<p>Or it could be reverse - “Stay at home Dad and let Mom work”.</p>
<p>I am retiring from my current job…but retiring? I have an idea I will be out there doing something maybe sooner than I have counted on. But change is good!</p>
<p>Hiring house help makes me feel very good not only because I simply cannot do it, but also because I know that I am providing a job for somebody in this really bad economy. And these people are terrific!! We do not think if we can afford it or not. There is a simple choice for us, we easer live in dirty house or a clean, I will NOT clean. The same goes for grass, my H. will NOT cut it. As we are paying very very high tuition, we probably cannot afford it by any measure, but on the other hand we are not going into debt because of any above.
Everybody’s priority is different though. I will not try to convince anybody to do one way or another. In addition, there are people who actually enjoy house chores, I have one house chore that I enjoy - laundry, folding clothes, it has calming effect.<br>
Retiting from my job means not only loosing major chunk of our income, but for me personally it means loosing my biggest and best entertainment, there is absolutely nothing compares with the sense of adventure that I am getting out of it. How long one can stay on a beach? For me, it is about 2 weeks. What would I do with the other 50?</p>
<p>We do it the “Oldfort Way”…hire someone to mow the huge yard, AND have someone who comes to clean. Even with me NOT working full time now, we still have these things (I never mowed the lawn).</p>
<p>I love pretty much all housework… even the dishes. I do the bare minimum during the week because I’m a terrible person and can’t seem to get it together enough to help my boyfriend after work, but while he’s at the gym and the grocery store on the weekend and I am home alone, I wash and fold all his laundry including bleaching his t shirts and socks, I wash all the sheets and towels, I make the bed, I vacuum and mop, I dust, I scrub the toilets and sinks and clean the windows and mirrors, I clean up any clutter we’ve left out… he comes home to a spotless apartment. And then gets mad at me when I don’t want to help put the groceries away because I’ve been running around like a wild woman all morning and afternoon trying to get things cleaned up before he gets home, and he ALWAYS comes through the door just as I am sitting down for the first time that day. Can’t win! lol. But I’d love to be able to just get up, sleep an extra hour if I am not feeling well, get my workout done, do whatever tidying up needs to be done, and then have the afternoon to do whatever needs to be done… I could hang out in my backyard with a book every day for months on end without getting bored, and lord knows there will always be things that need to get done.</p>
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<p>Not working has given me the time to do the things I enjoy BESIDES my work. The notion that I would work right up unti the day I die is not a happening. One of the reasons I retired when I did was so I could enjoy planning my life day by day and doing what <em>I</em> wanted to do…and it’s so worth it. </p>
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<p>Thyroid symptoms are similar to the symptoms for many other medical conditions. Go to a doctor. My guess is that one of the reasons you and your husband work is for the medical benefits. You don’t have to take medicine or anything like that if you choose not to…but what IF your thyroid “symptoms” were really indicative of a treatable OTHER medical issue? Your daughter is in med school…what would she say?</p>
<p>Lol Ema, you’re a much better “wife” than me :p. I work all day and the housework is mostly left to the boyfriend, especially right now when he’s only working part time and classes whereas I’m full time with classes. He does the majority of the cleaning, more or less all of the laundry (which is mostly mine), etc. I do “cook” which mostly consists of me heating up frozen food. We do the shopping together. </p>
<p>I would LOVE to be able to pay someone to come do household work. I paid one of my friends to do a deep clean twice last year, but she’s in Disney for 8 months :(. I absolutely HATE HATE HATE cleaning. Furthermore, bleach, dust, and mold send my asthma into high mode so I have to wear a mask whenever I clean. Such a pain.</p>
<p>I keep telling BF that he has it easy… he gets mad because he has to make jarred spaghetti and hot dogs most weeknights and load the dishwasher with anything he used to cook dinner with (everything else is loaded as we use it and I load my own plate and silverware), but that and doing the groceries once a week is literally ALL he has to do. And I bake from scratch every Sunday and cook a big meal! Such a whiner…</p>
<p>^ Oh boys lol. Mine used to complain until I literally sat down and showed him my schedule for both work and school. What was required from me both while there and at home. He hugged me, apologized, and has happily cleaned and done chores ever since.</p>
<p>I think I am going to try that. He gets off work two hours earlier than I do and lives next door to work, and I have a half our commute. I keep telling him, “do you realize that you have two and a half extra hours in your day that I don’t have?” and he doesn’t get it. I personally think that given that he has time to get home from work, eat a snack, watch a tv show, go to the gym, get home, and shower all before I even get home means he SHOULD be heating up my damned jarred spaghetti.</p>
<p>I am about to read him the riot act and tell him he can bleach his own socks if he doesn’t start putting them in the hamper. You know what he does? He puts his clothes ON TOP of the hamper, never inside. I’ve started calling him Snoopy. 
