Just Curious - South Beloit,IL

I do it during the week, not so my husband can relax on the weekend, but so I can relax on the weekend with my family and have family time on the weekend. I treat being a SAHM as a job, grant it I work 7-7 everyday, but it's my job. I do everything M-F, and then it's regular family time on the weekends.

Yes, but not just so he can relax....also so WE can play when we're together. We could either be doing chores or "blah" stuff during our time together, or we could sleep in a little, go to our oldest boy's soccer game, have a picnic lunch and then naptime (meaning mom and dad get to chill alone---sacred time!), then walk to the neighborhood pool, have an easy family dinner, chase the ice cream truck down, go to church, play at the beach, etc. Weekends fly by. I want my husband to relax and enjoy his time off, yeah, but I want ME to enjoy my time with him and all the family together, and I want the BOYS to enjoy daddy and time with all of us together. It's not just "serving" my man that makes me want everything done on certain days. But yes, I do feel a little stress sometimes to do all of the cleaning, meal prep, laundry, weekly shopping, etc by my own "deadline"......like a working mom would feel a little stress to get her job done done by a deadline. I consider being a sahm a job, and treat it as such. I do specific things on specific days (but include time with my youngest, time with my oldest, time with both.....but specific errands, activities, or chores for each day as well). Easier for me to do a little bit every day than 1 day of "killing yourself" to get everything done....and the house kinda looking like crud right before that day. :P

I do all those things, everyday. Weekend or not.
Then I fit in, time with the kids/husband.
I mean, my Husband can do household things too, and spend time with the kids TOO.
Not only me.
I'm a SAHM.
That does not mean Hubby does not have to do things.

Time with just Hubby... well that generally is when the kids are napping or in bed at night.
Unless, our relatives take our kids out. Which they sometimes do.

But toiling and doing home/kid stuff, is everyday. 7-days a week.

I WISH I would do that! I have good intentions but often the week gets away from me and it just doesn't happen. We are having rainy weather today so I was just thinking of starting some laundry. I do try to have sort of a schedule during the week. Vacuum certain rooms certain days and a load of laundry every day things like that but I miss a lot some weeks.

Yes I do try to do most of it during the week too. Laundry is the big one that I usually have to catch up on duirng the weekend, but for the most part I like to give myself the weekend to relax too. I mean I'm still watching kids and doing dishes so it's not a huge break, but if Husband isn't going in to work, I'm going to work less too! I feel like the weekends are the time to have family time and do outings and play and go swimming, etc. If my husband is out mowing the lawn or doing yard work I am more inclined to do some laundry or clean but for the most part we try and chill!

I do what I can during the week. I work hard as a SAHM, but I also have some serious chronic pain issues which can limit the physical labor. I get the kids to help out as much as possible since as residents of our household, they have to have responsibilities too. And honestly, just because my husband works out of the home, that doesn't mean he's working harder than I am. It only means he's earning a paycheck for what he does and I'm not, and it means that he's working in a different location.

As equal partners and parents in our marriage, it's both of our responsibilities to support each other whenever possible. That includes both of us doing chores. He doesn't get to just come home and be the fun parent with nothing to help out with on the weekend. Even moms that work at home need a break.

Yeah, that's kind of what I tried to do. Get everything done so that the weekends were more relaxing. I was successful at it for a while too!

But now that I'm prego with #5 (when this baby is born, we'll have four kiddos under the age of five years old...so they are young and time consuming and I often feel like showering is a big task - ha!)...so now that I'm prego with #5, I kind of feel like life is getting the best of me. I'm just now starting to be able to do the laundry again. Having morning sickness and a six month old to take care of, plus the other three, AND homeschooling my oldest two was a lot to do...not leaving a lot of time to do household stuff (it makes me realize why some people really need housekeepers!).

So hubby learned to step up and help with the kitchen and laundry - something he never did before! But ideally, and my goal is to get back to this, yes - having things done in the house so that weekends can be relaxing for all is the goal. I no longer view hubby as the one needing the relaxing like I used to...hehe...which I thought prior to having any kids, and especially once we had three kids. Very time consuming and busy (since they were close in age). I think he agrees that he has the easy end of things right now! Being a mom is hard work and I agree with the other comments that it's a "we" thing not a "he" thing. But we do like to make the weekends relaxing so we can all focus on being a family and doing stuff together with limited household responsibilities interfering. Life is juggle, though. It is hard to not feel pulled in several directions! I'm sure you'll be able to adjust and figure out what works for you:-) Sounds like you have the right desires!

