Help with Your Marriage
How to Manage the Household
This post reproduces Chapter 8, How Do We Manage Our Household, of the 20-chapter, 50,000-word, start-to-finish guide Help with Your Marriage, available in paperback and digital as part of the Help with Your Series. Investigate the series at help-with-your.com.
They had finally fallen into something like a routine. Delia had expected a period of adjustment after their marriage. She just hadn’t expected it to take so long. Things she expected to do, her new husband did. Things she expected him to do, he didn’t do, and so she did. They’d discussed some of those routines, while other things they just adjusted to without bringing it up between them. They hadn’t argued, at least not much and not too unpleasantly. Delia finally felt that she could live with their arrangement, even if she still hoped that a couple of things would change over time. The only problem was that one or two pretty important things to get done in the household, neither one of them was doing. Delia figured it was time they addressed those things. She just hoped they wouldn’t argue.
Management
Households take management. As efficient as modern conveniences make things, households still just don’t run themselves. Indeed, the conveniences have their own management tasks. Having a modern HVAC system in the home, for instance, is a huge benefit, with instant warmth or cooling. But if you’re a homeowner, you know its maintenance tasks including changing the filters, cleaning the humidifier, arranging an annual or other periodic inspection, checking pilot lights, and listening for knocks and noises suggesting the need for swift repair. Add to the maintenance, repair, and replacement list the water heater, electrical panel, garage-door opener, lawnmower, lighting, kitchen appliances, garbage disposal, faucets, toilets, showerheads, wifi system, televisions, cable service, computers, cell phones, and motor vehicles. Living in the wilds might take far less management, even if far more brute effort. Add recreational items to the list of household management items, like bicycles, scooters, exercise equipment, trailers, campers, tents, grills, skis, canoes, kayaks, sailboats, and motorboats, and management gets even more time-consuming and complicated. Don’t underestimate the thought and time that household maintenance requires. Respect one another for all that each of you will inevitably do.
Division
When one lives alone, all the management naturally falls on you. You do it all, from taking out the garbage to balancing the checkbook. Yet when you marry, you have both the opportunity and the need to divide household management. Sure, some things you can share. Two can empty the dishwasher, either at the same time or whenever the first one notices that its dry cycle has ended. Two can sweep the porch, as soon as either one notices that it’s dirty. Yet some tasks go better with only one spouse in charge. Caring for the lawn might be an example. One spouse might have the fertilizer, mowing, weeding, and watering all planned and scheduled, indeed might have already done some of it. The other spouse’s intervention might spoil the plan, duplicating labor, spoiling the lawn, and creating conflict. Managing the day-to-day household budget might be a similar task better undertaken with one, not two, in primary charge. Grocery shopping can be the same way, with one, not two, managing the rhythm of filling the fridge and pantry. Discern what those I’ll handle it! tasks are, and respect the efficient division of marital labor. You’re stronger, faster, and better as a team.
Aptitude
A friendly and appreciative division of household tasks creates an opportunity to rely on each spouse’s aptitude for tasks. We’re all better at some things than other things. You might be a great chef and your spouse a great kitchen cleaner. If so, then you cook, and your spouse cleans up afterward. Or you might be a handy house painter, and your spouse good at home repairs. If so, then you paint, and your spouse repairs. Every marriage brings some difference in spousal skills, aptitudes, and experience. Relying on those skills can significantly increase the quality and efficiency of household management. Don’t underestimate the power of pooled aptitudes. You can eat better food in a cleaner, safer, and more secure household, at lower cost and with fewer risks, when the two of you pool your skills. The two of you can be better together than alone, when assigning household management by aptitude. If neither spouse has an aptitude at a certain household task, then a fair division of labor may enable one spouse to develop the aptitude. Neither my wife nor I had any special skill at food preparation when we married. My meals were a disaster. Hers were slightly less so. I kept trying, to no avail, while she quickly became a wonderful planner of nutritious and tasty meals, leaving me to help in the few places I could without spoiling the meals. My aptitudes, she appreciated elsewhere.
Disciplines
Small disciplines can significantly reduce not only the management time but also the management tension and conflict. For example, you can put cups, glasses, utensils, and dishes in the dishwasher as soon as you dirty them, rather than leaving them in the sink. Plopping your dirty dishes in the sink is convenient, but when you have a dishwasher right nearby, giving the dish a quick rinse and sticking it in the dishwasher saves your spouse from having to stare at it in the sink and grumble about loading the dishwasher. It also saves you having to load the dishwasher later. Touch once, not twice. These small disciplines can apply all over the house. A quick squeegee of the stall’s glass door after a shower saves having to scrub the dried film off it every couple of weeks. Hanging your coat up when you take it off rather than tossing it across the back of the hall chair saves your spouse having to hang it up after you. You don’t have to run the household like a military hospital, with everything constantly in perfect order. But if your spouse innately needs to do so, then help your spouse out by showing a little discipline.
