The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 — a ratio of slightly more than two to one. If you break out couples in which wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, the number of hours goes up for women, to 38 hours of housework a week, and down a bit for men, to 12, a ratio of more than three to one. That makes sense, because the couple have defined home as one partner’s work (emphasis added). “But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.” Puzzling, right? Among the many reasons for this imbalance — cited both in the Times and by several Apartment Therapy readers — is that one partner, often the woman, has higher standards of cleanliness and is unyieldingly set in his or her ways of doing housework. That’s something we can all work on, both by reevaluating our own standards and by reaching a compromise with our partners about just how precisely things get done around the house. Not everybody thinks cleaning grout weekly with a toothbrush is a worthwhile endeavor.

Home Ec., Pt. 2: A Balancing Act for Us All

I’m not a wife but yes, I do clean the majority of the time. And yes, it is true I do have unnatural standards for cleanliness that very few people can fulfill. It’s an interesting discussion at any rate.