Inspired by 'what do you do all day'

[tmcg]

Hi everyone. I've been reading the archived threads in FAQ's and thoroughly enjoyed the 'what do you do all day' posts.

I'm 44, DH is 48 and he retired last year but I don't seem to have retired from housework! I feel much better having read about 'typical' days as I feel very guilty for reading or watching tv during the day.

I have been a housewife for many years and am finding it hard to not structure my day. At the moment it's like this:

9am wake up
clean house until lunch
lunch
clean house until dinner
dinner
lots of wine and tv
bed

On another day it's more like this:
9am wake up
spend hours on the laptop
lunch
spend hours watching rubbish tv
dinner
lots of wine and more tv
bed

Neither type of day is making me happy though. One is exhausting and the other is depressing!

Ho-hum, I need to read more 'chill out' threads!

Bye for now

 

[dumpster56]

Hi everyone. I've been reading the archived threads in FAQ's and thoroughly enjoyed the 'what do you do all day' posts.

I'm 44, DH is 48 and he retired last year but I don't seem to have retired from housework! I feel much better having read about 'typical' days as I feel very guilty for reading or watching tv during the day.

I have been a housewife for many years and am finding it hard to not structure my day. At the moment it's like this:

9am wake up
clean house until lunch
lunch
clean house until dinner
dinner
lots of wine and tv
bed

On another day it's more like this:
9am wake up
spend hours on the laptop
lunch
spend hours watching rubbish tv
dinner
lots of wine and more tv
bed

Neither type of day is making me happy though. One is exhausting and the other is depressing!

Ho-hum, I need to read more 'chill out' threads!

Bye for now

Take a walk? Go swimming? Sex?

 

[Walt34]

Bicycle ride.

Yesterday I put a window air conditioner in the garage window and detailed my pickup truck. Hot & muggy outside, T-storms just as I got done.

Today the weather is supposed to be nice, I think I'll go fishing.

 

[citrine]

How about do chores together, have lots of sex, go on day trips, volunteer somewhere?

 

[Leonidas]

... have lots of sex...

Ding! Ding! Ding!

This is always the right answer...to any question.

God, I so love this forum.

 

[FIREd]

You need to get out of the house! Also, instead of doing all your housecleaning on the same day, could you clean one room per day, like kitchen on Monday, living room on Tuesday, etc? It's less overwhelming. I work part time and on days when I am off, I try to reserve my morning for indoor activities like cleaning one room in the house, paying bills, writing emails and try to do activities that require leaving the house after lunch (walking, biking, shopping, going to the bank or post office, going to appointments, getting coffee...). I usually don't turn on the TV (except if it's to quickly check on the market) until 5:00 or 6:00 pm.

 

[retire@40]

...I'm 44, DH is 48 and he retired last year but I don't seem to have retired from housework!...

9am wake up
clean house until lunch
lunch
clean house until dinner
dinner
lots of wine and tv
bed...

Maybe you need a smaller house.

 

[ladelfina]

tmcg, I know what you are saying in that you can never retire from the housework. As someone who used to work and did minimal housework back then.. it does change when you* retire and have a choice between "fun" stuff/vegging out versus the housework that is now staring you in the face every waking hour!

*speaking as a woman and I know this is sexist but still true that women tend to both be and (more important) FEEL more responsible for the upkeep of the home.

DH helps but I have to be "the general". It doesn't come spontaneously to him. He'll never think to clean "his" bathroom unless guests are coming.. but if someone drops by unexpectedly I'm always nervous they'll wander in there! His level of acceptable squalor is much higher than mine, and the person with the lowest level of squalor-acceptance loses. My advice to you (and to myself) is to make up a schedule of what needs to be done in the house and get DH to help at least to some extent. It does require forcing an arbitrary schedule (the sheets must be washed on Monday) which is the hard thing I have with that. There is one site I came across from a woman who calls herself the "Flylady" but there are others that deal with scheduling housework efficiently.

Not helping, though, is the fact that the house gets dirtier and there's more cooking/cleaning the more time you spend there; when I was working I was doing very little to get the house dirty, so I find there's more way housework to do now.

