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How to Get Your Husband
To Help With the Housework
(Without Really
Nagging)
by Janet Attard
There he sits, feet up on the coffee table,
watching television.
And there you stand. In the kitchen. Washing mixing bowls
and pots that won't fit in the dishwasher. Keeping one eye on the
spaghetti sauce that's splattering over on the stove and the other eye
on your two-year-old who's pulling all of the pots out of the cabinet.
Surely, you deserve more out of life than dishpan hands. If only
he'd help!
Is this your predicament? Then wipe those soap suds off your nose and sit
down. You
can get your husband to help with the housework if you
follow these simple rules.
1. Forget everything your mother ever taught your about housework.
She expected your father to mess up the house, not clean it up.
2. Be cunning. There is no way to convince, wheedle, persuade, coax
or talk a man into doing housework. You have to trick him into doing it.
3. Break him in gradually. Get him into the routine of housework
before he knows what he's doing (or, what you're trying to do to him).
This week you might maneuver one chore, next week, two, and so on.
4. Never pick up after your husband (or any member of the family
over age three). If hubby drops his clothes in a heap on the floor,
leave them there. He'll probably start picking them up the first morning
he trips over his underwear and sprains his ankle.
5. Never get all the housework done when your husband isn't home.
He'll think you actually enjoy doing housework. One evening, for
instance, a neighbor who had dinner with us offered to help me with the
dishes. "Oh, don't be silly," my husband told her. "Janet will do those
in the morning. She
likes to wash dishes It gives her something to do.
6. Ask him to do something that really matters to him. Like sorting
his socks. First be sure he's home watching television when you're
folding the laundry. Then say something like, "Gee honey, could you sort
your socks? They're all black and they all look the same to me." If he
doesn't do it the first time you ask, do it yourself. But be sure to get
the socks mixed up. Next time he'll offer to sort his own socks.
7. Find out what chores your husband dislikes least. Then give him
a choice -- between something he hates and something he only dislikes
doing. If, for instance, your husband will grudgingly push a vacuum
around the rug, but turns purple if you ask him to dry dishes or dust
the furniture, ask him which of the three he'd rather do. Chances are
he'll vacuum the rug. Just be sure the vacuum is where he can find it --
in the middle of the living room floor, perhaps.
8. Never ask him to take out the garbage.
9. Never ask him to do the housework while you're out of the house.
He won't do it, but he'll resent being asked, anyway. Always appear busy
when you ask for help.
10. Ask him to help when someone important is coming over -- like
his mother. If he doesn't do what you ask, don't ask again. Start to do
the work yourself. But be sure your husband can see what you're doing
You might, for instance, wait until the last quarter of the football or
basketball game he's watching. Then, plug in the vacuum in the living
room (or wherever the TV is), wipe an imaginary bead of sweat from your
forehead, and if your husband is still sitting on the couch, start to
vacuum. In front of the television set.
11.Let him cook. When no one is coming over. But be sure you stay
in the kitchen. Then you can casually suggest that it's all right to fry
both the bacon and eggs in the same pan, that you can't eat breakfast
off a bare table, and that if he wants toast, he has to put the bread in
the toaster and plug it in.
A word of caution: tell your husband "We're having hamburgers for supper,
want to make them?" and you'll have hamburgers for supper--nothing else.
Except maybe a complaint or two about how you "never said anything about
vegetables, too.
------------------------------
Copyright 1971, Janet Attard
*Note: I wrote this article back in the 1970s for a magazine called
Woman's World (It was not the same as the newsstand publication by that
name now.)
Some people say times have changed a lot since then. Some say that men and
women now share equally in the housework. And others will tell you it's
their wife who doesn't know how to replace a roll of toilet paper.
But we think there are still a lot of people out there who say the only
thing that's changed over the years is that women are now expected to
make money AND do all the housework.
How do things shake out in your household? If you haven't already done so,
take our Who's Doing the Housework poll.
Then,
talk about it in our community message board
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