Talk

Unflip

1 2 3 4 5 6 ··· 21 22

AIBU?

To (privately) disapprove of my friend having a cleaner

536 replies

Unami · 29/04/2013 16:08

Ok. This may be long, but I will do my best to explain where I am coming from. My friend has a cleaner and I privately disapprove. I would never make an issue of it to her, or even bring it up. It was brought up by another friend when we were at her place for drinks. She was a bit about it, and it led to a big discussion, but I didn't say anything committal. I do recognise that she can hire a cleaner if she likes. If she likes she can hire a troupe of jugglers and have them juggle in her kitchen all day, if she likes. It's none of my business, I get that.

But I still privately disapprove. AIBU?

Her cleaner comes to her two bedroom flat twice a week and gives it a full clean, and that apparently includes hoovering all carpets and upholdstry, dusting all surfaces, polishing wood, sweeping and cleaning wooden floor in hall and kitchen, emptying waste bins in the house and taking kitchen bins round the back, cleaning mirrors, cleaning the inside of windows, full clean of the kitchen including inside the fridge, full clean of bathroom. Once a month she also gets the oven cleaned, extractor fan cleaned and polished (!?), cupboards dusted inside and out. She says she pays £45 a week for this.

It's just her in the flat. She doesn't have kids and doesn't live with her bf.

Here's my perspective. People say that having a cleaner is just like hiring any other service provider. But it's not. Domestic cleaners clean intimate, private parts of our houses, and clean up our bodily mess, and it's low paid, low status work. Yes, people hire gardeners and window cleaners, but these are roles which require specialist equipment and insurance, and they only work on the outside and periphery of your home. Yes, I recognise that cleaners are employed in offices I use, cafes I eat in and so on, but it's not really the same either. Most commerical cleaners are employed as staff and so get holiday pay, sick pay, NI etc. Agency workers don't have it so good, and I disagree with the terms of their employment too. But domestic cleaners are often paid cash in hand because employers think they are doing them a favour. But they have no holiday, sick pay - what happens if they have an accident in the house they are cleaning in. I know there are some well organised small cleaning companies, but I think they are the exception.

But most of all, I just feel like my friend is just being lazy or thinks she's too good to pick up after herself. If you are elderly or disabled or immobile, then I see nothing wrong with getting the help that you need. Likewise, if you have a busy family, and don't want to be stuck being the person who picks up after everyone else - get the help you need and show the family how much your time costs. But if you have a quiet life and are fit and healthy, I don't see why you think it's ok to have someone over to clean your toilet. I also think that people who say they are so impossibly busy with work that they can't lift a duster once a week really ought to think about cutting back their ft hours, and give others access to the surplus of work they have.

I'm not going to have a go at my friend. But I just don't think it's right.

OP posts:

Report

DonDrapersAltrEgoBigglesDraper · 01/05/2013 02:32

God forbid you might have to operate a Hoover- it is such a complicated bit of equipment.

This comes across as so unbelievably chippy and 'who does she think she is?!', that it puts people off seeing the point.

Clearly a vacuum cleaner is not complicated to operate. If a cleaner comes once a week, then chances are the vacuum cleaner will be brought out and operated by family members at other times, so they're getting their 'levelling' or quota of hard graft, which seems to be so desperately necessary for some.

I still don't understand why people should have to clean, if they don't always wish to. Why cleaning - above absolutely everything else - is so loaded a concept, that if it's done by anyone other than the people who created the mess, it's a travesty.

There are plenty of people who outsource lawn-mowing, window cleaning, cake-baking/icing, transportation of things, etc, etc, ad nauseum, who don't come in for the same level of vitriol as people who outsource cleaning.

Anyone can bake a cake, if they follow a recipe. Plenty of people get someone in to garden tend, even though they have the equipment, to save time and energy. I've just bought an item of furniture of from someone in a neighbouring suburb; I could hire a trailer and shift it myself, but I can't really be arsed with the faff, so I'm paying someone who does that sort of thing to do it for me.

All of this is seen as fine. But cleaning? No, it is Inherently Bad if you don't don the marigolds yourself.

Someone else doing your cleaning frees up your time for more pleasurable, or equally necessary (but perhaps tiresome) pursuits. That is all. If you don't get that, then you don't get it. Fine.

If you (generic) think that doing your own cleaning is important, then by all means do it. But you are never, ever going to convince people who outsource it that doing so is anything other than a brilliant idea.

And here's why: because when those people are on their deathbed's reflecting back on their one and only life on this planet, they are not going to regret the fact that they didn't live life less, and scrub the grout a bit more.