What is it about men that drives women to distraction? Is it the way they hog the remote, snore, and leave the toilet seat up? Or how they never empty the dishwasher?

Actually it’s all these things and much, much more. Just get a group of women together and the complaints about blokes flow quicker than the wine. Working mums Sue Hedges and Angie Savchenko came up with the idea of creating a website for Kiwi women to vent about the men in their lives after one of these group grumbles.

On that particular occasion, Sue (46) had been fuming because it was the fi rst evening out she’d had for weeks, yet she had still had to cook the dinner, clean the house and get her son Joe (10) ready for bed before leaving the house. “When my partner Andy goes out, he just goes, but I have to do everything,” she sighs.

It was also Angie’s fi rst night out for three months. But her husband Andre, who had been out three times that week, said to her, “I wish you weren’t going out.”

The two women established the website www.moanaboutmen.com. It was designed in New Zealand but fi rst launched in the UK where Sue and Angie (45) are based. The site took off immediately so the founders have now made it available in New Zealand too.

Sue says it’s domestic issues that get under women’s skin the most. “Things like not picking their socks up, not putting dishes in the dishwasher, or leaving empty cartons of milk in the fridge and empty cereal boxes in the cupboard. It’s those little things that have always been a big bugbear for women.”

The top complaint is what the website founders call the “Next-to Syndrome” – putting socks beside the washing basket and dirty clothes beside the washing machine instead of inside them.

Sue’s own pet hate is the way her husband will do a load of washing but will never take the clothes out of the machine and hang them out to dry. “And if he ever gets the vacuum cleaner out, I’ll give him a medal,” she adds.

“My favourite story is from a lady who would moan about her husband kicking his shoes off in the hall. Then one morning he tripped over his shoe and broke his ankle!”

Angie – mum to Niamh (12) and Vanya (9) – says her biggest gripe is how men always forget where they leave things. “They always say, ‘You must have moved it!’ It drives me nuts,” she groans.

However, Angie says males aren’t all bad. “Overall, men’s positives do outweigh the negatives, although I think it’s healthy to get all that annoying stuff out of your system.”

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