How do you afford a housekeeper?

[SouperNoodle]

I guess this is aimed at families like mine that have a good income but are by no means raking in the cash.

DH and I spend our lives working. With his job and me raising the kids and the constant cleaning and tidying, we're just shattered and getting more and more frustrated that we don't have much down time.
I genuinely think that if we had a housekeeper then half our work would be outsourced so we'd get more time together/relaxing with the kids and life would be that bit easier.

So if you have one, how do you afford it? Roughly how much does it cost you?
Is it worth it?
I wouldn't want a live in housekeeper so I'm aware it would be a bit more expensive.

I honestly don't know where to start.
(Fuck the daily mail)

Cleaner for 4 hours each Monday & Friday would probably be enough. Have groceries delivered so that saves you a job.

I don't think I know anyone who has a "housekeeper" and I know lots of extremely comfortably off people (think houses £2million plus). The most people have is a couple of half days cleaning.

Actually no, I've just thought of one family, who as the kids got older replaced the childcare with more like a housekeeper (though sorting out kids meals etc was still a large part of it). Think they lived in though.

Sorry, I know that doesn't answer your question, but you did make it sound like it was a fairly normal sort of thing for the well off middle classes, and in my experience it really isn't!

@SouperNoodle

We're thinking someone who comes 4 days a week for the full day. We'd preferably hire one that as well as cleaning, does laundry and changes beds.

OP do you really need 4 days a week? That seems a lot to me.

I also don’t know anyone who has a pretty much full time house keeper on this sort of money, I also don’t understand why you’d need one to be honest, you have two children, one of whom is four so is potentially in nursery and you currently don’t work.

Our household income is 110k in the west mids (so not massively pricey) no DC and we couldn’t afford a housekeeper without massively stripping back our lifestyle

With £110k income in a not expensive area and no DC you must have a hell of a lifestyle to get through that amount of money.

Beyond adequate accommodation of sufficient size for the household, essential bills and sufficient food and transportation, which again is hugely subjective, it's a matter of prioritisation, and without high housing costs it's absolutely possible that the OP could afford help, even if it costs £15-20k pa, if that's what she values most.

Of course she won't be able to afford a housekeeper and big car payments and lots of eating out/lavish supermarket bills and luxury holidays and overpaying the mortgage but if she dials back on these sorts of things, there could well be money available to buy in the help she's talking about.

I wouldn’t employ a housekeeper o your income. I would get a cleaner to come twice a week for four or five hours each time. They could clean, strip beds and do some laundry in this time.

I honestly can't understand why you want to go from zero in-home support (beyond a cleaner every fortnight) to practically full time. When you go back to work, surely the trick is to get SOME outside help in and just figure out what's most useful?

Identify what is the most stressful for you and sort that. For example you have young children and a large house, personally, I'd be increasing the cleaner to at LEAST once a week, and possibly for more hours per week then you currently have. Someone who would not only clean but also change bedding, washing bedding and towels, do "spring cleaning" etc.

Then, depending on your needs, consider other services - a cleaner/housekeeper who also cooks (or batch cooks) on her days for you or does your shopping (or unpacks your online delivery). At one point we had a nanny who did two half days for us. On those days she picked up DC from school, looked after them or took them to activities, and also prepared enough food for the kids AND us. A friend has a nanny-housekeeper who started work a few days a week at 12:00 - between 12:00 and school pick up she was doing ironing, light cleaning and cooking.

I have an ironing service that collects and drops off ironing.

Give Hello Fresh or similar a try - you don't have eto commit forever. Give it a three week trial and see if it works for you. If not, abandon it.

Agree with the others - up your cleaners hours to begin with. That’s not enough to stay on top of a house of that size with young children.

Once they agreed on top of the cleaning all if they will help you sheet / decker one cupboard at a time. You should need there though - organiser they won’t know what’s important and what isn’t. It will keep you focused as it’s paid for time.

Look a gousto or use Ocado with a strict meal plan. We do this and it’s relatively easy to stay on top of.

Another one here advising you to up your cleaner hours. We have a full time housekeeper and enough work to keep her very busy. Our joint income is many times yours, otherwise I don’t think we would have spent money on this over investments etc. it really is a big luxury rather than absolute necessity.

We have a cleaner (only 3 hours a week and a much smaller house). We both work full time but still manage the house fine - online shopping and other things make life so much easier. You could even hire a cleaner for 2 to 3 mornings a week. A good one would manage fine. I think a housekeeper is a bit excessive. But then we don't have particularly high standards.

@BarbaraofSeville not massively extravagant. One nice car one 20 year old banger, fuel costs are quite high for commuting and we have 3 cats. Our mortgage is pretty high as we didn’t have a huge deposit (our current income level is a newish thing) and house needs a lot of work doing to it. We aren’t in anyway struggling but not splashing the cash (shop at Aldi, not eating out all the time, gym membership with local council and not a high end club). To afford a housekeeper at the level OP wants we would need to swap our car for a much older one and move to a newer house with less maintenance costs. It would be incredibly difficult to strip back enough to afford a housekeeper if we also had to factor in childcare and other children based costs.