It started because he’d let laundry build up for three weeks before doing it and then there’d be no room inside the hamper. I put the kibosh on that because he’d sort out his laundry into like 8 different piles because he does each color separately, then he only gets two loads done and the piles sit on the floor for two more weeks… that’s how I started doing his laundry, I didn’t like the way he did it. lol. Now the hamper is empty every Monday because I did ALL the laundry in one day, but he keeps stacking the clothes on top! And then they fall on the floor. I think I am going to take the lid off the hamper and hide it. I already put flowers on the ledge where he kept leaving his stinky workout clothes and old mail so he’d have to stop. lol.</p>
<p>He also refuses to put more than four plates in the dishwasher or he’s afraid they won’t get clean… so dishes pile up that “don’t fit” in the dishwasher. I sneak more in after he leaves the kitchen and do an extra load when I empty the dishwasher from the night before when I get home from work.</p>
<p>This is why I don’t want to work full time. lol.</p>
<p>I’m very fortunate in that my husband works ten minutes from our house and gets home before noon, so he does most of the cleaning while the rest of us are out and about. I do all the cooking and we split the laundry.</p>
<p>I wish he would hire someone for the lawn, but he won’t. Says he enjoys it, which I think is nonsense because he is utterly awful at it. Constantly breaks the equipment, cuts down things that should be left alone, an absolute mess.</p>
<p>I don’t think we should hire a cleaning person because we’re all able bodied (also we have a dog that bites), but yard work takes some talent and knowledge.</p>
<p>Ema, your post made me laugh. I think I have to give my boy a hug after work now for not doing the majority of those things. I just tell him it’s good practice for the future as he wants to be a SAHD and I’d go crazy if I was a SAHM. I legitimately love working, I just despise having to work and then having to come home and do a 4th job as the “wifey”. It just isn’t going to happen and I made that very clear very quickly after we moved in together.</p>
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<p>LMAO. My parents do the exact same thing. Really, dad? You were a plumber for decades and you can’t figure out how the dishwasher works? :p</p>
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This is hilarious!</p>
<p>Everybody’s different! I love taking care of the house, even though BF is driving me bonkers I even enjoy that… he isn’t trying to be inconsiderate and is listening and improving, so I think it’s pretty funny when we banter about it. Not too big of a deal as long as he catches on eventually about how much work I am doing… if he gets to be ungrateful I will just keep working and make him pull more of his own weight. I won’t be a servant. This is something we need to discuss, but I was very sick for like a month recently and he is still kind of sore about how much he had to do during that time, so now is not the time to bring it up… in a couple weeks, maybe. I don’t think he’s ungrateful but I think he genuinely doesn’t see how busy I am.</p>
<p>What’s funny is that he was VERY neat and disciplined before I moved in. But he was so gosh darned anal retentive (washing each article of clothing separately and only four dishes in the dishwasher at a time!!!), that once he had another person around keeping him busy he didn’t have time to be so anal retentive anymore. So now he gets nothing done. He’s slowly adjusting, but I have a great time washing all his colored clothes together and watching him flip out when he sees what I’ve done… hehe. I don’t even separate my own whites! But I at least do that for him, since that’s within the realm of reason. Will not do a separate blue jeans wash for jeans that are 5 years old and won’t bleed, or a separate socks and underwear wash just because, or a separate green shirts wash. Ridiculous. I WILL pretreat stains, especially those nasty underarm ones that never go away, and bleach whites… which he would never do himself. Who’s the better housekeeper!?</p>
<p>"One of the reasons I retired when I did was so I could enjoy planning my life day by day and doing what <em>I</em> wanted to do…and it’s so worth it. "</p>
<p>-Well, this is exactly my problem as I am already doing everything that I know to do in my after working hours. I just seem not to be able to pinpoint exciting activity that would fill additional 10 hrs / day and I have to fill more than average as I sleep only 3 -5 hrs. I envy people who love to read, TV, movies, travel, shopping, cooking, house chores, gardenning. Not me. I am lucky to love exercise, but it gets boring after 2 hrs which I already do every day, even on vacation. I am also very lucky to find exciting hobby to fill my evening while TV is on, I usually know all news by heart by the time my H. mention any to me. Again, cannot do this for additional 10 hrs and it is still not exciting as my job.<br>
In regard to thyroid, I do not know how to tell if I have it or not for the lack of any symptoms. I go to the doctor, when I have some symptoms and I better know the diagnosis, otherwise, they have not been so good in findings, just very good in billing me especially when it applicable to deductible. Now I am also in a process of collecting medications for these deseases as many times my doc. has prescribed me drug that had no effect. As far as my D., she is awesome. After just one year of med. school, she knows so much, we are so impressed, and she promised me not to be a doc. who does not listen, who treats the sick body without regard to human being within this body, the robot who stares into computer screen for whole appointment.</p>
<p>Its better to go to the doctor with a list of symptoms, not with what you think the diagnosis is. In this day of internet surfing, patients sometimes do more harm than good by researching and making assumptions about their diagnoses. Let the doctor do their job. They should listen to your complaints, symptoms, review your meds (if you take any) and discern what might be going on. They’ll probably do some labwork to rule out other issues (diabetes, etc). And correct me if I am remembering incorrectly- but aren’t you overdue for a mammogram and colonoscopy?</p>
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<p>Personally, I think you need to find a new doctor.</p>
<p>Now back to the subject of working. It is remarkable how one can fill a day with very meaningful things to do OTHER than working a day job. I am having no trouble keeping myself very occupied with things that are fun and beneficial to my community, family and friends. The nice thing…I can do these things during the day when many groups NEED the help as opposed to weekends and evenings…when I didn’t want to do it sometimes anyway.</p>
<p>If one is using insurance with an in- network provider, the payment amount is identical regardless of whether it is paid by the patient in the form of a deductible or paid by the insurance carrier. </p>
<p>Ok, back to topic.</p>
<p>In response to a post further back in the thread, I said that of all the combinations of work/part time work/school/SAHM that I’ve done, staying home full time with babies/toddlers was the hardest, but I didn’t say I didn’t enjoy it. I just found it to be the hardest of all jobs. I enjoy my job as a nurse-and it is extremely hard work as well.</p>
<p>I roll my eyes when people state that a SAHM “doesn’t work.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.</p>
<p>lol. I’d definitely work harder. The prospect of not having to earn a living would kind of freak me out.</p>