I'm putting my foot down

Photo courtesy of Chrissie White at Flickr

I'm putting my foot down.

It's my own fault really, I've let them away with it for so long. I've now managed to get stuck with the job of full time mommy, as well as my other full time job. Imagine every single thing needing to be done around the house and muggins here does it.

But again, it kind of is my fault. You see, I love playing mommy. I like to do all these things for my family, cook and clean. Right down to laying my husband's clothes out for him the night before.

I haven't been very well this year. Nothing serious, just a bit run down and I've been picking up every cold and flu doing the rounds and I'm just starting to feel a bit taken advantage of.

I've started to get toots in on the act with some little things, because she is only little. She can help to sort laundry and she does a great job sorting socks, she has a lot more patience for it than I do.

She keeps her own room tidy and she cleans up after herself for the most part when she plays with her toys.

The problem lies with the husband.

Before I met him he had lived alone for 11 years and kept a pretty nice house so he must be domesticated in some way. We've been together now for coming up on 11 years so I think I may have to start with some serious re-education.

He needs to learn how to function without my help again. At the minute I'm convinced if I left him alone for a week at best he'd run out of clean plates and at worst he'd starve.

I'll try the standard chore list and make sure he sticks to it. Also he's got into a habit of leaving his things lying around and I, aka the eejit, pick them up later.

So I've developed a parking warder system. If i see something where it doesn't belong take a mental note and if it's still there an hour later, it's food for the bin. I don't care what it is, if he wants to keep it he'll learn to put it where it belongs.

Does anyone have any good ideas for getting the husband to help around the house? We both work full time and I think it's only fair that we both do the housework.