Sharing
Household labors, though continuous and substantial, don’t have to be isolating and grinding. Happy couples often find ways to share labors. Even if one spouse has primary responsibility for a task, the other spouse can participate in a support role, without interfering but while lightening the responsible spouse’s burden and enjoying the time together. One spouse may, for instance, be primarily responsible for the rhythm of sorting full hampers for loading the washing machine, and for sorting the washed clothing for moving to the drier or to air dry. The uninformed spouse who washes clothing at the wrong setting or that should have had dry cleaning, washes the wrong colors together, or machine dries clothing that should have air dried, commits an egregious transgression, potentially ruining valuable and precious items. Better in some households to leave the washing to one. But the other spouse can still help sort, fold, hang, and store the cleaned laundry, whenever hearing the drier stop or seeing piles of clean clothes to fold, hang, and store. Likewise, one spouse may be the skilled food preparer. But the other spouse can still chop and stir, while enjoying the skilled food preparer’s chatter. Sharing household tasks can not only balance the labor and increase efficiencies but also foster natural and endearing moments of spoken and silent communication. Seek and savor those moments. You don’t have to go out for an expensive restaurant meal to enjoy one another’s company.
Kindnesses
You can do more than share household tasks. You can unburden your spouse of mundane tasks at opportune moments and, in doing so, show frequent kindnesses. For instance, when you hear your spouse return from an errand or work, you can greet your spouse at the door, take your spouse’s coat to hang up, and unburden your spouse of bags or other articles in the hand, even if doing so interrupts your own work for two minutes. Having a happy dog with a wagging tail greet you at the door when you return home is nice. Having a kind spouse greet you at the door when you return home is even nicer. If you hear your spouse pull in the garage from grocery shopping, stop whatever you’re doing, long enough to go bring the groceries in from the car and put them away in the kitchen. For another example, if you hear the vacuum running while you’re watching a show, while sensing both a pang of guilt at your spouse’s efforts and a twinge of annoyance at the noise, you can quickly rise to complete the vacuuming, which might take no more than five or ten minutes. If you work from home, in a home office, these little interruptions aren’t necessarily interruptions. For your own health, you should be rising and taking a brief break to move around at least once an hour anyway. Making those breaks moments when you greet and help your spouse only adds to their benefit for both of you.
Symbolism
Think of the symbolic nature of managing your marital household. You and your spouse are not just getting chores done. Sure, the chores need doing. You’ve got to eat and pay bills, and you’d prefer to wear clean rather than dirty clothes and have a reasonably warm, dry, and neat home. But your joint management of household tasks with your spouse is much more than merely providing for necessities, conveniences, and preferences. The two of you are in a dance together as one household and one marriage. Your joint household management, whether kind or fractious, represents and embodies the entity and life that is your marriage. The two of you are also forming, refining, and practicing sacred rituals through which you honor and elevate your marriage. The two of you are also constantly creating and restoring order out of chaos, in the creator’s image, as the creator first brought order out of the primordial chaos and later illustrated on the cross the sacrifice that imbues that order with his loving, merciful, and gracious kindness. Your joint household management as a married couple also acts out the spirit’s love between the creator father and son, and between the son and the body of believers who follow him. Your kind and gracious household management is the fractal representation of all for which the creator made us. Don’t miss the meaning of what you and your spouse are doing, accomplishing, and celebrating when forming and sustaining a loving household.
Balance
Thus, in the big picture, you have two ways to look at managing the household, as either a privilege or a chore. Look at managing your marital household as a chore, and you’ll doubtless feel not only its heavy burden but also its inevitable inequity. No matter how much you do in the way of household management, indeed how much more you do than your spouse does, you’ll never actually outdo your spouse to the point of deserving the feeling of righteous indignation or bitterness toward your spouse. If that’s your attitude, that household chores get chucked on a balance scale as soon as you complete them, then one spouse’s side of that scale will always outweigh the other spouse’s side, whether in small or large degree. You’ll never find the perfect balance because you’ll always feel guilt for not doing as much as the other or indignation for doing more than the other. And you’ll sow in your own soul bitterness toward your spouse, whether you do less and feel guilty or do more and feel indignant.
Attitude
A better attitude is to look at marital household management as a privilege, not a chore. After all, many individuals have no spouse to continually love, cherish, and honor by regularly completing household tasks. Many individuals also have no household to manage. Many more individuals have no capability of managing whatever household in which they live. Your ability and opportunity to manage a marital household, whether with a generously contributing spouse or an indolent and non-contributing spouse, is thus a privilege. You bring honor to yourself, your spouse, your marriage, and your creator when you contribute steadily, skillfully, graciously, and generously to your marital household’s management, no matter whether your spouse likewise does so or not, and no matter whether your spouse recognizes and appreciates what you do or not. Try to maintain that attitude, no matter your marital circumstances. That attitude provides a solid foundation for household management.
Adjustment
That said, you, your spouse, and your marriage may at times do better by making adjustments in household management. Observe your spouse closely for signs that household management is unduly difficult or unpleasant for your spouse. If you see those signs, act on them. Try at first to silently adjust your own household management to resolve your spouse’s apparent issues or concerns. If you can’t effectively adjust, then raise the issue with your spouse. Your spouse may simply need your recognition, or your spouse may be able to propose a solution that you can provide. If you agree to adjust and help, fulfill your agreement. If, on the other hand, you are the one finding household management unduly difficult or unpleasant, then try to discern why, and try to make adjustments on your own. Your spouse may already be doing all or most of what your spouse can do. If you cannot relieve your issues, then bring them up gently with your spouse. Don’t expect immediate options and resolutions. Give both of you time to consider what you each might do to adjust. Gently bringing the issue up again, a second, third, or subsequent time, may be necessary until the two of you find a solution. Patience and persistence may be necessary, as it is in other marital issues.
