Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Division of Labor

The question of how household tasks are divided up was asked in one of my Fet groups, so I thought I'd address it here.   It is some thing people wonder about whether it is different for a Master and his slave than another couple that lives together.  

Things like making medical appointments and handling the phone calls, repairmen calls,  insurance companies, etc. are ordered and decided by my Master.  He makes the decision on when and what is going to be done, but gives me the tasks of actually doing them.    These sorts of things are often on my daily "to do" list that he gives me.

Taxes and paperwork, and bills - and anything else associated with financial keeping/investments- Master almost always does this himself, although sometimes he will delegate phone calls or trips to the bank to me.  He keeps all our financial records and does the taxes himself.  
 
I do the grocery shopping, meal planning and deciding what food to buy. 

Master is a vet, so he takes care of the medical care for our animals.  I do any daily treatments that are needed- giving pills, worming, applying tick medicine and heartworm pills, as well as all the grooming, nail trimming, training, letting out, exercising, feeding of dogs, cleaning up poop from outside or other messes they make, fence repair,  taking care of the sheep, hoofing trimming, shearing (when I have some wool sheep) and every thing else the animals need.   Sometimes it takes both of us, like for castrating sheep or pulling porcupine quills from dog noses.  

Master tells me when daily life appointments are needed, such as haircuts, and I make the calls. 

 Generic shopping- clothes and things for the house-  I do most of it.   If it is something a little more expensive, like a new set of sheets or a carpet, I wait until he gives me the approval to buy them.  

An aside:  Yay!  I just got some new pretty sheets today because he told me to get some!

 For home repair shopping sometimes he'll go or he'll just tell me what to buy and send me.

Car maintenance? Getting gas? changing tires or the oil? Renewing the triple A card.  We don't have a Triple A card.   He makes all the car maintenance decisions.  We take them to a shop to have all this done, including oil changes.  
I get gas for my car on my own as needed.  

Cooking dinner, doing dishes,  clearing off the table, sweeping the kitchen floors... digging the quarters out of the couch....

I do all the house keeping, laundry and most of the cooking.  Now and then he'll cook, and he's good at it.  He just prefers that I do it.   

Child care:  This is split pretty evenly when he's home at night.  He reads with the kids, puts them to bed, and tells them to have their baths as much as I do.   He plays video games with them too, which I don't, except for very rarely.   
 
Shoveling snow, or scraping ice off the car window:   We both shovel snow and scrape ice.  This is job that takes everyone, even the kids, because our driveway is long and Master doesn't want to get a plow or snow blower.  If a big snowstorm leaves us blocked in, Master will approve the calling of a pro to plow for us. 


What about pulling weeds and fixing fences?

I do a lot of this, but we both work in the garden, we both haul wood for the fire, move bales of hay, mow grass, whack the weeds and do fence repairs.   

He does a lot of the repairs and maintenance on the house and outbuildings, such as fixing the barn door, busting up concrete etc.  I help by holding ladders or fetching things for him.  Almost everything that involves going up on a ladder he does- gutters, dusk to dawn lightbulb changing, high painting etc. 




6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a typical marriage... and there's me thinking I'm not a slave...

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  2. Well, do your husband and you consider yourself a slave, property, owned? Or a submissive wife? There is a difference in thinking, but probably not in assignment of tasks.

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    Replies
    1. I was commenting purely on the tasks being similar regardless of the dynamics of a relationship, I've certainly not got the mindset of a submissive. I think there is a misconception that if one calls themselves a slave, that person does everything and it isn't the case, as you and Tori illustrate. I think in many vanilla marriages the wife still does a disproportionate amount of domestic chores and it is considered normal. My husband cooks because he is a better cook than me. He looks after the bills, I do the groceries and kids stuff. The division is based on who does it best and simply that.
      The most important job I have is picking up the cat fluff as my husband is mildly allergic to them.
      Sorry my original comment was misinterpreted.

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  3. I think as DelFonte said really when you get down to it its just like a normal marriage, that each does what their skill set allows them to, some shared and some not.

    Master is more than happy to cook on the times he is home early and clear up afterwards, if im out and he is home he will put laundry on etc..we work together because its all of ours home. Housework used to be more my domain, although he would pitch in when i was working full time and he was working from home although now we have a cleaner come in twice a week.

    Yeah there are certain things that i would say are more my domain..grocery shopping, ironing, changing bed, the bills are all paid by direct debit, but i deal with mail and sort that out for him.

    I think its kind of balanced, he isnt of the mind that just because im his slave it means i should be running around after him like a headless chicken lol when he is capable of doing things himself and when he is able to he will.

    I probably overall do more (domestic wise) but thats because i work less hours than i used to, so it makes sense practically.....he normally gets homework duty in the evenings lol

    x

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  4. I don't work outside the home/farm at all right now, but when I was working full or part time, Master did more chores at home. He'd agree with you Tori, that just having a slave doesn't mean that all he does is his job. The main thing is that he decides who does them, and how they are done, not me, and not by consensus or compromise.

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  5. My first thought when reading this was "Oh my God! Where do you get the energy to do all that?"... But then again, I'm exhausted in general, so I'm thinking it might be my perception that is skewed.

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