Just to be clear, the title of this post is not sarcasm. And another point to be clear on: this is not a “my husband helps around the house and looks after his own children sometimes I’m sooooo lucky” kind of post either.

Actually most of the gender stereotype enforcing, heteronormative memes that so many women who share their lives with men seem to relate to, that I see plastered across my instagram feed, apply to me not him. For example:

In my house I’m the one who doesn’t know where anything is. I leave a trail of destruction as I move from room to room and my husband tidies up after me. He cooks most meals, he does the gardening and some of the cleaning, and he does his fair share of looking after the kids. He does things that I’d never think of doing like cleaning the outside of the velux windows in the loft that the window cleaner can’t reach, emptying the filters on the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer and changing the lightbulbs in the lights underneath the kitchen cabinets. As well as being our main breadwinner he also does his own laundry which I hear from many friends with male partners is not a given for a lot of grown men (wtf?!).

Don’t get me wrong I also do my share. We have 3 kids after all and there are things I do that he wouldn’t think of doing either. I work full-time too, manage the family diary, order birthday cards and presents for EVERYONE, make sure homework is done, manage the kids’ extra-curricular activities, coordinate vaccinations/doctors/dentists/vets appointments, play with the kids, make sure everyone has clothes that fit them and don’t have holes in, express my breastmilk, tidy, clean… etc. etc.

I’m not “lucky” he does his fair share. We are partners contributing to our lives together in different ways. That’s the way it should be. This just sets the context for what I’m about to share that makes me feel like an arsehole.

You see these hooks on the back of our bedroom/bathroom doors:

They weren’t there when we moved in. After a few months my husband went to a store, bought them and put them up. We can now hang stuff on the doors. Our lives have improved. I am grateful to him for taking the time to do this. It was really nice of him.

The problem is I hate them. Who puts black wrought iron hooks in a new build with chrome fixtures everywhere? My husband that’s who. I confessed that I hated them a week or so after they went up. He asked what I’d like instead. I sent him a link to a chrome double hook much more in keeping with the house. He said he’d take a look.

That was almost 3 years ago.

Fair enough. He already made time to do that job. I’m also perfectly capable of changing them myself and I haven’t made time to do it, but every so often, usually when staring right at them during a night feed as I am now, I think:

FFS they look terrible. I’m so annoyed I’m going to pen a blog post about this in the early hours of the morning…

Talk about 1% problems* – I’m such an arsehole!

And there you have it. I really am lucky if this is all that’s occasionally keeping me up at night. Now I’m going to see if my 3 year old will go back to her own bed. Happy days :0)

*more commonly referred to as 1st world problems however I find that term problematic since the world can’t be neatly divided into 1st, 2nd & 3rd worlds. There are people in the UK who don’t know where their next meal will come from, people in Nigeria with more money than they could ever spend and all those people have valid problems in their lives. Therefore I prefer to refer to those problems which in the grand scheme of things you’d have to have a certain level of privilege through wealth to even have the opportunity to worry about as 1% problems. E.g. I am only able to worry about door hooks because I am wealthy enough to buy them, own my own home with doors to attach them to and own multiple dressing gowns to hang on them. Check out the Global Rich List website to see if you make the top 1% richest in the world. When this post was published an annual income including all benefits and student loans of £25.5k would put you in the top 1%