Balancing new house projects with daily life

June 3, 2016 7:25 AM

How do you balance new house projects with full time jobs, child, and daily tasks of living?

We have a 2.5 year old and bought a semi-fixer-upper house a year ago. We were both enthusiastic about doing projects on the house. Well what's really happening is that I'm doing the daily tasks of child care, cooking/cleaning, and spouse is doing the house projects. I know they're not necessarily "fun" projects, but I would really like to strike more of a balance between the projects and the daily tasks of living. I know this involves a conversation but due to ongoing challenges of communication in general, I just bought the books "Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work" and "Five Love Languages" and am asking him to read them with me. So I'm not looking for answers involving therapy/just talk about it and ask him. We have some family nearby that can occasionally watch him while we work together but the "work" of hosting them sometimes makes it a wash.

This question is really asking for others' experiences with having a fixer-upper home and small children. How do you balance them? Is it pretty standard that one person just does more of one thing than the other? Or have you found creative ways to share the one-off "projects" with the daily ongoing tasks?

posted by wannabecounselor to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

We have a soon-to-be 4-year-old and we've been getting our house ready to sell over the past several months (and have bought a new house that needs some work, so this will be a continued theme even after we move).

I do 95% of the work, but we've talked openly about our preferences, talents, and needs every step of the way, so we're both okay with that. I legitimately enjoy fixer-upper-ing and my husband really doesn't (and on top of that he's fairly terrible at some key skills), whereas he really digs just hanging out one-on-one with our kid and I'm the terrible mom who doesn't mind getting that experience in smaller doses.

Before embarking on all of this, we made a list of everything that needed to be done, separated out the stuff we'd need a professional to do from the stuff we could do our (my) selves, and laid out a vague time frame for when each task would begin. As we've really gotten into the thick of it with our move a little more than a month off, our normal housekeeping has kind of fallen by the wayside as we each just try to get to stuff as we can. Prior to that we had a chore chart that had tasks divided into weekly/monthly/quarterly and equally distributed between the two of us. When you did your tasks was up to you, just get them done by the due dates. Right now, we're just muddling through and trying not to live in squalor. It's okay to relax standards when necessary.

If my husband was not okay with this arrangement, we'd have to talk about dividing the big tasks up in a way that seemed fair and equitable. Again: make lists, assign dates and the person who's going to be doing it, make sure both of us are fully apprised of what's going to be happening and when.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:38 AM on June 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Well what's really happening is that I'm doing the daily tasks of child care, cooking/cleaning, and spouse is doing the house projects. I know they're not necessarily "fun" projects, but I would really like to strike more of a balance between the projects and the daily tasks of living.

I feel like you're burying the lede here. What I'm hearing between the lines is, I'm doing ALL THE REGULAR WORK for our home and children, and my husband only does the one-off fixer-upper stuff he chooses to focus on. Is that right? If it's more about getting your husband to do more chores/child care, unfortunately there is going to have to be some conversations about your mutual home goals. Is he feeling rushed to do everything for the house now? You might remind him that some/most of the fixer-upper projects can wait, but child-care/laundry/dishes/etc need to be done daily and you can't handle it alone.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:45 AM on June 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Well what's really happening is that I'm doing the daily tasks of child care, cooking/cleaning, and spouse is doing the house projects.

This is how it ended up working out in my little family. I was totally OK with that, because I know how to do kid/food/cleaning stuff and I have no fucking clue how to wire an outlet and would probably burn the house down if I tried, have no desire to strip wallpaper, etc. What do you want to happen? Do you want to do more house projects, do you want him to do more domestic tasks, or both? If you just want him to do more domestic stuff, you need to do more house project stuff. Unless the house project stuff is really not 2-3 hours per day / at least half a day on weekends so you feel like you're doing more work than him?

I think you really need to clarify what exactly the problem is with your division of labor. You can't find a solution until you identify your goal. "I want to do more house projects and want you to do more domestic tasks" is going to have a different solution than "I want you to focus more on domestic tasks and less on house projects."
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:58 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can totally understand the difficulty in trying to do anything productive with a toddler to watch. Some kids are easier and can be kept busy for a short time while both parents work on a project, but others need constant supervision and parental interaction (my 4.5 year old is still like this!). My husband and I have a few strategies for getting these things done:
1) Do whatever we can during naps and after the kid's bedtime. Of course, this is limited to the quieter or outdoor home improvement stuff (as we found out once trying to sand down some drywall mud inside, and managed to set off the smoke detector in the process.)
2) Trade off kid-watching and project-doing: one parent is in charge of the kids while the other gets to work on the house, then swap. We've always been very equitable about who watches the kids so this is easy for us, but you might have to push for it if your husband sees you as the primary caregiver.
3) Hire it out. Honestly, sometimes it's the best solution--a pro can get it done quickly and efficiently, and it leaves you time to spend your weekends together as a family.
4) Occasionally we have days where our daycare is open but we both have the day off of work, so we send the kids in anyway and have a whole day to spend on a project. These are magical unicorn days that don't happen often! Since you have family nearby, perhaps you could send the kid off with them for a day here and there?

On preview, ThePinkSuperhero has a good point. It's absolutely fair to have a more equitable split in duties. If that's not already your default, you will have to communicate that you want to do it and then act on it. If there's some project you have in mind that you want to tackle, tell him that! This weekend, say you'll be putting up shelves (or whatever) and he'll need to watch the kid for the afternoon.
posted by Jemstar at 8:00 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Small children are HARD and DEMANDING and ADORABLE and huge sources of GUILT mixed with LOVE. I am totally there with ya on how to balance home projects and small child wrangling, especially when after mowing the lawn, you can definitively tell the lawn has been mowed, but feeding/entertaining/teaching/snuggling a child does not make any kind of obvious difference that lasts a week if it doesn't rain too often.

