Separation of Chore and State

I was talking with a co-worker last week about chores around the house.  The subject came up because her fiancee is going to be moving back to Minnesota after being out of state for a couple of years for work.  I don't know, don't ask.  She was talking about how he's got those years worth of chores to make up because she has been doing all the cleaning, cooking, dish washing, etc.  I thought it was a weird line of logic, but whatever.  Has she been keeping track of how many meals she has cooked that he will have to cook.  How many times she has done laundry, or the dishes, or cleaned the bathroom?  Does she have a spreadsheet of these events?  The more I think about it, the creepier it seems.  I mentioned that ever since my wife and I started living together back in college, we have done our best to do specific chores.  And with rare exceptions, we stick to those chores.

For example, my wife does the majority of the cooking.  Whether it is dinner, breakfast on the random weekend, or baking cookies, she does it.  To counter that, I wash the dishes.  She dirties them, I clean them.  Fair play, right?  My wife does the laundry.  Is it because way back in the day I accidentally shrunk a wool sweater of hers?  Mayhaps.  I take out the trash and recycling.  So things like that.  Whenever it is that we move into a house, I'll end up doing the snow blowing and grass cutting.  Now, are these chores that we do gender stereotypical?  Yes.  It's not like we sat down and said, 'well, you're the woman so you are going to cook and clean.  I am a man so I'm going to take care of all the physical stuff.'  It's just that she's a great cook.  I'm okay at it.  There are days when I cook dinner (but somehow still end up cleaning the dishes....) and there are times she has taken out the recycling or trash.  We do our best to split the chores evenly.  Do I slack on how quickly I get my chores done?  Yes.  Yes I do.  But they get done. 

My co-worker was blown away by this and I don't understand why.   She wasn't taken aback by it, she just didn't understand the thought behind each of us having specific chores.  Maybe she didn't grow up in a house where the chores were split up?  Maybe one person did all the work?  I don't know.  Splitting the chores is just how our household growing up functioned.  Everyone had their work to do.  I think that is what makes a house a home.  Everyone putting forth an effort to keep it up and going.  If just one person does all the work, not everyone is invested in the house. 

Is this a common thing?  Does everyone else split the chores up or is it kind of a 'it's your turn to do the dishes because I did them last time' system?  I think either way works.  As long as it is doled out fairly, I think whichever method works for you and your household is best.

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