Is sharing the housework enough if one person still has to plan everything?

I live alone, so dividing the housework is a very short conversation. I mean, there is no conversation. It’s all mine. I do the laundry, I clean and handle everything else, and I’m also the person who has to remember what needs doing. Before I can wash anything, I need detergent. Before I can buy detergent, I need to notice I’m running out. No one thinks about all the thinking behind housework tasks. We often think about the physical workload and the visible results like a clean room or clean clothes.

That’s why this University of Queensland paper caught my attention. Researchers studied heterosexual couples and divided household work into three kinds of loads: physical, cognitive and emotional. The physical load is doing the chores, the visible ones like cooking, cleaning, or doing home repairs. The cognitive load is the thinking and planning behind those activities. Who’s going to do this? When? How? Do we need to buy something? So basically, cooking dinner means figuring out what to cook, how to get the ingredients you need, and planning how that will happen. There’s much more effort than what we tend to think when we see the prepared meal as a result. Finally, the emotional load includes noticing how every household member feels and offering care. 

And you know what? To absolutely no one’s surprise, women reported having a greater contribution in all three areas.