. And we aren't really in the best place to afford it. Before Covid we were about to get someone, but then finding someone became very difficult obviously, and we haven't revisited the topic since. Obviously I don't have the best answer, but talking to him about why you think this would help your living situation, and how you think it would be better for your mental health, and how you could then spend your free time with your children or doing something else that would help everyone might be a good place to start.
 
@josh87eg Yes you get it completely!

He also wants to fix everything himself. Sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes he spending weeks and extra money when someone could have fixed it in two hours for less!! But in the moment he thinks “I’m saving us money”.

I love him AND his black and white view point drives me crazy.
 
@tabernaculumnus Interesting point, we have a neighbor high school / college aged that lately I’ve been thinking about talking to about helping around here. More so for projects but I hadn’t thought about cleaning!
 
@gembeldolar Best thing I ever did was get someone to come in and do our laundry. Folded and put away. She organized my daughter’s toys, vacuums, and cleans toilets once a week. We also have cleaners do a deep clean once a month.

We have our weekends 100% for having fun. We still have to organize a little but it has changed our life so much!!!

I grew up super poor family of 8 kids. It was really hard to let go. What I realized was the house stuff was holding back my career. I didn’t have the time to invest elsewhere. If I let that stuff go I could have more brain capacity back and that is going to make me have the ability to make more money. You have to start spending money to make money. Time is money!
 
@abra That’s amazing! Is that a housekeeper? Or how do you find someone like that?

I put off putting away laundry (clean it but don’t put it away) for like 2 weeks. I’m not proud of that. It took 40 MINUTES to put it all away today. Just for me and my husband - baby’s I just toss in a basket as soon as it’s dry.
 
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