my cleaner has quit - says my house is difficult to clean! embarrassed

[allaboutthatsass]

So I've had a cleaner for 3 hours pw for the past year. She cleans our 3 bed detached and does our ironing. All agreed when she was hired.

Sometimes she comes alone, sometimes she comes with 2 staff (and they might finish in an hour).

She's now quit, saying my house is just too much for her. She says I have too much ironing to be done in 3 hours and that I'm not doing anything in between her visits.

I work full time as does my husband (in fact he has two jobs, a sunday is the only day I see more than an hour or two of him a day whilst awake). Our DD is 9.

I've never been houseproud, I admit, and I'm crap at ironing BUT my house is not tidy. There is zero clutter. I do my laundry daily, I make the beds, put stuff in the dishwasher, open windows for fresh air, I really try my best with the little time I have.

I'm very embarrassed that she thinks my house is too much work. My mother and sister tell me I'm a lazy shit (they are both a bit aggie and kim) but my friends say my house is a normal family house so I don't know if AIBU or my cleaner is?

I hired her to help me but seemingly my house is that bad she doesn't want the money...

we have a mutual friend and according to this friend if I want her back then she wants more money to do my house due to the amount of work she feels needs done every week. I pay £30 for 3 hours a week. I have recently had a drop in pay so not really keen on paying more.

Can anyone help me with advice on managing housework without a cleaner on such little time?

Oh and in addition to my full time job, I'm also a distance learning uni student as of September, so even less time!

RB68 my clothes look horrible if I don't iron them. I shake them out when hanging them up, but they still look wrinkled. I don't fold shirts, dresses or trousers as they get hung up in the wardrobe. Most mumsnetters must have magic washing machines that mean that clothes don't need ironing.

Back in the real life most people I know do iron because they need to look smart for work.

RB68 agreed, literally the only things that get ironed in my house are my husband's shirts. I generally wear fitted dresses for work which don't need ironing, neither do my casual clothes as I hang everything to dry or straight from the tumble dryer. And life is waaay too short for ironing bedding or underwear.

"as I hang everything to dry or straight from the tumble dryer"

How are they not wrinkled? What material are they made from?

If I do that my clothes are wrinkled. I am wrinkled enough and wearing wrinkled clothes does me no favours.

Mostly synthetic fabrics tbh, there's not much in my wardrobe that has seen cotton. Thick jersey fabrics, for example. Also most of my stuff is quite fitted, so creases wouldn't show because it's stretched once I've got it on, if that makes sense. I don't know, it all just seems to turn out alright and (in my opinion) I always looks suitably smart for work. Maybe everyone else actually thinks I'm a rumpled mess.

I have 4 hours a week for a 5 bed house but do most of the ironing myself and send out shirts. I pay £8.50 an hour which is standard here. However, I do clean in between, I keep the house completely tidy and I don't ask her to do any sheet changing

YABU to expect your cleaner to iron, very random. She is there to clean house, £10 per hour is really reasonable as well we pay £14 per hour and 3 hours to clean 4 bed house

LoniceraJaponica - You take them out of the dryer hot and fold them carefully and crisply.

Toomuchtooold - It's possible some cleaners are afraid to ask for more hours because they have been told in the past that if they can't do it in the time allowed then they should jog on.

Maybe they don't want to appear incompetent by asking for more time?
Sometimes a family will engage a cleaner and then become incredibly lazy about picking up after themselves or doing daily stuff they used to do like wiping down a bathroom washbasin, so the scope of the work changes as time goes on. This is not the cleaner's fault and many cleaners do not feel comfortable chiding an employer about the gross habits of the children or even the adults in a house they work on.

Or they have other clients whose time slots before and after yours are not negotiable.

RE ironing - I live in jersey dresses from Hobbs with a jacket for work. Smart AND no ironing :-)

And comfy. Really comfy.

Not rtft sorry, but when i worked as a cleaner years ago through an agency, so they set times and expectations with the owners, they would book a four hour slot for owners with a 2 bedroom flat if they also wanted ironing done, and I was only expected to do as much of the ironing as I could in the time, not all of it. In that time I would: change the sheets in the master bedroom; (spare bedroom bed was only done if people had been in there and there would be correspondingly less ironing that week)
scrub the bathroom
scrub the kitchen
dust everywhere including skirtings, picture frames and tops of doors
polish all brass and any wooden furniture and mirrors
hoover everywhere
and then fill any remaining time with ironing.

Houses with more bedrooms or with resident children took a 4 hour slot with no ironing, and some had a rotation system eg one couple used to get me to defrost the fridge-freezer every 4th week and clean the office and the 2 unused bedrooms once each in the remaining weeks. They all did some basic cleaning in between - dishes, wiping the hand-basin in the bathroom and picking up stuff so that I didn't have to do that before actually cleaning etc

Even now I couldn't do a thorough clean in our 2 bedroom flat in anything under 4 hours. And that's without ironingwhich-I-don't-bother-with-if-I-can-help-it

My cleaner does 5 hours plus and doesn't iron (we don't do ironing in this house). I don't think you need to feel embarrassed just give her enough time to do her job.

Maybe try and do all that yourself one day and see how unrealistic it is. Reduce workload by ditching ironing - agree with pp who said Hobbs Jersey and a Blazer for work. Artigiano do good jersey too.
Send shirts to a laundry or I think you can have them laundered at Sainsbury's dry cleaners quite cheaply.
Minimise and declutter so house is easier to clean. Prioritise so spare bedroom isn't done weekly but fortnightly.
Do some yourself as three hours a week is only going to be a superficial clean.
Maybe once a month deep clean a room - skirting, dado, picture rail, declutter, windows, dry clean curtains, steam clean floors if carpeted or polish wooden floors etc.
Buy two hoovers - one for upstairs and one for downstairs.
Get your daughter to clean her own room for pocket money.

