Our helper Sri is on holidays, two weeks to celebrate Ramadan with her family. So we are by our own. I know it is such a privilege to have help 5 days a week. We embraced the week without help. We didn’t necessarily discussed division of labor. Somehow everybody just some and we managed to keep the household running.
Kids: tidy up their rooms (by their standards). I chose not to check (to avoid yelling).
Husband: mop the floor when it’s dirty. Clean/cut ingredients for dinner. Do dishes after meals. Take out trash.
Me: laundry, prepare meals, tidy up the room.
We tried to minimize dinner prep by doing 1 protein dish, and two vegetable dish. But Friday was a bit more than usual as I also baked milanesas I had in the freezer, and made a spinach egg tart as I don’t eat milanesa.
I think we can easily do with partime helper now that girls are older. I entertained the idea for few minutes, and decided to keep our helper. I could use my laundry time for other things. this week of trial out without help was useful to know that we CAN live without help.
Weekend plan:
- Lizzy golf lesson
- Lizzy playdate with her friend from school
- Sofia swim practice
- Sofia has a sleepover birthday celebration
I plan to chill 🙂
Q: What’s your household division of labor?
Our New Journey 
In our house we don’t have help and we pretty much do a collaborative approach. If it’s dirty, you clean it (it doesn’t matter if you made the mess). We also make lists and check items off. I found out that I have to be very clear with my husband – I need help with xyz, then he goes “no problem, I’m on it.” Versus have him “guess” what needs to be done.
LikeLike
Since my husband travels a lot there is a lot of the time when the labour is 100% on me (with the kids helping, of course).
We had someone that helped us clean bi-weekly, but that’s now down to once a month because I actually found it hard to schedule around her arrival and got frustrated with how quickly things got dirty (especially the floors). Now when she comes I’m just having her tackle the things I hate – a deep clean of the bathrooms, dusting/vacuuming in the basement.
LikeLike
We don’t have any help either and never have, and we both work full time and are generally very busy, so it makes me giggle a little to think you worried you “couldn’t survive” without help? Lol!! I assure you, you could. 😉 We don’t like fully clean our house every single week, but we get to it every couple weeks and most heavy use things get naturally cleaned throughout the week. Example, kitchen counters get wiped every day after we eat, floors get swept, etc. The bathrooms we are pretty good about just wiping sink as we go, etc. Every 2 weeks the boys clean a bathroom and my husband does one. My husband does all laundry, always later in the evening. He does laundry maybe once a week. He’ll do two loads back to back and always dries and folds immediately, usually while watching TV. Doesn’t seem like a very big chore honestly since it doesn’t impact our other daily activities this way. Dishes are just ongoing and usually whoever uses them either washes by hand or puts immediately in the dishwasher. And we just cook our own food.. I do this the most, though we do eat out sometimes instead. I do a lot of the little tidying or picking up things, straightening etc throughout the week. I don’t feel that we really spend that much time on housework that I want to spend money on that to hire someone. It always seems to fit in easily enough it always seems between the 4 of us. And the boys always clean their own rooms (plus a bathroom), and I want them learning those skills anyway! So it works for us. Maybe if we had a huge house I would feel differently.
LikeLike
Our division of labor is as equal as I feel it could be in general. I would prefer that we hire a house cleaner but my husband would rather not spend the money on that so he does all of the cleaning – that’s the only thing that doesn’t feel equitable but it’s his choice to not spend the money which we could easily afford. Otherwise we do a lot of dividing and conquering. Things have shifted a lot since we had kids!
LikeLike
We have a big house and yard, so it feels like a lot of chores. My spouse does dishes, weekday cooking, trash, and some cleaning. I clean floors, counters, do laundry, some tidying and weekend cooking. We split the pet care, organizational tasks (like call a plumber), gardening, and yard work (sometimes pay for yard work when we are too busy).
LikeLike
My definition of a big house may not be the same as others’: Its 2500 sq feet, and old.
LikeLike