My days tend to be more like your day #2 since I hate housework! I love cooking, though.. so that part of the "housework" actually expands to take up a number of hours of the day since I make pretty much everything from scratch. I just made and canned a ton of ketchup using 25 lb. of tomatoes so that was a full day of work. Now I'm trying to track down a local source for CaSO4 so I can make tofu. I also do some gardening plus exercise with DH like dance classes and yoga.

There are lovely walks 'round here but I find just walking kind of boring so I am never inspired to do it. I think I might get a season pass for the local outdoor pool but the weather this month has been cold and rainy so I haven't gotten around to that.

It has been awkward trying to transition from a life where you do things because you have to, to one where you do things only when you WANT to. Part of what is holding me back from doing most of the things I WANT to is -frankly- fear of spending money. If either one of us had a COLA'd pension I would be off and running.

If you don't have kids or external commitments then you might have to invent something concrete that takes the place of that to get you on a schedule, get you moving, and get out of the house. Could be volunteering or taking classes, a book group or other kind of social club. If I were desperate I would even look into making some pocket money via babysitting or something like that; if you don't have kids it could be fun to "borrow" one and share some activities with them, like art projects or going to a park.

 

[tmcg]

Thanks Ladelfina for your thoughtful post. It certainly seems as if I haven't retired yet whilst DH sees his whole day as goofing off!

I like the idea of breaking it down into manageable chunks, that way maybe I can do housework in the mornings and find a hobby to soak up the afternoons.

I love having DH around so much but it was hard to adapt at first as I always felt he was in my 'office' if that makes sense. Poor guy! Over the year he has adapted well and just loves doing nothing but computer stuff and sport on tv. I on the otherhand still have a myriad of chores to do!

Thanks everyone for your comments

 

[Moemg]

My housework also increased with retirement . Before we used to share cooking now it is all me. I don't mind cooking it's the figuring out what to cook that drives me nuts . I have joined a gym and go almost every day so this jumpstarts my days and gives me a little routine . Plus it gets you out and around other people.

 

[haha]

Ho-hum, I need to read more 'chill out' threads!

Bye for now

Things will fall into place for you. Maybe a class?

A friend of mine said yesterday that her day consisted of cooking and exercising- the latter mostly to stave off middle aged muskuloskeletal infirmities.

This is how she felt; but in reality she is one of the most active people I have ever known. She might go dancing 3 times a day, or dance in the morning, go to Pilates in the afternoon and a movie in the evening.

It exhausts me just thinking about all that activity.

Ha

 

[Marquette]

Where does one find these women that do all of the housework? Well, come to think of it, my wife might agree to if she wasn't working, but I think I'd rather just help out by doing the laundry.

Seriously, though, I thought that model was discontinued in the '60's.

 

[Khan]

Where does one find these women that do all of the housework? Well, come to think of it, my wife might agree to if she wasn't working, but I think I'd rather just help out by doing the laundry.

Seriously, though, I thought that model was discontinued in the '60's.

Heck, I could use a wife AND a husband. (I'm lazy).

 

[Walt34]

I went fishing today. Didn't catch any, but it was a nice lazy day on the Potomac river. Perfect weather, 75 degrees gentle winds, I saw two other boats the whole day. Put in at Williamsport, MD, ran 7.5 miles upriver and pretty much just drifted back down. A family member came up with the name for the boat - Almost Heaven. Seems a bit of a stretch to name a 10.5 foot boat but why not.

Just a nice lazy summer day on the river.

 

[Rambler]

DW has been a housewife for about the last 15 years and was PT before that. She has her routines down to a pretty fixed schedule. We humans seem to be creatures of habit, and sometimes my "helpfulness" actually turns things inside out and upside down for her. For example, if I have gone to the gym twice in a day instead of the normal once, and run out of gym clothes, I'll gather some clothes up and start the laundry. This puts her out of sync with her laundry schedule and it seems she can be messed up for days.

All of this said, I'm not FIREd yet. When I am, I would like to spend a lot of my time with her. As is the case with many couples, most of the outdoor chores currently fall on my shoulders, and most of the indoor chores fall on hers. I'm hoping that we can figure out a way to work together to get these things done, so that more of our time is spent together, whether it is with chores or hobbies. Obviously we have our own hobbies, but we have shared hobbies as well...but I'm hoping that we can share more time, because the many years I have been at megacorp has robbed us of a lot of it.

