Hi reddit, sorry for long post. Skip to the first bold for the main problem or tl;dr at bottom.
We've known each other since she's been in med school, and got married once she figured out where she would be practicing her residency (think of it as interning 4 years at a hospital). I work a standard 8-5 job with the benefit of working from home everyday.
Prior to marriage, she had some more free time and even during the peak of med school, she was capable of doing things I requested of her such as chores or tasks. On top of that, she was able exercise often, make her own meals, and just be more active as a person.
With residency, she is asked to work 6 days a week for roughly 12 hours a day. She leaves for work at 5:30 AM and comes home at 6 PM. She relaxes for 3 hours, showers, sleeps, repeats.
Due to her crazy work schedule, and the fact I work from home, I do all the apartment lifting. Grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, organizing, etc. On her days off, she helps out where she can, but I will feel bad, because it's her only day off and just make her do some quick chores.
Lately, I've been asked to travel from work Sunday-Friday night for the next three weeks (rare). So I tasked her with just using 15-20 minutes of her free time everyday to do some things here and there. Take out trash, clean dishes, etc. I would even text her everyday to remind her and she would respond with a "You got it".
After the first week, I came home Friday night and was just shocked. I left the apartment spotless, but now it's a total mess. I did what I could on Saturday, but let me tell you what I saw. She received two packages on Saturday, and left the cardboard boxes next to the recycle bin, because our trash service doesn't come till Monday. That stuff was still there on Friday. The day I left, I realized I left my protein shake sitting on the sink, and I texted her to empty it out/clean it. She said she would 5 minutes later. I come back a week later, and it's still sitting there now all gross and smelly. The laundry we did on Saturday, she just took her batch out of the dryer and placed it on the dryer to fold "later"? Still there. The shoe rack SHE wanted? Her shoes were scattered all over the apartment. The thai food she ordered and forgot to put in the fridge on a Tuesday? Sitting out on the counter on a FRIDAY. When I asked about it, she said she didn't even "notice it".
I told her to just do a little thing here or there everyday...15-20 minutes at most, but nothing came out of it. Now I'm back on the road and am dreading what the place is going to look like this Friday. I don't want to yell at her or piss and moan to her. I want to help her get back on track with how capable she was before residency. But I know she's working a lot, and I don't know how to approach this problem.
EDIT: Looks like most are recommending hiring a cleaning service. I'll look into it, while also seeing what we can do to mitigate the apartment turning into a dump.
tl;dr: Wife started working 6x a week + long hours. I've been caring for apartment. I am now on 3 weeks of straight business trips. Came back after first week and apartment was a mess despite me telling her to do some stuff here and there.
Submitted October 01, 2018 at 08:22AM by AcrobaticWish https://ift.tt/2DK3UtX
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