When it comes to keeping your home clean, you probably have a general plan of how that happens, and your plan might be different than your neighbor’s. Some people prefer to clean everything themselves. Perhaps it’s because they enjoy cleaning, feel like they do a better job cleaning than anyone else, or simply don’t want to pay someone else to do something they could do themselves. Other people would jump at the chance to hire someone to clean the house for them. Yet others split the chores amongst family members.

While it’s perfectly fine if different households have different ideas about how to keep their homes clean, it becomes difficult when people inside the same household disagree about whether to clean the house themselves or hire a house cleaner.

One lawyer turned to Reddit to ask for advice. He explained, “We have a shower stall that only I use, and a bath that only my wife uses. The shower stall has accumulated some rust and I’m really not bothered by it, but my wife wanted it cleaned as it’s bothering her. She asked me to clean it, as I’m the only one who uses the shower.”

It sounds simple enough except for one thing. The husband refused to clean the shower. He told his wife that he wanted to hire someone to clean it. He wrote, “I am a lawyer, I have the ability to take on as much work as I want, and if I spent the time it would take to clean the shower instead doing my job for compensation, I would make about four times as much money as it would cost to hire a cleaner. In my view it simply does not make economic sense for me to use my time personally cleaning the shower.”

That argument makes logical sense, but the problem is that his wife doesn’t want to hire someone to clean the shower. He continued, “My wife refused to let me hire someone to clean, saying she doesn’t want a stranger coming into our house and doing menial labour that I’m ‘too lazy’ to do. She finds this embarrassing. I refused to budge and my wife ended up just cleaning the shower herself, although begrudgingly and she’s giving me grief for it.”

The Reddit community felt that the idea of hiring someone to clean your home when you can afford to do so is not a bad thing. One Reddit user wrote, “If I made enough money id never do menial labor ever again. I’d hire out all dishes laundry and bathroom cleaning. God forbid he give someone a job….It’s not about the time it would take. It’s about doing an unpleasant task that you don’t need to do.”

Other Reddit users agreed that the idea of hiring someone to do that job was not a bad idea; however, the problem was that he wasn’t taking into consideration his wife’s feelings. One Reddit user explained that this lawyer is in the wrong “because you seem to think that your preference to pay someone to do something for you should outrank your wife’s discomfort with having a stranger in your house, and when you failed to understand that your wife has just as much of a right to say who can come into your house as you do, you tried to make it about something else (your rack rate) instead of maintaining a respectful domestic relationship.”

Another comment reads, “So you’re too good to do any housework because you’re some important big-shot. NO, you’re not too good to basic upkeep, get off your high-horse and chip in around the house.”

Yet another Reddit user explained, “Take fifteen minutes once a week and clean the shower. You spend longer than that arguing about why you shouldn’t have to clean the shower. If you really want to get a cleaner, negotiate that with your wife over time. But right now you’re being childish.”

Do you think this lawyer should clean the shower when his wife asks him to? Do you think the wife should’ve let her husband hire a house cleaner? Do you think there’s a way for this couple to compromise?