Inside our household
Nilsa, Nora and Kelly have all done this post lately and I enjoyed reading all of them so I’m jumping on board too! Happy Friday! 
Vacation Time: Since Eric is in school right now our together vacation time depends a lot on his break schedule since he can’t miss more than 1 or 2 days. Our Mexico vacation will fall during his reading break! I also tend to do a lot of girls weekends (and already have 2 or 3 planned this year!) where I use a day or 1/2 a day of time off to go away with girlfriends and Eric gets the house to himself for the weekend (which he really enjoys!) so we don’t always take vacation time together but we try to once or twice a year.
Work: I work full-time and Eric goes to school full-time. Luckily Eric doesn’t have any night classes right now so our schedules are pretty similar but he definitely spends A LOT of time after hours working on homework – either at home or at school – and also a lot of weekends. It is definitely challenging in a lot of ways to have one person in school and the other working. Only one more year to go of this
Food: We almost always go grocery shopping together but I will occasionally go by myself. We usually do one big shop every 1 to 1.5 weeks. When it comes to cooking we actually almost exclusively cook our own meals! One of us will make dinner for the two of us once or twice a week but for the most part we do our own thing. In fact as I was typing up this blog post I was eating leftover soup and Eric was making himself stir fry. We also cook together a lot, especially on the weekends and this is one of my favourite things to do for date night – cook dinner together, open a bottle of wine and watch a movie!
House Cleaning: We switch off doing the dishes and swiffering our main floor (the daily tasks). I usually clean the bathroom and we switch off vacuuming the stairs (though we don’t do this as much as we should). To be honest we are probably not as clean as we should be/could be but our house is almost always tidy so oh well! Occasionally I will go on major cleaning binges and spend 3-4 hours cleaning EVERY ROOM in the house (by occasionally I mean like once a year) and Eric will also go into crazy organization spurts and clean out our cupboards or closets and organize them!
Laundry: This varies, sometimes I do all of it but then sometimes I get lazy and don’t do laundry for like 2 or 3 weeks (I have a lot of clothes…) so Eric will do his own then. haha. Laundry is something I actually don’t mind doing and I like to fold it while watching old Friends or Sex and the City reruns on my laptop.
Yard Work: We don’t really have much of a yard but this is mostly Eric. He built our new deck and fence last summer and also tended to our small herb garden. I did help put together our front flower bed but that’s about it. I have big plans of having more flowers this summer though.
Home Improvement: Haha this is definitely ALL Eric. He did the majority of the painting when we first moved in, built our fence and new deck and did the majority of the work on our kitchen floor! I did however paint our laundry room last weekend on my own then Eric helped me hang our new-to-us cupboards.
Communications: We both communicate with our own friends and family though I do talk to my sister-in-law a lot. I fail at sending out Christmas cards most years but have got them out twice in the seven Christmases we’ve been together haha. We are pretty big homebody’s so our social calendar usually isn’t super full and we both like it that way.
Activities: I tend to be more of a planner and Eric is more spontaneous. So planned activities are usually me and spontaneous ones are usually him!
Finances: We have separate bank accounts and credit cards. Eric takes care of our cash budget for the month – grocery money, gas money, entertainment money etc. and I take care of things like mortgage, strata payment, phone bill etc. Things aren’t split down the middle right now because our income levels are very different so we follow more of a Suze Orman approach to splitting the bills and it works well for us!
Pet Care: We walk Chloe together most nights of the week and then I also run with her on my own. I have a few girlfriends with dogs so will take her for hikes or dog walks with them a lot too. We randomly take turns feeding both pets and I take care of scooping Webster’s litter box. Now that I’ve typed this all out there really isn’t that much to taking care of pets!
Who Wears the Pants: I’m sure a lot of people who know us would say that I do but I don’t think that’s true. Eric definitely wears the pants when he wants to/needs to! He’s just a super easygoing person and lets me handle most things
How does all of the above work in your household?
I loved reading this! It’s funny how similar you and I and the Eric’s are
For YEARS we actually cooked our own dinner always, I cooked mine and Eric cooked his. In the last year or so, Eric has been trying to eat a lot healthier so he has been cooking more that I can eat- so now he cooks for me 3-4 nights a week. The other nights we do our own thing and then we usually eat out at least once or twice every weekend. When we used to ALWAYS eat our own thing I always felt like we were the ONLY people who did that. haha. I think living in a place you didn’t grow up is the key to not having an insane social calendar. Eric and I are also homebodies, but since our friends and family basically ALL live here (with an exception of a few of my college and of course blog friends), there is just never enough time to see everyone 
Well I do it all since I am not married.
Except cleaning my house. I hire someone to do that every other week. I am definitely more of a planner than Phil, so I tend to be the one that initiates the ‘what do we have going on this week/when will we see each other discussion.’
It is interesting to hear how other couples split all the work, though!
