How are household chores split at your house? I’m finding myself taking on the brunt of cleaning even though both my husband and I work. Not sure how to find a balance but feeling extremely frustrated.

We use the Fair Play method and ensure we are both “owning” the task. We established a “minimum standard of care” which is the base tasks that need to be done before bed everyday. Both of these things have eliminated me making lists, nagging, and carrying the mental load of the household.

I sat my husband down and explained that I’m unhappy (aka I don’t want to have “fun” anymore) because of the stress the house chores created. His solution? Stop caring so much. I told him that I’ve never lowered my standards for my career, friends, or partner and I won’t be starting now. I framed expectations and we negotiated minimum standards. It was emotional but at the end of the day he agreed that the expectations weren’t unreasonable and that “well you didn’t marry a loser so I gotta step it up.”

Things were bad enough that prior to having this intervention I had already googled divorce attorneys. We’ve been together almost 10 years and the Fair Play movie (on Hulu or Amazon I think?) plus the book have been life changing for us.

Completely 50/50 for us. I set that boundary very early on into the relationship. If we are both working the same hours then we both do the same amount of chores. If one ends up working less hours they will do more

Yeah.. house chores used to be crazy for us until we sat down to share what we could do and what we would like to do. Both of us work, and we have 3 kids, so we decided to divide like this: My husband handles clothes, food, and garbage. I do the rest because I prefer things to be done in a certain way, so I like to do them myself. However, I dislike doing those tasks, so my husband decided to take care of them. Now, things are less stressful.

This is so tricky and common for a lot of couples. Before you have a conversation though, you should really evaluate if there aren't things that he is doing that you don't see or acknowledge. When my husband and I have had these disagreements in the past, and he rattles off all the things he's doing, I realize that we're actually more balanced than it feels sometimes.

50/50. It's nothing we've ever really had to talk about, we just pick up each other's slack. I hate doing dishes, so my husband handles that. He hates vacuuming, so I take care of it. We both despise laundry, so we tackle it together. It's worked out well enough for us so far. If you feel like you're having to do way too much, you need to sit down and have a conversation about it. Create a weekly chore list, decide who's doing what and stick to it.

I can relate to that so much. For us, it’s been trial and error. My husband works from home, so he naturally ends up doing more during the day, but I still feel like I’m doing the deeper cleaning on weekends. We’ve been trying to split things based on what we each hate the least, like I don’t mind laundry but he’s better with dishes.