According to this report on Sunrise, a new study has found that Australian men are some of the laziest in the world when it comes to doing household chores with 1/3 of them doing NONE at all.

And my husband sits firmly within that 1/3. And it’s all MY fault. I think…

I don’t even really remember how it ended up this way but I believe it had something to do with the fact that he left for work before I did, and got home after me. And he used to do a LOT of stuff outside. The first house we bought together had an overgrown jungle for a backyard, there was a driveway that needed to be put in, an outdoor laundry that needed knocking over, roof tiles and weatherboards that needed replacing as well as an entire bathroom renovation.

And so while he was happily doing all the heavy lifting, I was puttering around with the cleaning, dusting, vacuuming and cooking.

And then we had our first baby. And I stayed home altogether for a while so it only made sense that I kept doing it all while he was at work all day (and he worked really long days and really long hours including most Saturdays) whereas I could pretty much put my feet up and relax by lunchtime most days.

But then, I went back to work, the kids went into daycare and somehow I still ended up doing it all. I would be making beds, throwing a load of washing on, tidying up the kitchen and turning on the dishwasher before I left, and similarly emptying that dishwasher, hanging up the washing and have dinner started by the time he got home. And when he was at work Saturday mornings, I vacuumed, mopped, dusted and and scrubbed bathrooms.

And even that would have been OK but I am STILL trying to teach him many years later that the dirty dishes do NOT go in the sink when there is a dishwasher two feet away and the socks he took off the night before go into the laundry basket, they don’t stay on the floor. And put all your daily accumulated crap from your pockets the fuck away.

And he long ago stopped doing all the outdoorsy stuff – these days we pay someone to mow the lawns and poison the weeds and shock-horror-gasp, my son doesn’t do any housework either! (Thankfully he’s still in the house-reno mode but will he be pitching in when all that shiz is finished?) I wonder.

It also comes down to differing opinions of what is a mess and what isn’t. I like everything to be pretty damn tidy and in its’ place at all times and he doesn’t seem to notice or care if things are all over the place. It’s a case of “it’s my home and I live here too and I just want to relax” while I’m inwardly seething that he’s destroyed the lounge room in the first 30 seconds of his arrival.

At the end of the day, annoying as it is to have to do it all, now that I’m working from home I can’t really complain too much and we have a good balance but I do get VERY jelly (and a little turned on) when I see my friend’s husbands pushing around the Dyson or marching around with a bottle of Windex.

I think it’s too late for me now but if you’re in the early days of your housework-partner relationship, sort that shit out while you still can.