If you're having trouble making your point about needing help, ensure that any duties that specifically affect your husband get done last or not at all – washing his clothes, sorting his socks, and picking up his shirts from the dry-cleaner, for instance. "Sorry about that, Herb – I had to vacuum the entire house today by myself!"
Try extortion
If your spouse is reluctant to do his share of the cleaning, says Beckwith, hire a housekeeper to alleviate the burden – once every two weeks might be all the relief you need. Also, take the family's dirty clothes to an outside laundry for cleaning and folding. Hire a cook for a day to prepare a week's worth of meals (do an Internet search for "personal chef services.") If your spouse objects to these expenses, remind him that you've been asking for help. This will motivate your spouse to do more.
Five very manly things about cleaning
If you're the kind of guy who fears that housecleaning is a threat to your manliness, here are five points to keep in mind:
1. Being in charge of a cleaning job is a valid excuse to buy tools.
2. When you clean, you get to wear your rattiest jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers.
3. A guy who can clean is able to eat all the junk food on the couch that he wants – and hide the evidence.
4. Any guy who can leap into action at a party and remove a fresh wine stain from the carpet will impress the heck out of everybody.
5. You get to hunt down and kill fierce wildlife. Okay, we're actually talking about germs, but they're still dangerous little beasts.
Read more: 10 tips to get your kids to do household chores.
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Excerpted from How to Cheat at Cleaning: Time-Slashing Techniques to Cut Corners and Restore Your Sanity by Jeff Bredenberg, copyright 2007. Excerpted with permission from Random House of Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.
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