I stopped doing the housework

For most of our marriage, I’ve taken responsibility for the house. Because I worked from home, while Dennis usually worked outside the home, doing virtually everything relating to the house gradually became part of my role too. I’m not sure we ever consciously decided it would work that way. It simply became the way things were.

Recently, though, our circumstances changed, and I began questioning why I was still automatically carrying so much of the house alongside my work. I decided I needed to step back from some of it so I could concentrate more on my business. Except deciding that certain things were no longer automatically my responsibility didn’t mean I immediately stopped feeling responsible for them.

That was the part I hadn’t anticipated. I could decide not to do something and still notice that it needed doing. So, I began trying not to automatically step in. I didn’t announce it or turn it into some kind of grand declaration. I simply began experimenting with what would happen if I noticed something needed doing and didn’t immediately assume that meant I had to do it. Which sounds rather straightforward until you’ve spent years being the person who notices something needs doing and automatically does it.

Once I started stepping back, some of the things I would normally have done were simply done without me. When Dennis put on a clothes wash, I felt guilty because I hadn’t done it myself. That surprised me. I’d deliberately decided I wasn’t going to do the washing. I knew why I wasn’t doing it. I hadn’t forgotten about it or been too busy to get around to it. I was actively trying to stop taking responsibility for something I had decided was no longer automatically mine to do. And still, when Dennis did it, there was this feeling that somehow I should have done it first.

Perhaps that’s part of what I hadn’t understood when I decided to step back. I thought I was stepping away from the tasks. What I really wanted was to stop carrying the responsibility for making sure the tasks happened, and apparently, as it turns out, those are two very different things. Because I still notice. I still know the washing needs doing. I still know what hasn’t been vacuumed or cleaned. I still see what needs attention and, once I’ve seen it, there’s a very familiar part of me waiting to step in.

And then there’s the clothes horse.

Dennis had put on a wash and hung everything up, and later I went to turn the clothes so they would dry better. The way he had hung them immediately caught my attention. When I hang washing, I tend to organise his clothes together and mine together because it simply makes things easier when everything is dry and needs putting away. Dennis hangs up whatever he happens to lift out next. That doesn’t bother me. It’s simply a different way of doing it.

What bothered me was the way the individual clothes had been hung. I take care with tops, for example, making sure the seams are at the edge of the garment. Dennis seemed to have lifted each thing out of the washing and squeezed it into whatever space was available, some of it looking as though it had been thrown onto the clothes horse from 90 paces. I stood there looking at it all. This is where stepping back becomes much harder for me. I don’t expect everything to be done precisely the way I would do it simply because that’s my way. I just like to take care when I do something.

There’s a difference for me between somebody having their own method and something being done in a way that, through my eyes at least, looks as though less care has gone into it. I can look at Dennis hanging his clothes and mine all mixed together and think, fine, that’s how he does it. When I look at a top squeezed onto the clothes horse in a way that makes me want to immediately rehang it, I find it much harder to leave alone.

And this is where I’m currently stuck. I wanted to stop carrying so much of the household responsibility, and now I’m discovering that putting something down doesn’t necessarily mean I stop noticing it.

There’s an uncomfortable kind of space between seeing something and refusing to automatically take care of it. Sometimes that means sitting back while the washing waits rather than automatically doing it myself. Sometimes it means feeling guilty when something I would once have done without thinking gets done without me. And sometimes it means looking at clothes on a clothes horse and resisting the urge to interfere because I’ve already decided that particular responsibility isn’t mine right now.

The Responsibility Doesn't Disappear When the Task Does

I’m beginning to see how much of being the person who “takes care of things” happens long before the actual doing. It’s in noticing. Remembering. Knowing something is waiting. Being aware that, if nobody else deals with it, eventually you probably will. That responsibility can become so familiar that even when you deliberately try to put it down, some part of you is still carrying it.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about alongside my own work around boundaries, because my Establishing Strong Boundaries Self-Healing Bundle explores some of that difficulty around over-responsibility and the guilt that can appear when we start protecting space for ourselves. I’m realising in my own life that a boundary can feel very different when I’m the one trying to live it rather than simply understanding why I need it.

And I don’t yet know where the line sits here. I don’t know how much of this is me learning to leave things alone and accept that Dennis will do them differently. I don’t know how much is a genuine frustration that something I care about is being done with less care than I would give it. I’m still trying to work out what belongs to him, what belongs to me and what happens in that uncomfortable space between the two.

For now, though, I’m trying to stop picking up every piece simply because I’ve noticed it lying there. And perhaps the hardest part is discovering that my hands can remain still while my mind has already picked it up.