Calling all Working Parents

Well, I'm a stay-at-home working mom, I work to take care of my baby. I find myself too tired to do anything except take care of my baby which is most important. Because my husband is a "slob" to a degree, and we live in a big house, I don't have the energy to do everything! I told my husband that he either helps or I hire someone. I hired a service that comes every two weeks and does all the very detailed work, changes sheets, does the laundry and scrubs the toliets, polishes the furniture - a good 3 hours for two women. I take that time and get out with my baby at the park, or shop or drop off or pick up my dry cleaning, etc. You can't do it all by yourself and your spouse should not expect you to. I also teach on weekends once in a while, and my husband is working on his Master's while working as well. So, we're more than busy. Anyway, I hope you can find a balance between the two of you. Time management, multi-tasking all great tools to make things easier. When the baby is asleep, I do run a load of wash, run the dishwasher, and catch up on business and this forum!

Hi! My ds was a preemie and I conviced dh that we needed to hire a cleaning service while he was still in the NICU as we were there all the time that we weren't at work. I've also recently started working 4/10 hour days per week. It is so nice to have 3 days to have 1:1 time w/ds and to do chores on Friday so that the weekend is strictly family time. My dh does dishes, vacumns, folds clothes and splits the care of ds with me. He is wonderful in all respects:D My ds just turned 4 months so we are still getting into our groove. Mommy to Ryan

I'm a single adoptive mom of two lovely kids, now 12 and 13, and I work full time. The other night we were out to dinner with a couple and their 12 year old daughter, and the lady of that household (who also works) was complaining about staying up late doing all the household chores, "Last night I was up until midnight doing laundry." My 13 year old daughter replied sympathetically "I know, I've been up late doing laundry every night this week." I was grinning from ear to ear! I invested my time in teaching the kids to be independent and responsible, and now I only have to do "my share." Usually one weekend morning we all spend 30 minutes or so in a "cleaning frenzy," picking up stuff, sweeping, etc, and the rest of the time we either do our own (sometimes including meals) or take turns. We all just built a round pen for the horses outside, a pretty major construction project for a lady and two kids, but as my son exclaimed yesterday "Wow, that looks pretty good. Can you believe we built it?" Satisfaction in a job well done.

With me when my 3 yr old was born I would take her to work......she enjoyed it......but when I get home I do a couple chorses take a nap than get up and finish the chores and cook dinner than the rest of the day is trying to relax....but when I got engaged 2 months ago and got pregnant its alot more harder to do that cause im in my 3rd trimester(7 months) and my wedding is sunday so inbetweem trying to rest because i'm suppose to stay in bed for a certian amount of time,taking care of my 3 yr old,and planning my wedding its ALOT harder.

I do it all. I don't work 40 hours a week only 32 so I try to get a lot done on my day off during the week so my weekend isn't as hectic. I have let a lot of things go because my baby is more important to me. That was hard. But oh well, I'll get over it.

My husband and I both work. We both help in the home. He does his laundry and I do my laundry. Our daughter does her laundry. We all help. This has worked well in our home. We live on a farm, so my husband has his job away from the farm and the farm work. He never complains. There are days that I feel like maybe someone doesn't help as much as they should but it all works out. Today when I arrived home from being away five days, the house was totally clean. It was great. My daughter had cleaned most of the house by herself. She even mopped and ran the sweeper. WOW!

My husband works a four days on/four days off schedule, and I work 2-3 days a week on his days off, and we've reached a pretty good balance. Essentially I try to organise it so that my last day off, the house is looking good, so he doesn't go onto days off with a huge mess, and he does the same for me. There are some chores that are definitely "his" (garbage and doggy-doo patrol...ewwwww...lol), and some that are definitely mine (insert bathrooms and dusting here), but all in all it works out really well! Our children also have their little chores around the house, which makes them feel like they're really contributing ... Its all about balance, and my logic is we all live here, so we all do our part to make this house run smoothly, which gives us more time just to hang out as a family. I've learnt to overlook clutter ..lol...so long as I know its clean underneath it all, I'm pretty happy. At any given time around here, its a 10 minute cleanup, and the house would look awesome.