Using subtlety to get your SO to do housework unsollicited

[BettyR]

You would think my house was an airport by the number of pilots we have around here and no one can pile it higher than my husband.

When he gets through using something it is left sitting right were he finished using it. I will come behind him and clean it up; then he gripes because he says I loose all his stuff. I tell him if he would have put it away when he finished using it then he would know where it was.

This has been going on for the last 35 years so I doubt that anything is going to change. What I don’t understand is that he still doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that if he doesn’t put it away that I’m going to.

 

[Rosalind]

DH goes through phases where I have to ask him to do it, and phases where he decides he is a martyr who does everything around here. It's frustrating because he has a bad back, and honestly, there are plenty of days where he is amazingly capable of doing something he wants to do with his bad back (say, move a heavy chair so that it's better positioned in front of the Xbox), but he can't seem to muster the energy to do housework because, yanno, he has a bad back and all.

What works for me is starting a competition to see who can do chore XYZ better. When I do his "Man Jobs" (e.g. take out the trash, mow the lawn, weed-whack) I do it better than he does. Then he feels like his masculinity has been insulted. Another option is to exchange chores: I will only make you pancakes if you do dishes and wipe down countertops.

Some things he just will not do. The last time he cleaned the bathroom was 2002.