R

 

[ladelfina]

Rambler.. two thoughts:

1.) buy extra gym clothes (even at Salvation Army or Goodwill). I will confess that I was so lazy as a college student that I would buy extra underwear to lengthen the time between trips to the laundromat.

2.) definitely try to schedule at least part of the indoor/outdoor maintenance together. It's much easier for me to "get into" housework if DH is helping: vacuuming while I am dusting/scrubbing/tidying. I'm sure it helps him psychologically too, if I am out weeding while he is mowing. Even if you don't do all the same tasks there's a solidarity factor that helps diminish potential resentment or taking-for-granted.

 

[Walt34]

I've noticed that DW feels compelled to do housework/cleaning if I'm outside mowing, washing the car, etc. When I asked her about it, she says she feels guilty sitting if I'm working on something and that it's a good time to do it because I'm "not underfoot".

 

[citrine]

My household chores routine is so out of whack now when I am not working than it was before! I do pick up the house, do dishes, and laundry....but that's about it.

 

[Rustic23]

One, male or female, never 'retires' from chores. The yard needs mowing, the car washed, garden weeded, dock repaired, house fixed, golf played, trees trimmed, deck cleaned, deck painted, trash taken out. They come and go, but unless a big check comes with retirement, the chores remain.

 

[haha]

One, male or female, never 'retires' from chores. The yard needs mowing, the car washed, garden weeded, dock repaired, house fixed, golf played, trees trimmed, deck cleaned, deck painted, trash taken out. They come and go, but unless a big check comes with retirement, the chores remain.

True. But renting a small apartment and getting rid of stuff really does lighten the load. I'm pretty well down to laundry, dishes and cleaning the aprtment. Not much to clean in 500 sq. feet either.

Some retired men like the sort of tasks that you mentioned. And many couples probably need them as boundry markers. But as a single man who would rather go out than fix something, read a book than cut grass, an apartment has been a good compromise.

Ha

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Start drinking the wine earlier in the day and see what happens.

Hey Walt, dont those wheels on the bottom of your boat make for a little excess drag when in the water?

 

[DangerMouse]

When I finish work in a couple of weeks my situation will be similar to yours. However, I am prepared as it is only the past 2 years that I returned to the workforce.

Things that I have found work for me include the following;

1. Don't obsess about housework. What I used to do was clean 1 rooms a day. However, even though I am going to be a house-mouse next month I have no intention of giving up my cleaner who comes every second week. I figure she does it better than I do and the cost is less than 1 starbucks coffee a day.

2. Focus on the things that matter. For me that is losing weight, eating health etc. I like to serve up health meals every day and I figure by having time to buy fresh food, use coupons etc, combined with not eating out so much that cleaner is going to be well and truly paid for.

3. Find an activity that gets you out the house. For me, that will be joining a group tennis lesson at the Y one morning a week. I don't expect to make any friends, however I should be able to pick up some acquaintances who are looking for someone to play against. This method has worked in the past.

4. Look for a volunteer opportunity that appeals to your heart. If you like animals it make be working at a cat shelter, hospitals and hospice always need people. A cool one I found last time was at an acquarium, though unfortunately that did not jibe with my schedule so I did not partcipate.

I think the main thing is not to throw yourself into too many things at once as that can become overwhelming and more tiring than working. Make yourself a list of things you have always wanted to do and see if you can start making some of them happen.

 

[haha]

His level of acceptable squalor is much higher than mine, and the person with the lowest level of squalor-acceptance loses.

A high level of squalor acceptance has long been my secret of successful living.

Ha

 

[unclemick]

A high level of squalor acceptance has long been my secret of successful living.

Ha

Amen. Unfortunately now with a female roommate/pal/companion I just stay out of her way - she does New Orleans style cooking also (20 plus pounds to prove it) house stuff and gardening I defer to her. I get to play with the lawnmower and my chainsaw when the mood strikes.

heh heh heh - Off limits is 'my computer room' where squalor reigns supreme!

 

[Sarah in SC]

A high level of squalor acceptance has long been my secret of successful living.

Ha

Ha, I think I can out-squalor you.
I know I can out-squalor my DH!
It is a gift. But having 9 animals in the house does help.