To (privately) disapprove of my friend having a cleaner

[Unami]

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.

It's absolutely none of your business etc etc as others have said, but I would be silently judging my arse off as well.

I have a cleaner. I do feel guilty about it, and then I have a special extra layer of guilt on top of that for the condescension that the guilt implies.

My last cleaner was a nurse in the Philippines, a head nurse in an A&E. That made me feel very guilty.

But as others have pointed out, it's a good job. You make a lot over minimum wage, and it's flexible & has pretty low barriers to entry. I wouldn't knock it - she's providing a job.

am i really reading a thread where someone thinks a woman should cut her employed, wage paying hours at work to clean her house more?

yep, it's still 2013. thought i'd time travelled for a minute there!

£45 a week for a two bed flat lived in by one person? I doubt the cleaner is being exploited

I'd like a cleaner... can't afford one at the mo. Such is life.

"it is low paid, low status work"

Status is in the eye of the beholder.

My cleaner wouldn't like a regular contract, because sometimes she has to change terms at short notice: when her back acts up or she wants to take a holiday. It suits us both to keep things informal.

I think OP's hang up is mostly about perceived laziness.
Most very lazy people I know wouldn't clean the house themselves either; happy to live in filth. I could be too, but glad I have afford an alternative.

*can not have...

"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 it wasn't for the fact my DM doesn't know how to use the internet, I would be wondering whether she had started this thread, because OP, this is precisely her opinion.

I often work 16 hour days (and yes, I'm a freelancer, so I don't get paid for holidays and when I'm ill!) yet I bust a gut to keep my house clean on top of that - having a cleaner would save me so much time, but because of the guilt my mum has instilled in me over it, I've always battled on, thinking I was being unreasonable...

Reading here how 99% of people are all for the cleaner, has made me think: sod it, I might just get one!

So clean or be 'on the dole' - is this the 'choice' that everyone who has a cleaner is talking about? It is a moral and political question for some. People think about it or have an opinion on it as believe it not everybody in this world just thinks of their own happiness and own needs first- thank God!

Employing a cleaner when you are perfectly capable of cleaning up your own crap, perpetuates and affirms inequalities that already exist in our society.

I have a cleaner for 4 hrs a week.

I could do it myself, but would rather not.

She earns more than I did as a TA. Quite a lot more.

Basically, your problem OP, is that YOu think cleaners do lowly badly paid work.

i think there is nothing lowly about cleaning, it is a job a professional can often do better than an amateur (me). It is a job I did myself part time as a student. I don't think waiters are lowly either, or people who give massages, or beauticians.

I also do not think cleaning a toilet, even someone else's toilet, is any way demeaning. Why would it be?

YABU. As long as she treats the cleaner well. I agree it seems decadent, but I honestly can't see anything wrong with it.

Do you know I'd rather go and clean someone else's home than my own? I think I'd do a better job just cracking on with it than I would trying to do it at home amid the distractions.

"Employing a cleaner when you are perfectly capable of cleaning up your own crap, perpetuates and affirms inequalities that already exist in our society."

Silly.
and by the way, my cleaner doesn't go on the dole ever, wouldn't want to. She just wants an easy PT job that fits well with rest of her life.

I would clean if it kept me off the dole, if things came to those being my choices. There is No Shame in Being a Cleaner. Unless you want to see the world that way, that is.

There will always be inequalities in peoples work as people have different skills, intelligence, wants, needs etc. There is nothing wrong in that but the fact that you belittle the job a cleaner does is wrong.

I often leave the house at 645 and get home at 630pm, DH does the school run and gets home at a similar time. The days I am home earlier I want to spend time with my DCs. On my day off I do volunteer work and occasionally have a coffee with friends. I am not asking someone to clear up my crap but I am spending my money on what I want to ease pressure on us as a family and that is the job she has chosen to do, she has no issues with it and can afford nice holidays, has a lovely house and gets much of the school holidays off also.

WTF how does it perpetuate inequality?? Why do you see cleaners as unequal to someone who earns the money to pay them? I think you need to take a long hard look at your own judgements.

I have a cleaner that comes to my home and does everything she does twice a week, EVERY DAY! ....and I don't work. I live abroad and it's just part of the lifestyle. DH works 16 hour days, he doesn't want to help out with the house. I don't have family to help with DCs, or give me a break as I am in effect a single mother Monday to Friday.

When I am in the position that I need to return to work, a self employed cleaner would reckon high up in my job choices.

YABVU - your friend is providing a job for someone.

Not only do I have a cleaner, she makes more per hour than I do making clothes. We both have our own businesses and we enjoy what we do. She is clearly however a better business woman than I am! She values what she does and so do her clients. She also has time to spend with her family and on her hobbies. I think she'd be pretty insulted by the OP. and curryeater's analysis of the transparency of housework is spot bloody on!

see now I am craving coming home on a friday after work and stepping into a clean house, sparkling loo, clean sheets, clean bath, fresh towels... having a bath and opening the wine ahhhh bliss, not coming home dumping the shopping, putting tea on, running a hoover round, stuffing a wash load on , stripping the bed, tidying the breakfast pots away, then sitting down at 8 or 9 to open the wine. anyone know a good cleaner in plymouth, preferably one who will iron too?

I think the OP said she was heading out, so she probably isn't reading all this, but I wonder how she feels about hotel rooms - they are 'intimate spaces' where she has slept/used the loo/chucked dirty tissues about, but presumably someone else cleans those. Why is it any different in your home?

I use the services of a cleaner. Actually it is too women (mothers) who have set up their own business so it's flexible around school hours, sick kids etc.

I pay by bank transfer. I have no doubt that they pay whatever taxes they are obliged to.

Yes, it's true self-employed people don't get holiday pay, but that is the pay off for being your own boss. DH is self-employed too.

I don't think it is necessarily low status, and it's not low paid. I pay the cleaners more per hour than I make for instance.

Yabvvvu.

I want your friends cleaner.

I also don't feel it is particularly intimate - no more than having a babysitter in the house.

It's none of your business

My first cleaner had her own cleaning business and employed others, as well as cleaning herself.

My second cleaner was an immigrant with poor English who did a heck of a lot better earning above NMW in my house than she would have done in a factory or agricultural work.

My third cleaner was a mum easing her way back into work, she cleaned for a year and now is her own boss as a CM.

So I'm a bit as to how I'm exploiting these bright, sparky, businesswomen.

As to being lazy? Do one. I earn £35 - £50 an hour as a freelancer. So if I take two hours out to clean I lose £70 - 100. And no, no-one else could do the 'surplus' work because it's my work for my clients.

You really need to hoick your judgey pants out.

And YYY to the pp (curry?) who said the more people pay for cleaning, the more it will be valued as a service.

My take on this?

Your friend has a good ethos, she is paying somebody a salary, which is an excellent choice that I approve of. I cant think of a better way to give somebody around £200 per month.

It is a service, like ironing and shopping even. In Belgium to (legally) hire household help, you buy service checks and employ someone through a a recognised agency. The service cheques are 8.50 euros and pay for one hour cleaning, or so much ironing etc. the govt ensures that the social security is paid for the employee and they are insured , and the best bit is that they are tax deductible. So Belgian families are positively encouraged to employ someone to clean and iron for them. Everyone benefits.