My wife runs the household
She tracks what we're out of, what needs ordering, what needs cleaning, what the week looks like for food, what baby needs. She owns it. And because she owns it, nothing falls through the gap between us wondering who was supposed to handle it.
What I do is make it as easy as possible for her. Whatever she needs from me to do that job well, I do. No negotiation. Often without asking. She's in charge, so I support her in that charge.
And I’m in charge of finances. Make sure all the bills are paid, money is in the accounts, more than enough coming in every month, investing for the future, etc. And she does everything she can to make it as easy as possible for me.
Most couples share everything, which sounds fair and usually is the opposite. Shared responsibility means both people are half-responsible, which in practice means both people are waiting, at least a little, to see if the other one handles it.
It creates low-level friction that never fully goes away. Someone has to chase, someone has to remind, and whoever does that more often starts to resent it.
The modern ideal is partnership-as-equality, which gets interpreted as everything split, everything discussed, everything decided together. That works for some decisions. For the ongoing operational load of a household, it tends to produce a permanent negotiation that exhausts both people.
When neither person has clear ownership, both people have plausible deniability.
We each trust that the other person has their domain, because we've both seen the evidence of that over time. The trust accumulates.
The person in charge doesn't have to be perfect. My wife doesn't run a flawless household and I don't manage our finances without the occasional mistake. What we each do is own it. Own it enough that the other person doesn't have to worry about it.
