It's funny, my wife cooks, and I do the dishes. That is our agreement. However, often she will make dishes throughout the day that are not a result of cooking (

It's funny, my wife cooks, and I do the dishes. That is our agreement. However, often she will make dishes throughout the day that are not a result of cooking (coffee mugs, plates for small snacks she makes for herself, etc). Sometimes I will get yelled at for "not doing the dishes" when I neither a) created them or b) enjoyed the spoils the dishes were used to create/consume. How's that for gendered? Another thing: when I do the dishes, the drying rack looks like a well-engineered marvel. Everything is stacked perfectly and efficiently to dry as quick as possible. The things we use most often are the most accessible on the drying rack. When my wife happens to do the dishes (if I'm out of town), the drying rack looks like a shantytown in a post-apocalyptic futurescape...things are piled up with no rhyme or reason, you have to dig through a bunch of wet tupperware to find plates or cups, the silverware is mixed in with the sharp knives. Yikes. There are times when she does a household task, such as fixing a door or something, I come back when she's done to find the tools strewn everywhere and I have to put them away. I guess that makes me the woman. My point is: there are divisions of labor. It's important to decide what those divisions are, where they begin, and where they end. I don't get angry at my wife when the dish rack looks like a scene from Mad Max because she hasn't had all the time I've had to perfect the skill (and I'm just glad she did the dishes at all). But conversely, I ask her not to get mad at me because I didn't put a gift bag back in the exact place it was supposed to go after she re-organized our closet and I lost track of which box is for what. That said, we've both discussed, ad nauseam, the above issues and worked out or differences. This usually happens when resentment builds to the point of one speaking harshly to the other, at which point we cool off, dissect what we're feeling, and both attempt to change our behavior. I think that's the real point here: it's not so much about gender (am I woman for doing the dishes?), it's more about dividing the tasks, setting the boundaries for those tasks, and talking to each other when something needs to change.