I live with my mom so we do a lot of our own things: own laundry, own cleaning, own bills, etc. We switch off dinner duties but she mainly cleans the kitchen (I hate cleaning the kitchen!). Sometimes, we take vacations at the same time (i.e., cruises!) and sometimes not. She’s more of a go-go-go gal and I’m more of a homebody, but luckily she’s found someone who is go-go-go like her so I can enjoy more of my homebodiness! Haha.
I think I could probably go 2 weeks with laundry but I tend to do it weekly since I hate seeing it pile up and then it gets overwhelming! But I also don’t mind it since I’ll fold it while watching a TV show. Also, I spent 3 years having to use a laundry room and now to have our own washer/dryer in our apartment is HEAVENLY. I will never complain about laundry again!
i do all the cooking. he has cooked for me once in all of our years together (that’s 7.5 years – holy cow that number doesn’t seem fathomable!). Since i cook, he usually does the dishes!
Cleaning – well, we have our own bathrooms so we clean our own. I generally clean the house myself, but am hoping to get someone to come in and deep clean once a month!
laundry – he usually does it. But sometimes i’ll jump in and help him.
finances – we have our own checking accounts, but we do have a joint account to pay the bills. and what we contribute is based on what we make. So i do contribute quite a bit more than him.
This is a great post idea! Our vacation time is limited since Brian is a teacher…we are stuck to Christmas, spring break, and the summer. Oh well, we make it work and it will be nice once we have kids. We split the cooking (I couldn’t handle a husband who is not willing to do his share of the cooking!!) and then split the dishes. I do a lot of the house work, but Brian does the home improvements (well not painting). Works for us
Oooh, I’m so stealing this idea for a future post when I get around to it!
Our vacation time is definitely limited since I’m still nursing Isla. One day soon we hope to go on a trip somewhere together though! I’m in dire need of a vacation
If cooking together = date night, then I guess Sweets and I have date nights every night of the week that we’re not going out for… date night. hahaha.
Love that this blog idea is spreading around … it’s such a great way to get to know you!
I love this post – can I steal it for my blog? We’re supposed to split things like cleaning, laundry, adn pet care but Nathan can go for weeks without even thinking about washing the dishes or his clothes (seriously, the boy wears the same pair of jeans for WEEKS!), and his idea of walking the dog involves taking her to the back door of our building and letting her pee beside the sidewalk – so I do almost all of that stuff. Men. Sigh.
YAY! love that you did this.
It’s so nice that pets don’t require a lot of work =) Although, D would differ as he hates walking Jack in the cold. It’s also funny to me that we split our tasks a bit based upon our sleep schedules, as in, I prefer to steal 10 extra minutes of sleep in the morning so he walks Jack then. I don’t mind staying up late so I do the night walk.
One of my goals is for the manfriend and I to share responsibilities more evenly like you and Eric do. While I think it’s his intention to help, I really have to tell him exactly what to do and when to do it, which can be tough on me at times.
That’s a cool post! Such a nice picture of you guys too.
I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOUR VACATION!!! If you post pics of it, then I’ll pretend I got to go too! :0)
The hubs just got a new job that may require more travel, so I’m hoping I can go with him once in a while and do my own thing during the days. That might be how some of my vacation plays out this year, but I’m not sure yet. It’s fun to dream about though!!!
Have a great weekend, Amber!
Cooking-for the first 3 years Ken did all the cooking. He’s a great cook and he enjoys it so why not? but once he found out that I can cook an edible meal it mostly me cooking.
Cleaning is me and I dislike housework. Could be cleaner and tidier. work in progress. going to work on changing this so he’s more involved.
Finances we have separate accounts. if i need to shop or pay bills, i go into his account and transfer the money. so far its been working.
animals- i feed ducks and chickens. Miss Lena takes care of feeding and watering dogs. also letting them in and out for bathroom. very responsible 4 year old. River helps her sometimes.
things may change a bit when #3 comes. Ken works 6 days a week and leaves at 5 am and comes home 7-7:30pm. not a lot of time for housework after eating dinner.
soon it will be gardening and greenhouse planting time. that is my hobby so it will be about 95% me.
Considering that I’m single right now and live on my own, I do everything. I do find it interesting to see how people share the responsibilities though, since one day I’ll have to do it too. I always thought I’d be good at the whole splitting it up thing, but since I’ve been on my own for so long, I don’t know if I will be. I don’t even like it when someone moves the stuff in my fridge.
This is really cool! I think it’s really neat that you and Eric manage to lead such independent lives, despite living together. I feel like that’s something I’ll really need when I get married because I’ve always been quite independent… But also definitely with date nights and cooking-together nights and all that fun stuff. You guys have a pretty great *recipe* for success in your marriage, I think!
Chris and I don’t live together officially, but he does spend quite a bit of time over at my place. We vacation as much as possible, both work Mon-Fri jobs, and he also drums in a band on the side. We both grocery shop, sometimes alone, sometimes together, and cook most of our evening meals together, and breakfast and lunch on the weekends.
[...] originally saw this post on Amber’s blog, and then again on Holly’s, so I thought I’d jump in [...]