I try to stay on top of it everyday so nothing piles up. I do slack off a little during the weekend because we usually have lots going on. If I dont pick up several times a day my house would be trashed. But to answer your question, yes I do less on the weekends.

Well, since my husband works on Saturdays, and I spend most of the weekdays running the kids around for school and after school stuff.. I tend to let Saturday morning and early afternoon be my big laundry days. Unfortunately, that is sometimes when a lot of birthday party activities take place, too, so some weekends I am a little frazzled.

But doing laundry mid-week just doesn't work well for me. I do do a few loads here and there (one or maybe two every day or every other day)... but the kids are still wearing "school" clothes and aren't home to drag their dirty stuff to the laundry room. And I am at the point that I no longer gather dirty stuff for them. While the mantra "if you don't take it to the laundry room it won't get washed" sounds great, and DOES work... if they aren't here, the reality is that there isn't much laundry to do until they DO take it to the laundry room.

I try to get everything done during the week, but not for the same reason! I want to enjoy my weekends too! We are usually on the go visiting family, running errands, playing outside, Church, ect.. My husband is also really good about giving me some "ME" time every weekend and I don't want to waste it doing housework!

Ha!

No. Not at all. Cooking still needs to happen. Adventures still happen (life's messy, clean it up) so unless I want the house to be a pit on Monday cleaning still needs to happen. Sunday is the day we strip all the beds and wash the linnens/duvets & towels to start off fresh for the week. Our garbage/recycling/yardwaste goes out on Monday, so those need to be gotten out Sunday, as well (which also means we're emptying bins out to them/ filling them up with whatever is in the 'wating' piles... aka broken down boxes, etc.). Add in the perpetual DIY remodeling that DH is determined to be a part of (he HATES saying "My wife did ________" even if I did 90% of it, he chips in on weekends to avoid the phrase ;), and quite a bit of 'household management/maintenance' happens on the weekends.

We're not pulled in a zillion directions though, just because our situation is different. We homeschool, so aren't lacking in kid/family time. When we were in awayschool weekends were nightmares trying to get in time together. ((NOT that any version of schooling is better than another, it just knocks family time back to 'early years' paradigm... like when kids were toddlers. Instead of having to figure out how to get time with them, it's figuring out how to get time away. Just a different set of challenges.))

I am a SAH mom. I do most of the grocery shopping and cooking. I have a cleaning lady who comes every two weeks. My husband and the kids will come with me for a Costco run. But I do try to get everything done during the week, so we can all relax and "play" on the weekend. We usually go to the health club as a family on Sat. am. and then might do some errands together. I do want him to have some time for himself. He works hard duriing the week. Often on Saturday or Sunday aft. he wil take care fo the kiids so I can have some alone time. This seems to work well for our family. I hope this helps.

I do that during the week, then that way on the weekend (or when my husband is home, normally he works 6 days a week) we work on the bigger projects of the house or just have a relaxing chill day.

When he does get home he does help out, especially telling my twins to get their rooms picked up, they listen better to him than they do to me.

I work on the house during the weekday and only keep up with dishes and the kitchen floor on the weekends. Usually no laundry gets done on weekends and only vacuum the living room if absolutely necessary. Hubby only home on weekends so our priority is spending family time.

Good luck!

Our house is kind of a day-by-day house, so we work as we go. Some jobs have to be saved until the weekend. It would be nice to get all that prep done, but my weekdays working and taking care of the house just aren't long enough to get it all done in advance. We just pace ourselves during the weekend. For what it's worth, during the weekend, I'm responsible for 80%+ of the dishes, meal prep, laundry, housekeeping, dinner, etc.And the garden. Our son is an only child, so he turns to me for companionship, which I love and understand, but it's a chunk of time as well. Plus working. So I'm not super-concerned about taking a bunch of stuff off my husband's plate, but we don't overschedule our weekend work, either.