Hugely first world problem but are my expectations of a housekeeper too high?

[SlightEmbarrassment]

Prefacing this that I know I’m hugely privileged to be able to afford this etc.

We recently (Feb) hired a housekeeper on a full time basis (8 hours a day Monday to Friday, £45k annual salary) to look after our new house. She’s excellent at laundry and ironing, bed making second to none, but the house is not that clean and definitely untidy. Clothes and toys and STUFF out. Not a tip but not pristine or impromptu guest ready.
Am I unreasonable in expecting dusting, cobweb cleaning, putting things away in this time? I know I could do it myself but I’m paying her (I think) a good salary so I don’t have to.
We have a biggish london house but not a mansion - 6 bedrooms over 4 floors.

Part of the problem is maybe that she’s always talking on the phone on her AirPods, which I’m sure slows her down.

She’s also consistently 15 mins late but leaves bang on time, which again isn’t a huge amount of time she’s missing but feels irritating since I’m not sure the quality of her work is fantastic. There have also been multiple occasions she’s been a lot later due to various issues (dog was sick, plumber etc) but it’s happened more often than I feel is reasonable for such things to arise.

Part of the reason we hired her is my eldest daughter has severe dust mite allergies and associated asthma and eczema so it’s key the house is as dust free as possible to avoid asthma attacks etc. but shelves/ornaments are dusty.

But am I unreasonable in expecting a totally spotless, 100% tidy house everyday for her hours?

My mum’s house is immaculate and she is my dad’s full time carer. She could do this job standing on her head. I come from a background where women worked because they had to contribute to the household income, often doing quite physically demanding jobs, yet the homes were absolutely immaculate because it would be shameful otherwise. Plus they cooked all the meals. My house is always what you would call visitor ready because that’s how I was brought up. I can’t imagine paying someone £45k who leaves cobwebs in your home, especially given your DS’s allergies.

you could have a cleaner in every day for a couple of hours and a house keeper in every day for a couple of hours that can do laundry/ cook and other household jobs.
be more cost effective and more productive

But she's not a cleaner! She's paid quite a good wage to keep house, which to me includes putting stuff away.

Unless she's doing life admin, cooking, errands and household stock management, you do not need a housekeeper, you need a cleaner.

I disagree with the people who are saying you need more than one person or that you need a cleaner. I'm in a less full on job now than I was when we had a 40 hour per week housekeeper, but the whole point of having someone for those hours, who is that well-paid, is that it's one person who knows your household and, once settled, doesn't need to be micromanaged. They know how you like things and can just get on with them, plus deal with things that crop up along the way. You should be able to expect that from this person.

I'm a cleaner/housekeeper. Yours sounds pretty useless. I know my households inside out. I know exactly how they like their pyjamas folding, exactly where everything goes in the house, how to pack and unpack for their holidays, I do all laundry and ironing, I keep on top of out of date food in the fridge, I keep the house spotless under my own regime, I do all the big stuff and notice all the tiny details too. I do it by observing and quickly figuring it all out. Im nnever late because I'm trusted to just get on with it, so I manage my own time but I never, ever short change on hours. That's my job and what I'm getting paid to do. Being good at just beds is a very low bar. You need to manage her and be decisive in moving her on if she doesn't step up significantly.

Thanks everyone. I had a chat this morning about keeping everything much tidier. She didn’t say much beyond ‘yes, I’d been thinking the kids areas looked a bit messy…’

That said from listening to others of you with experience of being/employing a housekeeper she just doesn’t sound like she’s providing the level of service we should be expecting (and I suspect she potentially isn’t up to it - I wasn’t expecting to have to train from scratch for that salary) so I’ll start chatting to agencies also.

The thing is if she has to spend time clearing away your 'stuff' that's time away from being able to clean. So the amount of detritus she has to deal with before she even starts cleaning is relevant.

This would be true if you were hiring a cleaner for half a day a week but not a full time housekeeper. The OP is entitled to expect to not have to do any domestic work herself if she is paying someone else to do it.

@SlightEmbarrassment definitely time to go if thats her response. " yes I thought the kids area looked messy." she is being paid to tidy up as got plenty of hours some cleaners are only given 1 to 2hrs a day.

