Who In Your Home Cleans The Bathroom?
A few years back I had a co-worker I will call Mike. He had just moved into a home with his girlfriend, Sarah. They wanted to be equal in dividing up household chores, so they discussed who would clean the bathroom. Mike lost the coin toss. He was designated as the bathroom cleaner.
A couple months into the relationship, Sarah said, “I have had it! You said you would clean the bathroom, but all you do is move a few things around on the counter. That isn’t cleaning!”
Bewildered, Mike said, “It is always clean! It doesn’t need any more than that!”
She responded in exasperation, “It is always filthy, so I clean it! That is why it always looks clean to you! Because I clean it!”
Mike was honestly shocked. He hadn’t noticed the bathroom to be filthy! All Mike knew is when he went in to use or clean the bathroom it looked good to him!
This real-life example of Mike and Sarah has much more to do with the mechanics and inner workings of their relationship than it does who cleans the bathroom. Maybe you are thinking right now, “Who cleans the bathroom where I live?”
Decision Making
In this example, Mike and Sarah had good intentions for dividing up who does the household chores. Very few people enjoy the mundane activities of washing dishes, cooking, washing the clothes, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom.
These are some thoughts to consider if you are attempting to make decisions in your relationship:
Who: Perhaps a flip of a coin is not the best way to determine who does household chores. Or maybe not the best method for making any decision! “Who” is probably the most important question of all.
What: Using cleaning the bathroom as an example, what is involved with cleaning the bathroom? Do you include emptying out every drawer and wiping down light fixtures as part of weekly cleaning, or is it a quick once over and you are done? Who decides what is “clean”?
When: When or how often is the bathroom cleaned? Is it daily? Weekly? Who decides this?
How: How clean is clean? Is bleach involved every time? Who decides this?
How Long: How long does any one person have to clean the bathroom? Do you take turns? This month it is you, next month it is your significant other? Or once you start cleaning the bathroom it is your chore for the rest of the relationship? Who decides the scheduling?
Sending and Receiving
Mike and Sarah loved each other, they wanted to spend more time together, they felt they had shared values and they felt like they communicated very well together. Those are the reasons they moved in together. There probably isn’t any doubt all those things were true. But there is still more to a relationship.
For communication to exist, there must be a sender and a receiver. One person is initiating a discussion (the sender), and one person is participating in the discussion (the receiver). While both Mike and Sarah were discussing who was going to clean the bathroom, the sender was not clear about the expectations about what it means to clean the bathroom. For more information about senders and receivers in relationships, please see article: Five Roadblocks to Effective Communications
Perspectives
It wasn’t that Mike and Sarah were wrong or unrealistic in their views of a clean bathroom, they just had different expectations, different perspectives. It hadn’t occurred to either one of them to explain their expectations to the other person.
Mike was raised with his parents and four brothers who shared one bathroom. Sarah was raised with her parents and one sister in a two-bathroom house. Both Mike and Sarah thought saying they wanted a clean bathroom was obvious! However, based on their childhoods, they had different expectations, different perspectives, about what a clean bathroom should look like.
Had they discussed what constitutes a “clean bathroom” there might not have been the tension between Mike and Sarah.
Self-Talk
Mike thought cleaning the bathroom was a pretty easy job! It always looked good to him! It wasn’t until two months later when Sarah expressed how unhappy she was at having to be the one to clean the bathroom “when it was Mike’s job”.
You can have very long conversations in your head that you don’t share with others. These conversations are called self-talk. They almost always sound like the truth. And you can build up a whole scenario in your head. For Sarah, it might have gone something like this, “Mike is such a slob! He doesn’t care that he agreed to clean the bathroom! If I can’t trust him to do this, how can I trust him to do other things he said he would do!” And on and on the spiral will go.
In this situation, Mike had no idea this whole conversation was going on in Sarah’s head. Because he didn’t know, there was nothing he could do to fix what was going on. That is the problem with self-talk. In this case Mike never had an opportunity to defend himself or fix the problem before a “landmine” exploded.
When something is bothering you about your significant other, it is so much better to have a discussion early on, than it is to wait until it becomes a big deal. It is likely you have heard of the phrase, “making a mountain out of a mole hill”. Discussing something early when it is a mole hill is so much better than waiting until the situation is a mountain.
Take Away Point
Healthy communication is vital to a healthy relationship. The example used in this blog of cleaning a bathroom is only a method for demonstrating how two people who thought they were good at communicating were not on the same page after all. Mike and Sarah went on to get married. They still “joke” about who cleans the bathroom!
No content in this blog was created by AI (artificial intelligence). The information presented is the perspective of the author and material amassed from 40+ years as a clinical social worker.
With warmest regards,
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