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The original was posted on /r/amitheasshole by /u/Vivid-Arachnid2370 on 2024-01-21 20:06:06+00:00.
I WFH and my spouse stays home as well to take care of our 3 kids (2 toddlers and 1 infant). Every day when I come downstairs from work the house is a mess. Toys are scattered everywhere downstairs (living room, kitchen, entryway), food is caked onto the kitchen floor and the high chair from the infant, and dishes are left out with food hardening on them.
In addition, things just start to pile up around the house over time from never being put away. Clothes are tossed on or at the base of the stairs until they are a huge pile, things that have been taken out are just left on the tables or countertops until those are piled up as well. Some of this stuff is kid items but some are also my spouse's items that are used and never put away. Our bedroom has food and trash everywhere and every night our bed has crumbs all over because our kids wake up (8-9 AM) and my spouse sends them downstairs to get food to eat in bed with them so my spouse can sleep more.
Every few months we have people over for some reason or another and there is always a fight leading up to it because of the mess. It takes us multiple days of cleaning for hours a day to get the house in a state where we can have guests over. I get extremely frustrated because the bulk of our cleaning comes from cleaning up the accrued daily mess that happens while I am working. We clean up for multiple days to have people over and within a week the house is back to where it looks like we never cleaned at all.
I understand that being a stay at home spouse and caring for kids is a job in it's own right but I feel like part of that includes picking up after the kids so we aren't left with this giant mess constantly. If things were picked up throughout the day then we wouldn't have such a large list of things to do once the kids are in bed. I also feel that if you take something out to use, you put it away when you are done instead of leaving it on the counter.
I'm not expecting my spouse to do things like clean the bathrooms or do all the dishes daily, just pick up after themselves and the kids during the day as they go. Am I the asshole for expecting this out of my spouse?