To be honest, we feel accomplished if our lawn has been mowed weekly, there are clean clothes to wear, and there is food to eat. Full stop.

We pay people to do the work, honestly, for the big stuff. I do the research and the phone calls on my lunch breaks at work, and that's how we got our roof reshingled last summer. If there is a project that would take a few hours or afternoon, one parent takes command of kiddo wrangling and goes to the playground, gets ice cream, goes grocery shopping, etc. The other parent does the project labor. We try to include the kiddo in the work - shopping, carrying, "helping" - as safely and age appropriately as possible.

And we keep our expectations low. And communication as high and non-defensive as possible. "Oh, man, I am feeling so frustrated that I didn't get to do XYZ with you. I feel bad I couldn't help more, but Kiddo just HAD to keep watering the sidewalk. Can we swap next time? I'd really like to be the worker on ABC."
posted by jillithd at 8:02 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

We have been through this when our kids were 3 and 18 months. I did ALL the projects while my wife sat with the kids because the kids wanted to watch and she was there to grab them when they went for a drill (except she was bad at it and I had to babysit AND do the house projects while she just...I am not sure what she did). I didn't mind, though. My now-7yo knows how most things work, and my 5yo can be trusted to hand me dangerous tools and be my helper (but not use the tools).

P.S. FWIW, I do all the regular housework, too. I guess I just do everything. But I truly enjoy it and it's how I show my love to my wife and that is her love language.
posted by TinWhistle at 9:05 AM on June 3, 2016

Our situation is similar- two small kids, two years in a moderate fixer-upper house. The key is accepting that your house is going to take YEARS to get the way you want, and that those house projects will sometimes have to go on the back burner. Sure, the patio will be nice when it's done, but it's not worth the stress when you're currently losing your mind because the kids are screaming again. The older they get, the more they can entertain the, and the easier it will be to carve out project time. Hang in there and embrace the mess and imperfect house for now.
posted by chrisamiller at 9:34 AM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

It really all depends on why the work division ended up the way it did. It sounds like you don't actually know the answer to that, which means talking with your spouse is a necessary first option. Because the path to resolving the problem is different if it's caused by e.g. differences in opinion about gender roles, differences in free time, differences in interest, differences in talents, differences in taking initiative in various areas, differences in strength/energy level, differences in hours of work you're willing or able to put in, differences in other time commitments, etc etc etc.

If talking to him is really not an option (or you try it but it doesn't help anything), I would suggest taking initiative on the house projects you want to work on, and ask him to take initiative on domestic tasks more often (or if that doesn't work, you can decide whether to put in the extra emotional labour to delegate specific tasks to him). If he outright refuses to help more with that stuff, then you really do need to have a detailed discussion with him about what your household chores division should look like and why (and why you're unhappy with the current division). Ideally in terms of hours as well as specific tasks.
posted by randomnity at 11:19 AM on June 3, 2016

We bought a fixer-upper in June 2014 and I got pregnant with our first child in October 2014, and your question is basically exactly my life. When we bought it, we intended to spend time together sharing the workload equally, but the way it works now is that we both work full time and when we're off, I'm watching the baby while my partner does all the renovation work. He doesn't have an issue with this, I'm the one struggling with not being able to help him and also being stuck with the household chores and baby duty.

The way we balance it is... we don't. We can't, really. I don't know how to do some of the bigger home improvement stuff, and since we need to get things done in order for the house to not be so dysfunctional anymore, he has to take over all renovation duties. And I watch baby.

Things that have helped us try to get control of the situation a bit more is taking days off during the week so we can get things done while baby is at daycare, or just working when she naps. Sometimes I just leave the house and go do fun stuff with the baby, so even though I'm still on baby duty, it feels less like I'm not pulling my weight or that I'm trapped with baby and doing domestic tasks. It feels more like getting out and enjoying our day out together. This works because my partner loves home improvement and is perfectly content being left to his own devices at home. But of course, the household chores don't get done this way.

Keeping expectations low is also key.

I struggle with this a lot. I'll be following this thread to see other people's suggestions.
posted by ohmy at 11:43 AM on June 3, 2016

I fixed up our house before and now have a baby, and I watched a friend balance her young child and a fixer house.

In thinking about what balance you seek, you might mentally separate the planning from the doing. As an unskilled DIYer, it took me a ton of time to determine what needed doing and to watch videos on how to do it. Then there were the umpteen trips to various stores to pick the tile (e.g.) and purchase the mortar, grout, etc. All of that research and shopping could be done while children nap or with children along. I enjoyed being hands-on at first, but over time, I came to find the planning and preparation part interesting but the actual cutting and lifting of the cement board (e.g.) mind-numbing and physically painful to a certain extent. It might help to identify what parts you most want to take part in.

Also, really look at the cost-benefit of paying someone to do something. Once I got more realistic about how long something would take me and what I'd spend on tools I'd use once, vs. what it'd cost to get some help, I started to hire out a lot more. Hiring laborers helped a lot. Often $125 meant the difference between something occupying my entire weekend and leaving me headed to work exhausted vs. paying two day laborers to help and getting it done by 1 pm on Saturday. Sometimes that expense really felt worth it.
posted by slidell at 1:55 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]