After 6 years of both of us working full time, getting home tired, sometimes stressed and with workplace baggage, having decide what to cook for dinner (and who can be bothered) amongst other household chores, with me often travelling for work and with C-chan often having Uni to go to a few nights a week...
HAVING ONLY ONE OF US WORKING IS HEAVEN!!
Our household has never divided the labour up very well - the result being we had to negotiate doing most things (washing, cooking), which is fine and flexible, but caused arguments if something needed doing and neither of us could be bothered. And some things just never got done (e.g. ironing). The exceptions would be that C-chan tends to be dishes and tidying monitor, and I'm shopping monitor (but only while he's so busy with study).
Now that I'm not working, I have time to do these things at my leisure, and it's nowhere near as much of a chore. One or 2 chores a day in amongst fun stuff, with quality time with my c-chan at the end of the day is much more bearable than the prior scenario. (Don't get me wrong, C-chan is still filling in for me when I suddenly crash from pregnancy-induced tiredness, like the trooper that he is). I'm hoping we can swindle it so that only one of us is working full time from now on... not necessarily C-chan, but that will be the case for the next few years.
2 comments:
Mmmmm, I secretly enjoyed my three months of unemployment for the same reason (though I never told anyone because kick-ass careerist types are meant to want to be out kicking ass). And I definitely enjoyed staying home yesterday. And I quite liked it when Mr Right was unemployed, because its so nice to come home to a house where the lights are on and dinner's cooking and someone offers you a glass of wine before you've even kicked your shoes off!
Yes - it's a shame that you don't hear more examples of blokes taking time out of work to do home stuff, and we still feel like we should keep quiet if we like it or risk sounding like we've reverted back to pre-feminism times.
I just like the breathing space (there's more to life than paid work, but never enough time to do it when working full time). Might crave work again in the future. I'm sure C-chan would like a break, and we're planning to factor that in as soon as we can...
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