Work
The sharing and division of household management must generally account for time spent at work earning the household income. If only one spouse works for an income, whether working at home or outside the home for that income, and whether employed or self-employed, the other spouse might naturally expect to shoulder more of the household management. A traditional division of marital labor follows that pattern, one working outside the home while the other works in the home. But traditional patterns are only patterns and tradition. Many households require or by choice have both spouses at work, each earning marital income. If that work requires roughly equal time for each spouse, then household management may likewise require or recommend roughly equal time from each spouse. It may, in other words, simply be a matter of available time. One spouse likely cannot sustain forty hours of work outside the home and forty hours of work at household management, while the other spouse works neither inside nor outside the home. Yet divisions of work for earned income and work in household management need not equate in any particular fashion, if the spouses find other arrangements acceptable or if circumstances like illness, injury, or disability demand.
Help
In those cases where household management and obligations to earn income burden the spouses and their marriage, spouses may have the option of contracting or bartering for household management services. You might hire a cleaning service for the home and lawn service for the lawn, for instance. Or you might exchange mowing the neighbor’s lawn when you mow your own, for the neighbor walking your dog, taking your trash to the curb, or doing a similar convenience. You may also find household management efficiencies. Ordering groceries for pickup or delivery, or subscribing to a home-delivery meal service for a time, may, for two examples, relieve unsustainable household management burdens. Curtailing shopping trips in favor of online shopping and home delivery might be a similar efficiency. Get help for unsustainable or unduly burdensome household management, whether from a neighbor, a professional service, or a technology, even if only for a season.
Change
Marital circumstances can indeed change, necessitating or recommending changes in household management. As already mentioned, one spouse may fall ill, suffer injury, or suffer other disability from household management, requiring the other spouse to take on more or all of the household management. One spouse may have seasonal work burdens, such as planting or harvesting in farming, or accounting and tax preparation around tax-return filing time, that prevent the spouse from carrying on the usual household management. Business travel, military training or call-up, parental care, and similar events can suddenly change household management. In such instances, recognize the necessity to adapt, and appreciate and support one another in the adaptation. If the change requires bringing in extra help, finding new efficiencies, or simply letting some household management go for a time, then do so, without blaming one another. Keep in mind that running a household can be a little like piloting a great ship, where turning the ship can take time and sensitive adjustments of the controls and manpower. Be thoughtful, respectful, and appreciative during difficult times of household change.
Appreciation
The last note about appreciating your spouse’s household management bears elaboration. Sometimes, one spouse must bear the bulk of the household management burden, again due to the other spouse’s work hours and commitments or disability. And sometimes, one spouse prefers to bear the bulk of the household management burden. Whether your spouse does more than you do, less than you do, or just differently than you do in the way of household management, show your appreciation. Genuine expressions of gratitude, no matter how often repeated, can go a long way, although never express mocking gratitude for a task your spouse finally, after much delay and perhaps much pleading, performed. Mockery has no place in a marital relationship. Compliments can go even farther than thanks. Sharing how tasty and nutritious a particular meal was, for instance, can mean more than just saying thanks for dinner while rushing off. Express the genuineness of your appreciation not only with thoughtful, sensitive, and affirming words but also with hugs, return kindnesses, relief from household tasks, and even gifts or offers of reward outings, whatever encourages your spouse most.
This article really hit home especially the part about attitude. My husband makes my coffee and breakfast every morning and does my laundry because carrying it up and down the stairs is tough for me. I handle most of the computer and internet stuff as doing my share which is more mental and less physical. Yet the time he puts in seems far greater than mine.
I’ve told my husband more than once that I sometimes feel guilty about how uneven our chore split is. But he always responds, “Love is a verb,” and he really lives that out. He doesn't keep score and I am learning to accept the difference with more grace and less guilt.
We love to cook together even though our style couldn’t be more different. He’s precise in prepping, uses recipes, and measures. I’m more about big chunky cuts and just intuitively wing it. And honestly, we both thoroughly enjoy the process and the results. I think we are both meeting more in the middle and learning to take the best from each other’s ways --- which really reminds me of the saying, “It’s not the destination nor the journey, but who you’re with along the way.”
I can let piles build up (ADD brain), but luckily, we’re on the same page about how much clutter we can handle. I think that it is important that couples share pretty much the same level of tolerance for neatness or messiness. Otherwise, it can make for misery.
I’ve also been in a relationship where the balance was uneven, I worked long hours while my partner took care of most things at home. Then he got ALS, and I became his full-time caregiver and housekeeper. That experience changed my thinking. Balance isn’t fixed. You never know how life will shift. Love isn’t about splitting everything perfectly…it’s about showing up for each other however you can.