Reading this thread has made me realise how far we have come since the day, nearly 7 years ago, when we retired simultaneously. Then DH, with no one else to instruct or argue with, directed all his helpful hints at me. Although I was brought up in a household with two working parents and fully involved in all household chores from an early age AND I can remember how amazed he was when we were first married that I was, at 19yo, a more than competant shopper, cook, baker, jam maker, gardener, paint and paperer, dressmaker and so on, when we retired he seemed to think I was in need of his instruction in such matters as washing dishes, lighting fires, changing batteries and plugs, growing vegetables and making jam.
This attitude resulted in him being handed the rubber gloves, garden fork, frying pan or wooden spoon and left to get on with it. Not a clever response on my part, I was just walking away before I 'lost the heid' and attacked him with said implements. Later, having calmed down, I would express interest in his methodology, claim that 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' - me being the old dog - and allocate that job to him in future. Now he does all the washing up - rinse, stack, wash (in a precis order), rinse, dry, put away -takes about an hour following a 2 course meal for 2 of us! He has complete charge of lighting the real fire (I am hopeless at that), managing the rota for the wheelie bins (too complicated for me), changing the beds and duvet covers (apparantly I am too small to do this successfully), charging mobile phones and such like (I just cannot remember how to do that), cutting grass and hedgesand hoovering (I have become terrified of electrical gadgetry). However, I am the recognised computer expert, whilst he has failed to master the cooker, iron and washing machine. He (without recourse to the instruction manual) can operate both the toaster and microwave enabling him to have HOT beans on toast if I am unavoidably elsewhere at a meal time.
We have, by accident, resolved the tandem supermarket shopping dilemma. We started to use 2 trolleys because we were usually accompanied by 2 DGC who would fight if transported in the same trolley. We have continued with the 2 trolleys even if we have no DGC in tow. I do a normal weekly shop with mine and usually have to wait for him to catch up with 8 to 10 items. I load the items at the checkout, which allows me to quietly dispose of surplus items from HIS trolly e.g. the kitchen roll, paper hankies and toilet rolls which he thinks we need - ME: 'The cupboard is full of them dear' HIM: 'That's because I remember to buy them every week'. Meanwhile, he packs the bags, sorting the goods by size and weight (to balance the bags)rather than my silly method of sorting by categories such as non food, cleaning stuff, fruit & veg, meat and a special bag for frozen stuff.
I see I have nearly written a book on this subject, so will save the vageries of 'putting the shopping away' for another day.