You absolutely should not have to train someone from scratch. You're paying a good wack of money to get someone at the top of their game. Any decent cleaner can make a serious dent even in the first week (not literally!!). In my first week, I try to balance it between getting stuck in to the cleaning and figuring out the lie of the land. Her response to you is really poor. Don't limp on with substandard service. There are good people out there who really can make a big difference for you.

Agreed - that’s ridiculous. If a cleaner comes for a couple of hours a week or fortnight, yes, tidy up first to let them focus on cleaning. A full time housekeeper (unless it is a seriously massive stately home with 60 bedrooms) should be doing pretty much everything.

Op wants her to keep house AND do the cleaning. That's the whole point of the thread. If housekeeper is having to spend 2 hrs a day clearing away all the crap that op and her family have left everywhere then that's 2 hrs less to do everything else, there's only so much time available, and you can't clean until you've cleared.

Good lord. What a terrible response from your HK

GET RID!

Do you really need a housekeeper or a mother's home helper?

tbh she shouldn't be on the phone at all during working hours. quick phone calls is one thing, but being constantly on the phone is another.

We employ a housekeeper for 20 hours a week and she manages more than your’s does in 35. Plenty of time for chats, tea breaks, making little posies from the garden (she loves floristry) too. So yes, I think they are pushing their luck. Possibly they are quite bored. I think I’d be on a go-slow if I had 35 hours to do those jobs.

Our housekeeper keeps her phone in the utility room and, while I know she checks it and sits down with a cuppa for a scroll, I’d be unimpressed if she was on it while working. Just like I do not use my phone while doing my job.

However, I would say that our housekeeper sometimes finds tidying quite hard. She worries about putting things in the wrong place so we can’t find them, opening private cupboards and drawers and upsetting the children by tidying away precious crafts or games in progress. She knows she wouldn’t be in trouble if any of those things happened, but it’s worked better for us not to expect too much in the way of that sort of tidying (obviously general tidying, kitchen and grocery putting away and laundry into cupboards is fine.) Maybe it would help to be clearer about expectations around tidying, and reassure her it’s fine if she makes a mistake.

I think you need to have a list of expectations going forward.

what you expect in each room, and how often you expect those rooms to be looked over.

My cleaner is superbly efficient. She takes between 90 minutes and 2 hours to give almost 3000 square feet a decent onceover, with particular attention to the kitchen floor and bathrooms. There are no small children, and she has a pass for DC's space because it's untidy. And at the weekend, I will hoover and deep clean the kitchen when needed. I do windows and laundry too but between us, I think my house is visitor ready most of the time, unless I was showing the house to a potential buyer.

Fuck her off. She is taking the piss.

Even 2 hours of putting stuff away (which would be an awfully long time to have to spend every single day) would still leave you 5 hours a day to clean, do laundry etc. And remember the whole house doesn't have to be cleaned in one day. If she doesn't have time to clean the bathrooms one day then she'll be back again tomorrow.

I'm not sure what exactly you think a housekeeper should be doing?

This. If she tidies every day, most parts of the house probably need proper cleaning every second / third day at most which she can do on a schedule. Even if she does a quick wipe down of the kitchen and bathrooms every single day (with the proper clean twice a week), the house should still look pristine most of the time (maybe not on a Monday depending on how much mess the kids have made over the weekend).

Of course it's privileged. Most of the world don't have cleaners, most of the UK doesn't.

@SlightEmbarrassment I'm interested to know if things have improved. I find it mind boggling that your house isn't spotless snd tidy every day she's there. My house is FAR from spotles and tidy, but give me 40 hours and it would be.

My sister cleans holiday lets, 3 cleaners manage a large 4 bed house in 1.5 to 2 hours. This includes changing all beds in 4 bedrooms, (splitting King size to twin or vice versa) 3 large bathrooms, utility, large (massive) kitchen diner, large living room hallways etc. Everything gets dusted/wet cloth wash, windows have a quick clean, hoovered, mopped.

Obviously there's no clutter but even so!

Sadly it hasn’t improved. It did briefly when I literally walked through the house with her pointing out dust, cobwebs and items to put away but within days it drifted again.

We’re away this week and I can tell from my ring doorbell (and a couple of missed deliveries) that she’s been coming in for 4-5 hours of her 8 contracted without pre-agreement, and I assume not realising I would know.

So we are definitely replacing her.

Good for you. She sounds terrible at her job and beyond hope.