This Marriage Monday post is for ALL the couples…heck, all the PEOPLE…living with anyone! Now, we tend to believe here in my house that the sharing of household duties- let’s just call the chores- is a lot easier with the person you love and are dating/married to than with roommates.  There is just an extra desire to make the other person happy and serve the well (“out-love” them as we like to say here).  But under every situation, even two individuals who aren’t terribly picky about how they clean and keep a house will struggle a bit with the division of labor- who does what chores.  There are ways in which Michael and I take more traditional roles (he does a lot of the outside work, I do a lot of the inside work), and definitely ways in which we are less than typical (Michael does 98% of the cooking for us).  In the end, we believe it is a little less about who does what and a little more about the attitude behind it- and we have found some tips to make it easier for ourselves along the way!

One of the main things we have learned in our 6 years of marriage is that you can’t keep score. We believe this one phrase works in every area of marriage- gifts, fights, surprises, mistakes.  But it definitely goes for chores.  There is just too much to do with running a house (especially with kids!) to hope for fairness. And that can be really challenging, especially if you come out of a situation where you are living with roommates in college or after and everything is split 50/50…or if you have lived by yourself and got to do as much (or little!) as you wanted.  So many factors play into who does what chores, and for us, it even changes in different seasons.  During the height of fall photographer craziness, Michael does a lot more of the dishes for us even though that means he is usually cooking and often doing dishes…because in doing that, he gives me 20 minutes to finish a blog post/prep sneak peeks for the week while the kids watch bedtime cartoons, which allows me to be more present in enjoying time with him once they go to bed!  The division of it all is ever changing here, and I think that is a part of why it all works well for us- we know that it will swing back the other way at some point!

Another key task here is that we try to be equally busy. What I mean by that is with the exception of someone just needing a little downtime due to some less-than-usual circumstance, if one of us is doing chores, the other one is working too.  That might just mean being actively involved with the kids (which usually someone always is with 2 toddlers!)- but it for sure means that someone isn’t typically sitting on their phone scrolling while the other is giving baths and putting away laundry at the same time!  Sometimes it happens- and we definitely give a lot of grace for that, with a polite “Can you help me quick” if we need intervention, but in general we are both working towards the common good! 🙂

Lastly, I wanted to share a little tip that has really helped me in organizing the cleaning/laundry task. We outsource a lot of our house cleaning now, but there is still lots to do, and we could do 1-2 loads of laundry a DAY and still not be caught up! I have found that dividing up those 2 big jobs into a couple tasks a day works really well for me.  It is a little strict and certainly doesn’t always get followed, but here is an example of what I mean:

Sunday Night: Pick up toys, put away remaining laundry

Monday: Vacuum all rugs, wash bathroom mats

Tuesday: Dust Living Room/Dining Room, wash towels

Wednesday: Clean tables/counters/microwave well, catch up on clothing laundry

Thursday: Dust bedrooms, wash sheets

Friday: Day off of those tasks!

Saturday: Clean wood floors, catch up on clothing laundry

There is of course still daily dish washer loading/unloading and dishes, and clothing laundry- but this helps me keep up big time vs trying to randomly remember when do things- and then trying to remember when the last time I actually washed the towels was!

Now, I have to admit that I certainly don’t accomplish this every week, but it is a good goal! I also have to say that now that I have shared last week’s Christmas present organization tip and this weeks chores tip, I have officially shared with you pretty much all the ways we are organized at all! 😉 Just in case you thought we had it all together, I assure you, we do not! Which all our friends and family will know when they don’t get a Christmas card this year (or the previous 2!). Maybe some day- maybe we can add one organization component to our lives each year!

How about you- how do you and the people you live with split up chores?

(And for some beauty…our winter wonderland this weekend- that left us stranded inside for 95% of our time! We were thankful to be forced to slow down!)