Come on guys; it’s time to clean house
An article in the Seattle Times on Saturday states that only 20 percent of men say they clean house. Here’s the relevant bits of the article by David Bradley:
This just in: Men don’t like to clean house.
Millions of women are surely tempted to say, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Statistics bolster what women know to be true: A scant 20 percent of men report they perform housework, such as cleaning, versus a vast majority of women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Ohio State University Extension Service says men would need to perform 60 percent more housework to catch up to the current household workload of women.
I don’t know about you, but I do pretty close to 50% of the cleaning chores. How did I get this way? Well it took a little pain and a plan. We now dedicate Monday evenings to doing house chores. Nothing else is scheduled. We found that weekends don’t work well; we’re too busy, too lazy, or maybe out of town. Anyway what else are you going to do on Monday: go out to eat?
As for the chores, we have the following schedule in place. For me, having an organized list really helps. Each Monday I know what to expect and it feels good to get it done. All in all it takes less than 1.5 hours each time. (Laundry does tend to spill into Tuesday, but the time spent is still roughy the same only counting the load changes and folding.)
| Jek | Tarn | |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Sweep Clutter |
Vacuum Bathroom |
| Week 2 | Sweep/Mop Clutter |
Laundry Dust |
| Week 3 | Vacuum Bathroom |
Sweep Clutter |
| Week 4 | Laundry Dust |
Sweep/Mop Clutter |
August 23rd, 2005 at 4:30 pm
Where’s the cooking and dish washing…..the yard work……house maint……?
August 24th, 2005 at 10:41 am
In a household with two successful, FTE professionals and no little ones running around, this kind of symmetry is pretty straightforward to maintain, I guess.
I don’t have access to the rest of the article, but what Jek quoted is that only 20% of men perform housework, yet men would need to perform 60% more work to catch up with the current women’s workload. Heck, does that mean that just upping the % of men doing work from 20% to 32% would offset the difference? The article says the vast majority of women are performing house work, >32% presumably. If it only takes 32% of men accomplish the same amount of work as, say, 75% of women, what does that say about efficiency?
August 24th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
Let’s see, chores… Katie tends to do more dishes, but I’ve been doing a lot more dishes since I haven’t been working this summer, but I’m going to try to keep doing that half of the time now that I’m heading back to work on Sept 1st. I’m responsible for floors (sweep/vacuum), Katie cleans the bathroom. I handle the lawn care, Katie does the garden (well, sometimes). I try to help with the weeding. I handle the finances (bills, investing, account reconciling, etc.) and the car maintenance. We both do laundry throughout the week. Oh, and I maintain the computers.
August 24th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
To Anon: Our original chore list had stuff like that listed. Since those roles are fairly ingrained, they didn’t make the latest revision. In general, Tarn does the cooking; I do the dishes; she does the bills; I do Quicken (though right now I’m behind); She does most of the gardening; I pull the weeds and mow; we both rake; and I maintain the computers. MAINTAINING THE COMPUTERS IS A CHORE?! Awesome. Great idea TTop. By that measure, I’m over the 50% line. 🙂
To HuskySooner: I’m not sure how the 2 data sources quoted in the article are related. Seeing the rest of the article won’t help, since it quickly goes into talking about book titled Clean Like a Man: Housekeeping for Men. I did find the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey here. In Table 1, you can see that on an average day in 2003, 19.5% of men did housework compared to 54.6% of women. So the article is misleading, since it doesn’t follow that only 20% of men do housework. However, that also doesn’t mean men are doing their fair share. In a dual working household (even with kids), on average you’ll find the female doing over half of the house work.
I didn’t think about the one person working with kid(s) situations. To me, that environment is pretty hard to imagine. Most of our local friends are single or couples without kids.
PS: Tarn was a little shocked I posted our chore list. In particular, she’s concerned that the fortnightly bathroom cleaning might scare people. Fortunately it never really ever gets that dirty.
August 25th, 2005 at 7:31 am
Hee hee. I was just twisting the stats a bit, which didn’t seem very clearly presented. I assume they mean that of the 20% of men who do chores, those need to do 60% more work to catch up with the average woman doing chores.
Our own task-dividing is more like Ttop’s. But in a couple years we’ll have a chart like Jek’s for the kiddos.
August 28th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
I do most of the house work, But the good thing for us is that we are not at home thru the week so the house does not get messed up Now the truck, That is another story.