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Ways To Tackle Your Lazy Husband
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 No, this is not about tackling your husband to get going on a football field, but in the confines of your home!
So you're not a stay-at-home mom. You work hard to earn a living. If your husband earns the bread, you bring home the butter. Or perhaps he gets the bread and butter, and you buy the jam!
So naturally, household duties, aka chores, are your joint responsibility too. The size of your pay cheque is of no consequence. What matters are the hours you spend out of your home.
Enough is enough
But sadly, perhaps you find yourself putting on weight, as doing chores after you return home tired after a hard day's work doesn't exactly help burn last night's pizza and ice-cream indulgence. Your husband, in contrast, may be having a whale of a time at the gym, knowing he will return to a clean home, a freshly cooked meal and scrubbed children ready for bed.
If this scenario even remotely describes your situation, it's time you learn to put your foot down.
Bring your husband onboard team 'home'
Once you've realised that you need help, ask your husband to shoulder some responsibilities at home. There lies a key - instead of telling him, ask him what he wants to do. In other words, don't assume doing the laundry is a job fit for him. He might actually fancy cooking!
Asking him will give him a choice, not over whether or not he does the chores, but over what chores he does. If you find him not answering your request or feigning incompetence in household jobs, before blowing up, it would help to find out (preferably from his mom) if he actually knows how to do any chores. After all, a generation ago, most moms stayed-at-home and managed their households single-handedly.
So your better half may actually never have run a washing machine, or vacuumed, or handled crockery. Get the drift? His reticence might be telling him "I don't know how." If such is the case, don't let him off the hook - get him started with small tasks and work your way forward.
However, if he just grunts in response, or throws a tantrum thinking his irritation will make you back off, persist with patience.
Encourage your hubby to be a man about your house
Here are some ways to set the ball rolling, if your partner is a cleanliness freak, or a foodie, or a miser!
- Lower your expectations - don't expect your home to simile those gorgeous apartments with spick-n-span interiors like in Good Housekeeping!
- Simplify your meals and explain that you're doing so, simply because you don't have time to get through the chores and still cook up a lavish dinner. Suggest that if you had help around the house, your meals could be more interesting.
- Propose that you hire an extra maid to spring-clean the house every week. If he doesn't want to spend extra on a maid, he might actually stop being lazy and suggest the family clean the house together every week-end! And if he's ok with hiring the maid - well, you'll get the help you need either ways.
Egg him on
For those dear husbands that turn to without much ado, these suggestions will encourage them to stick at it.
- Introduce a creative fun game for the two of you to play! Together, put together a list of chores that must get done, with points attributed to each on the basis of how easy/difficult each is and the time involved to perform it. Then link up these points to romantic rewards, such as a back rub, a head massage, and so on. You may well find him racing to accumulate points, in anticipation of enjoying an exciting encounter - thanks to a chore! A similar reward system could work for the kids as well.
- Work chores into your husband's favorite pastimes. You could get him to shell peas or chop veggies while watching cricket!
- Once he's got into the mood to help, never say no to his assistance, even if you're doing well on your own. Don't roll your eyes at his goody-goody mood, or assume that what you're doing is best done only by you. Let him do it, even if he does it his way, as long as it gets done reasonably well. After all, we all have our own style - yes, even when it comes to chores!
- Just as getting your man to assist at home is in many ways, a process of helping him appreciate what it takes to live together and run a household, your expressing gratitude for whatever he does will encourage him to keep it up!
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Charu Bahri
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