my wife refuses to clean. refuses. her reasoning being "this isn't the 50s and i'm not some stay-at-home maid/wife".
i'm not a meticulous guy so a perfect house is not my ideal. not by any stretch. remotely.
but things still need to be cleaned periodically. scrub the toilet, sweep the floors, vacuum, etc. so i do it. all of it. not on any set date, nor do i spend hours laboring over it. i just do it when i notice things.
and since i'm such a clod and never think things through OF COURSE she has to follow along after me and re-do everything i did because it's totally wrong and i probably used the wrong cleaning product/vacuum setting/swept in the wrong way.
she also abhors everyone else's mess. if i drink a glass of water, leave the room and don't bring the glass she points out that i'm setting a bad example for the kids by being a lazy mess. meanwhile, 3 empty wine glasses, 6 empty chocolate bar wrappers, underwear on the floor, dirty plates, etc. all hers... not an issue since she "didn't have time to clean it up yet".
which leads to situations like we encountered the other day. she was walking upstairs (stepping over her dirty clothes and shoes that were on the steps) and decided that the banister was "sticky". it's not.. but... apparently it was that day. after grilling everyone about what might have been spilled on it... or what someone purposefully did to make it "sticky" and not getting a satisfactory answer, she took it upon herself to tell me that the banister should be cleaned. to which i replied that i'd dusted/cleaned it the other day (i hadn't). after stewing about what to do she actually decided to clean the banister............ using some cleaning product that completely stripped the varnish & stain off the entire thing.
upside: banister isn't "sticky" anymore. you might catch a splinter off it but at least you won't feel "sticky" wood
downside: it's my fault for not realizing she was using a cleaning product that would strip layers off the banister and stopping her before she ruined all the wood
end result: until i re-varnish the thing it will remain as is because my wife "doesn't do manual labor, that's (furley's) job"