"You take them out of the dryer hot and fold them carefully and crisply."

I can't do that as my tumble dryer is in the garage and don't know when it has just finished. And I only use it when it is raining. On fine days I line dry.

I don't fold shirts, they get hung up. I also find that tumble dried stuff looks crumpled anyway. And I wear a lot of cotton.

I'm not complaining because I don't actually mind ironing. It's a good excuse to watch something I have recorded. I'm just mystified that other people's washing looks pristine without the use of an iron, whereas mine doesn't.

For the people saying £10 isn't a lot of money for a cleaner do they realise that if you pay a cleaning agency £15 an hour the cleaner only actually gets minmum wage? They wouldn't even get £10 an hour out of that £15. £10 an hour direct to the cleaner is a reasonable amount to be paid. I know a lot of people who would be more than happy to earn £10 per hour.
Tip for non creased clothes - don't overload the washing machine or tumble dryer. Our new tumble dryer has a sensor to stop when clothes are dry so doesn't 'over dry' and if you don't empty it the drum turns a few times every now and again to stop them being creased.

My dryer is in the basement and I sometimes hear the beep at the end of the cycle, sometimes not, depending on how much hubbub is going on. I know the length of the usual cycles I use and set my kitchen timer.

Loni, may be I just look scruffy (no ironing). The twins' sixth form white shirts are non iron shirts and they were put to dry over a radiator and genuinely looked fine to me. If they wanted a different standard they were welcome to iron them (they just finished school so that's over). No one else wears a shirt so what are these clothes people iron? Obviously not underwear as no one sees that.

So today I have on a cardigan - never ironed one in my life. Do people iron them? Most of the time I'm doing dirty garden, house, file stuff and working at home and I don't find people when I go to a shop are repulsed by the cardigan and back away in horror. Yesterday I was with clients so I put on a jacket. I presume people don't iron work jackets. Under that was a vest top and I wear those deliberately rather than shirts because there is no ironing. I can't see how the vest top would have looked any different if ironed.

I was telling one of my 18 yerar old sons some people like ironing and if he wants to take it up try it in front of the TV. He has tried a few times but I think he's coming round to my no iron views.

At the moment (I am cleaner free for the first time in years and never has the house been cleaner but that's a different long story of tolerance no doubt tolerance on both sides).... I hang the washing to dry near the washer and do not tend to use the drier. I then take my few items upstairs and leave the other items about 95% of it for the 3 boys. Most of it seemed to be underpants, socks, quick dry sports T shirts, pyjamas, T shirts. I just dump that over the washer. If they want it folded or anything fancy like that (I never fold) they are welcome to wash and fold it.

I genuinely don't think people look at us and say yuck, unironed clothes, awful people.

RB68

I really don't understand why people do so much ironing its bad for the environment

What now? How is ironing bad for the environment?!

I really don't understand why people do so much ironing its bad for the environment

By using electricity I suppose. I suppose by the same logic we shouldn't boil kettles, plug in fridge freezers or vacuum our houses ...

I have a lot of loose cotton tops that simply look scruffy unitoned. DD's school shirts also look scruffy unironed. And yes, you can really tell.

I have a linen dress that I wear in the summer which also looks a mess unironed.

The difference is that I don't mind ironing so it doesn't influence my choice of clothes. So I will choose cotton and linen if I want to.

So putting your clothes in a dryer is OK but ironing is bad for the environment?!

That's what I was wondering as well Zara

Could you quit the ironing? I don't do any, and my OH needs 5 fresh shirts a week.
You can line dry stuff carefully, put shirts etc straight into hangers , don't bundle them into a basket even you bring then in. its never an issue.
If the clothes were wrinkled, my very glam teen daughter would definitely complain. But it totally works.

No it doesn't. It really doesn't. Maybe I am fussy, but I don't like wearing crumpled clothes, and unironed cotyon and linen never looks smart.

And to reiterate, I don't dislike ironing. I do it when watching TV.

I am an untypicsl mumsnetter

I kind of stopped reading all the messages as some were really unkind, likely from those who don't work as many hours as DH and I do.

To give you all an idea of how a typical day goes:

Wake up at 6am, go out with dog whilst DH has a shower. Eat breakfast, hang up last night's washing, put another load on. DH leaves at 7am for his main weekly job. I get showered, dressed, get DD up and dressed and fed. Open some windows for some fresh air. Make beds. Leave house at 7.30am and either drop DD off to grandparents or grandparents come here to watch her.

9-5 I'm at work, arrive home at 6.30pm, collect DD who will have been fed, walk dog, home for 7pm, start making dinner, DH home at about 8pm, eat dinner, load dishwasher, tidy kitchen, empty washing machine and hang up on dryer. DH heads upstairs to do admin for his self employed job whilst I play with DD, bathe her, do homework, get her ready for bed. At about 9pm, I sit on my ass and maybe watch a tv show. Take dog for a last walk. Go to bed maybe 11pm. DH joins me between midnight 1am. then we start all over again at 6am.

Cleaner normally comes on a Friday.

Weekends - DH is meeting customers for his self employed job or doing his admin. As house is normally done by cleaner I spend most of my weekend entertaining DD who I dont see much of during the week. I do the weekly grocery shopping and try to spend some time studying for my course. I will quickly wipe down bathroom (which I do daily admittedly with those dettol wipes) and also kitchen surfaces (which I also do daily). I will hang out washing, empty bins, declutter house, strip beds and wash bedding, remake beds.

I don't have a tumble dryer due to lack of space.

I hope the dog is being let out during the day!