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AITA for refolding laundry my partner had already put away?

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My partner opened the bedroom door and found three stacks of clean shirts spread over the bed.

"I just finished those," he said.

He'd done our laundry that morning while I bought groceries. He washed it, hung it up, folded it and put everything away. I normally handle laundry, and he took it over because I'd said I was tired of spending every Saturday on it.

I like my own shirts folded narrow enough to stand in a row in the drawer. He folded them flat in stacks. I took my shirts back out and started doing them my usual way. I left his clothes alone.

When he asked what I was doing, I said, "Putting them away properly." He said his version wasn't improper and that watching me redo it made the whole morning feel wasted.

I told him the washing and drying were still done, and I hadn't asked him to refold anything. He said if I'd always redo my half, we should each handle our own clothes.

I don't want that. Our current split works because one person can deal with laundry while the other does groceries. I wanted my drawer arranged the way I use it, but I also want him to keep taking this task off my hands. AITA for redoing it?

Discussion

3 community replies

The folding preference itself seems ordinary. 'Properly' is the loaded part: it turned your narrower stacks into the correct way and his into a mistake. You can prefer your drawer arrangement without describing a completed chore as badly done.

He did more than fold the shirts. Washing, hanging and putting things away were all work you didn't have to do. Naming that work might reassure him more than saying he shouldn't care because you only changed your own half.

If the arrangement matters enough for you to spend a few minutes refolding, that's your choice. It isn't automatically a criticism. But you can't insist he keep owning the task while also rejecting any say in how he completes it.

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