Ask Aviva: My wife needs help

Dear Aviva,

My family lives off of my income, and my wife takes care of the housework and the kids. Things are getting tight, and I want her to look for a job. She keeps coming up with another excuse of why not. Basically, it boils down to needing to hire a babysitter/cleaning lady and she is against it. She says we can’t afford it, or she says that cleaning ladies don’t know how to keep the house organized, or she says that babysitters neglect kids. My wife likes to keep the house a certain way and I think she doesn’t want to relinquish control. I see so many other families with help, why is it so hard for her?

-Helpless

Dear Helpless,

You’re not helpless, because it sounds like your wife is doing a lot of the helping. Is she helpless? What do you do to assist her? I know that you’re the one who is bringing in the soy bacon, but what do you do when you are off the clock? Don’t start scrubbing toilets, but be conscious of the footprint that you leave. Clear the table. Put things back where you found them. Consider washing the dishes that you use. Throw dirty laundry in the hamper. (I mean IN the hamper, not next to…)

I’m not trying to grill you—I’m fully aware of why you wrote in and I think your solution may lie in you partnering in her responsibilities. If you’re not involved with housework, you don’t really have a say over housekeeping (from her perspective.)

Breach the boundary here, and just start taking over a bit. If your wife finds the linen closet newly organized, she’ll feel nice to have someone driving in her domain. Just make sure that you are organizing something that’s in need of organizing and completing the job. Imagine the extra work she would have if she went to put the towels away and found the linen closet in that darkest-before-dawn phase of organization?

Don’t go crazy trying to help her. Do small things every day that she can rely on (devoting 20 minutes at night to straightening up, or putting away the dishes in the drying rack.) After helping her, she will experience what it’s like to have a lightened load. Now that you are both on a more level playing field, you can begin to explore more options with her. Is there any work that she can do from the house? Or work that she can do when you are home and the kids are asleep?