My home has a bathroom problem. The pipes work fine, the water pressure is great and the sliding doors for the showers are brand new. The issue is that my partner and I never want to clean it.
We are pretty good about trading off household chores like folding the laundry and doing the dishes. But cleaning the bathroom is like playing “Not it!” And it’s a frequent source of bickering that can build up bad feelings like soap scum on shower tiles. Yuck.
But fighting about chores is often … not about the chores, says attorney and activist Eve Rodsky. It’s about a lack of fairness and respect for each other’s time.
If you're the person in the household who always seems to be the one bearing the brunt of the domestic work, you might be feeling unappreciated and resentful. But there are steps you can take to ensure that the household chores are fairly distributed, say Rodsky, author of Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) and lifestyle coach Jacqueline Misla. That includes defining what fairness means in your home -- then splitting up responsibilities accordingly.
“When you know your role, everything becomes easier,” says Rodsky. “People are afraid of [making guidelines for housework] because they think their home should be just full of love.” But the way to truly create a loving and resentment-free environment, she argues, is through a methodical approach to chores(read the four-step guide here).
This comic (which you can also print into a zine) below highlights some of Rodsky and Misla's top takeaways on how to divvy up housework. Listen to the full episode to learn about how gender dynamics play a role in domestic labor ... and learn the real reason why dirty dishes make us so upset. (Hint: it’s not about your partner’s scrubbing technique.)
-Andee Tagle, Life Kit reporter
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