I have a cleaner/housekeeper for 6 hours a week over 2 days, and in that she cleans the whole house twice, changes all the beds, folds/sorts laundry, irons and organises the kitchen cupboards or anything else (the agreement is that she looks at the house and decides what needs doing and does it so if she feels the dining room needs a really deep clean, thats what she does, equally if she pulls everything out of Ds's chest of drawers and makes that tidy and leaves a pile of odd socks for me to bin) . DH and I both have very full on FT jobs and this keeps everything beautiful. For years we had a weekly cleaner, but adding the extra 3 hours for organising at our previous cleaners suggestion made all the difference in the world to our sanity

Cleaner-plus here too. Our cleaning lady spends a few extra hours every week tidying/sorting whatever needs looking at. She actually cooks for me too occasionally.

This seems to be a good solution and keeps us from getting too stressed about about everything..

I don't have a housekeeper nor the money for one - but surely it doesn't take four full days to take care of all the cleaning and life admin? That seems like a huge amount of time.

Considering your job is 20k does that mean it is part time?

I’m wondering also if it is a low pressure role too?

A cleaner could easily pick up more around the house - especially weekly

Floors & cleaning, bedding, put laundry away, put food shop away, ironing, (4/5hrs pw?) £240/300pm

Regarding mess etc why not make sure you have good toy storage etc and also get the kids to tidy away each night. Look at trofast from IKEA.

Yes you’ll still have laundry, cooking and parenting but the above could help.

Also maybe a slow cooker?

What about an au pair plus?
Could help with school runs, do light housework, take kids to activitiez, run errands.
I do have a housekeeper, she does four mornings a week. But this is flexible.
I have a five bed house, three dogs, and one unwell dsd living there full time.
Dp and I both split time between this house and London flat.
Our house keeper cleans, tidies, puts food way, and minds dogs and dsd when we are both away.
She and I work as a team... Decide on a monthly basis where we need her to help. Sometimes it's doing more and doing some cooking on a Friday as we've got house full and then coming to do big clear up on a Monday.
Sometimes it's staying over with dsd.
Sometimes it's taking dogs to vets.
She even helps wrap Christmas presents
If my and Dp ever split I am keeping housekeeper in any asset split!
The right person can be life changing

Oh and our income is multiple of OP, we pay our housekeeper £15k a year for 16 hr week, and £10 per hr for extra time.
Or we flex it.

We are generous employees but its worth it to give us peace of mind and the flexibility

For 4 days I would reckon on £25k or so, including employer's NICs etc. That obviously comes out of your post-tax income.

The only people I know with a FT housekeeper have seven-figure incomes. Most people just have (and just need) a cleaner. I'd also factor in how you'd feel to have someone in the house all the time- we could afford a FT housekeeper but would never have one as we wouldn't enjoy this aspect (as well as not needing one).

I priced up the costs of having a few hours of a:

• cleaner
• housekeeper
• PA
• gardener
• handyman

I can't remember the hourly split, but it was basically weekly cleaner, fortnightly housekeeper, and some hours for each of the others. It came to £10k at local rates (Midlands). Call it £12.5k for inflation.

We'd certainly be able to afford it on our previous joint salary of 100k. Not that we chose to, but it certainly feels like a very rich contingent of staff for relatively little.

See if your cleaner is able to come weekly instead of fortnightly as a start.
Before you go back to work get an organiser/de cluttering person to go through your house like a dose of salts.
A friend did the Marie Kondo training and does it here ( in Oz). If you don't know what's in your house it's time to sort it.
It will be easier to tidy if you have room to put things away!

I don't have a housekeeper but do have a cleaner once a week and am trying to work out if I could get someone to come and take on more of a "housekeeping" role - specifically to stay on top of the laundry as well as the cleaning.

I think in your position I would try get your cleaner to come more often/see if she would do washing as well as a starting point? If you had her coming say 4-5 or even 7-8 hours a week instead of once a fortnight I think that would make a big difference?

E.g. Tues and Friday, with time enough for them to do washing and change one set of sheets and do a basic hoover/sorting out of the kitchen (and bathroom if it needs it that often) both times, and then more time on top on one or both of the days to rotate through: cleaning the oven, cleaning out the fridge, ironing, cleaning the washing machine innards, sorting out the dishwasher filter etc.

That would then leave you with just the tidying or maybe you might even be able to negotiate that they did that too?

Then for things like bread and milk - have you considered getting a milkman? Yes it is more expensive than the shops but it's probably cheaper than paying someone to go and get them?

My friend has a housekeeper who works 4 hours a day for 4 hours and is paid £15 per hour.
How about something like this?

OP our household income is a bit more than yours will be once you’re working again - and more to take home as its split more equally between 2 earners. We couldn’t dream of getting a housekeeper, not in a million years! We only recently decided to get cleaner once a week rather than fortnightly and that feels quite a push. We don’t live in a crazy expensive area either but it’s childcare that eats our £ - won’t this be an additional expense for you once you start work? Unless you’re going to tell me your 20k is for one day a week or something!

I can totally understand things are overwhelming at home if you’re there full time with 2 small kids. But truly a housekeeper to me is for the v rich indeed. More cleaning hours and get a cleaner who tidies (and irons if you need that - frankly we just don’t bother!).

Me thinks only a millionaire can afford someone in for 4 full days a week

I am far from rich and i have a cleaner come in 3hrs every 2 weeks to do a blitz £40