The Fight

My husband and I had a fight this morning.  I have worked every day for the last 10 days (and I have another 4 to go).

I washed the laundry for myself, him and our daughter and piled it on the bed to be folded and put away.  I didn't have time to start folding so I left it and went to work.  I had hoped that, being a grown adult with functioning brain cells that my husband would fold and put away the laundry.

I got home from work at midnight, fed the animals, entered our budget details for the day (I have to run a pretty tight ship budget wise as we're low income and have massive medical bills (I'm an insulin dependant diabetic and my glucose monitor which insurance refuses to cover costs $500/month) so at the end of the month we usually have about $0.12 to play around with.

Anyway, the clothes weren't on the bed so I assumed he'd put them away.  In the morning I found the clothes in a heap on the closet floor.  Apparently because I wasn't there to fold the clothes and sort them he was utterly incapable of doing so himself and his solution was to dump the clean clothes on the closet floor.

We had a fight about who does more work around the house.  He works full time whereas I work part time (30 hours/week for me, 40/week for him).  I sat down today at work and made a list of the all the chores that are done in our house.

I made a spreadsheet (I LOVE me some spreadsheets!) and assigned each chore to one of us (there was some overlap on some that we both do) and calculated the number of hours spent per week on these chores.  One thing that bugged me was that I couldn't think of a way to capture the time I spend making doctor/dentist/eye appointments for myself, our daughter and my husband, the time I spend keeping track of his schedule and responsibilities, the time I spend keeping track of family (his and my) birthdays and events etc.  All those organizational tasks that don't take much time at the time but that add up to a lot of time.  I didn't realize just how much of a personal assistant I am to him until I wrote it all down.

Anyway, even without that time taken into account I spend 30.75 hours/week on household chores compared to his 5.25 hours/week.

Making this spreadsheet made me realize a few things. 

1. running a household involves a lot of tasks
2. the division of labour in my household is bullshit and needs to be addressed

When he does perform household tasks (like cooking supper on nights when I work late) he bitches and whines about it or (like hanging clothes in the closet) does such a shit job (while whining and bitching about it) that I end up re-doing it myself and when he does cook dinner he leaves one hell of a mess for me to clean up, when he empties the dishwasher he often leaves 1/2 of the dishes still in there and he ALWAYS just leaves the dishes on the counter instead of putting them in the cupboard - guess who comes along behind him and puts the dishes in the cupboard.  When he brushes his teeth and spits into the sink he doesn't rinse the spit down the drain, he leaves it stuck to the side of the sink for me to wipe up.

How to Organize a Closet

Closets are a pain in the backside.  Mine isn't, obviously because I keep mine organized.  My husband's on the other hand is an absolute nightmare.

When I get up in the morning whether I'm going to work, spending the day running errands or meeting a friend for lunch it takes be 2 seconds to choose an appropriate outfit.

My husband spends several minutes cursing and swearing (we have a walk in closet), and rustling through various items before he finally finds his uniform, jeans or whatever he's wearing.

My side of the closet is organized according to need.

Each uniform is hung on an individual hanger.  Pants over the cross bar, and shirt over top. 

Suits are hung the same way, pants over the cross bar, shirt and jacket over the shirt.

Casual shirts are hung according to sleeve length.  Long, short, sleeveless from left to right.

Pants and skirts are hung according to type.  Skirts, capris, casual and jeans.

My rule is that I always take the item I need from the left hand side and hang the empty hanger on the end.  When I hang my clothes I put the clean ones on the right hand side so I'm always rotating through.

My clothes are all different colours but all my colours go together.  Even if I wear a purple shirt with blue pants the colours go together. On very rare occasions I may decide to match a specific outfit.

A very important rule is to have all the hangers facing the same way and to have your shirts all facing the same direction.  I like the open part of my hanger facing the back and the front of the shirt facing to the left.  I find it's easier to remove the hanger in the morning and easier to take the shirt off.  All of my hangers are white plastic.


My husband's organizational style is a bit different from mine.  He hangs his shirts, pants and jackets in whatever order they come out of the wash.  His hangers face the front or the back and when he takes his clothes off the hanger he just grabs the shirt or pants and leaves the hanger where it is.  He has white plastic, purple plastic and wooden hangers.  As I said before, he takes ages to find an outfit or a uniform for work and he's always losing things.

My Big Fat Island Life

This blog is an opportunity for me to collect my myriad recipes, organizational hacks, home hacks, triumphs and failures.

I try to be environmentally friendly by decreasing my use of plastic, using home made cleaning products and I try to be healthy (ish) by making home made snacks and foods instead of industrial, mega corporation stuff.

I may or may not post amusing stories or links to things that I like or feel are important.