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!

Thirty quid!! Nobody wants to clean an entire house plus iron everything in it for thirty quid

3 hrs is not enough to clean a full house and iron a families ironing for a week. She either needs more hours or less work.

To be honest my ironing board comes out for work shirts and that's it. Don't buy clothes that need ironing, fold straight off the line or out of the dryer.

I suspect that what you need to do is get a full house clean, have a wardrobe sort and decide what does and doesn't get ironed in future and if you want her to continue then have a conversation with her and negotiate with her. I mean would you do all that for less than 50 quid?

It's not long enough. I was a cleaner for a while. She could probably clean the house in 3 hours (if it was reasonably tidy to start with) but not do the ironing and clean.
She needs either fewer tasks or longer hours.

I'm a cleaner, 3 hours a week is not enough to keep a house clean, if only the bare minimum is done between visits, never mind ironing. Are the toilet, and things like kitchen worktops and sinks only cleaned once a week? Hoovering/mopping? Do you have pets?

you genuinely don't need to spend all your free time cleaning, ironing, but if you want someone else to do it you will have to pay them a decent wage or increase their hours. It is a little bit rude for you to declare "she doesn't want the money" when that is not the point she has made, she has worked for a low wage to workload ratio for over a year before calling it quits. You also have a dog, so there is presumably some extra cleaning from that point of view too.

I have no cleaner, I also do not iron, but I do work longer hours than you and I wipe down the kitchen and bathroom everyday and run the hoover and duster or mop around on a saturday morning. Not being in the house so much means we have little opportunity to create mess.

OOPS! ZOMBIE THREAD!!

Its pretty clear that 3 hours isnt enough to do both cleaning an entire house AND all the ironing.

My cleaner can generally do my house in 3 or 4 hours.
Maybe you could get her to do only the downstairs and then the ironing, or add an extra hour on for ironing. I think she probably feels rushed and stretched to complete all of those tasks in the time that would usually be more or less allocated to one of them.

If youre struggling to afford more, I think you just have to prioritise your most important tasks for her, rather than give her an unrealistic workload and then be surprised when its too much

And typical I see the zombie thread alerts too late. I hope anyone in a similar situation gets some use from this thread.

When I cleaned houses, I didn't do ironing. I knew that most people will say "and then if there's time, could you do a bit of ironing?" There's never "a bit" of ironing. They will take the piss and the pile will grow and grow. So, no ironing, ever. If its not on offer, they won't expect it.

The sort of person who wants "a bit of ironing" done is often the sort to push other mission creep, as well. I learned the hard way that if you don't have firm boundaries then you find yourself picking up dog shit from the back garden in the rain. I had to fire that client: in addition to the "bit of ironing" and dog shit there was a broken toilet that the kids used as a cess pit all week (I was expected to flush it with a bucket then clean it) and the amount of clutter grew and grew. Oh, and a broken wine glass once left on the kitchen floor for me to clean up.

I learned to make it clear that, feces, blood, vomit, laundry, dish washing, tidying beyond simply stacking on the end of the surface, and anything outside was not going to happen.

The ironing service that I use is really cheap in my opinion (£10 per hour and she collects and brings back.) DH and I both work full time and do our own cleaning.
My ironing this week cost £25.

I think £30 for 3 hours if you don’t do anything in between is really low to be honest. I’d bump up her hours rather than pay her more (if she was happy on 30 for 3 hours then great) which is more money for her and extra cleaning for you still

You say you're not tidy. If you put everything away so that she can concentrate on the cleaning she comes to do then it will take less time, also maybe get the ironing done by a separate ironing company.

It depends where you live. Handymen/ironing services are £10 an hour quite easily where I live. People are glad of the work.

We don't live in a very affluent area mind.

we have a three bed, and a cleaner who comes for 2 hrs a week. She doesn't do the beds, and only skims the kids rooms (my decision, due to the older children apparently needing to empty both toys and clothes onto the floor and not pick them up!) and still concentrates mainly on upstairs one week and downstairs the next. Def no ironing! And I pay £12 an hour. But, with me doing a fast clean for an hour and a half once a week (no DC's to distract in the house - DP takes them out), this works. I also tidy each night and any spills etc get cleared up immediately to avoid build up.

Oh - to avoid ironing I tumble clothes to 3/4 dry, take out, shake vigorously and hang up (bathroom is good - steamy atmosphere makes creases drop out). May occasionally have to do linen or really annoying shirts (wretched collars) but nothing else!

If you're doing a load of laundry every day, do you want it all ironed? Sounds like a lot of ironing.

This thread is a fine example of people posting after having only read the OP.

Several have pointed out it's a ZOMBIE THREAD but it goes unread.

Would love to know what LourdesO found so fascinating about it to dredge it up.

I feel like posting on principle when the zombie 🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️ police come out

Yes. I think zombies need love, too.

@SilverySurfer yep, happened to me too. It would be useful if old threads were marked somehow I usually read just the first page, people can't expect me to read 394 other posts

Why can't people address the op in their replies, without reference to what every other bugger thinks?

Our cleaner sacked us many years ago as it was "too hard work". She didn't hang around as long as a year though. Just a matter of weeks. Think she thought the house would stay tidy until the next time she came back and her job would get progressively easier whereas in reality after a couple of hours it wasn't really obvious she'd done anything. (3 pre-school dc and me at home all day.)