AIBU to wonder why everyone has cleaners these days!

[Storm4star]

Ok, please don’t take offence, I say this somewhat in jest. But my goodness how many of you have cleaners?? I have been utterly ripping the pee out of a male colleague at work because he and his wife have a cleaner but I hadn’t realised how common it’s become until I joined MN!

I personally struggle to justify spending my hard earned cash on things I could do myself (also do most of my own decorating and DIY). But have I missed something? Is a cleaner now the new must have?

I do not think a having cleaner is posh or been a cleaner is common anymore. My area is working class though friends from this area have done degrees master's and now work long hours.

I saw an opportunity to start my own PT cleaning job. I have 3 a week. My sister been one, her and her DH are much happier.

I get to work my own hours too and I like Abit if scrubbing, only rule is their place must be tidy, otherwise my 3 hours is spent picking up.

It's a win win situation.

I work long hours

I can’t afford a cleaner

And of course I would rather spend time doing something else rather than cleaning

MN world it’s an option for many in the real world it isn’t

I would happily do it as a paid job, but still employ the cleaner I have. I know lots of mums who do it, one has set up a company employing other mums (who are professionals by career, but have children). It’s the convenience of being able to work around school times.

I think there is less snobbery around being a cleaner and employing a cleaner. It’s no sort of status symbol to have one, and there’s no shame in doing it as a job.

We don’t have a cleaner. We could probably afford one but we
are —slobs— a bit untidy and the house needs a good decluttering.

In my mums generation, in the area I grew up - most middle class mums didn't work full time with young dcs. Working class woman did, middle class woman worked part time or not at all, so having a cleaner was for people who were really "posh", as it's hard to justify the cost when you had a SAHM - unless you have a lot of spare cash! So my mum was a bit sniffy about woman too lazy to do their own cleaning (and she worked full time and did all the cleaning on top of that, I was the only one in my year at school with a mum who worked FT)

But more woman work longer hours now, so more need to outsource cleaning.

You do realise stopfuckingshouting that in a lot of areas of the country, nurses and social workers are considered to be on pretty decent wages and, thanks to cheaper housing, may well be able to afford a cleaner?

Yes, my single parent social worker best friend has a cleaner. 3 hours a week, £10 per hour. We live in a fairly cheap area. It saves her sanity.

We don’t have a cleaner anymore, although used to when we had 2 under 2. We do however outsource the ironing, and sometimes the laundry. I’m a SAHM. We outsource it because we can afford it and I hate doing it.

I would LOVE to have a cleaner to take the pressure off,but sadly can't afford it.

I think it's just a fact if our busy working lives, and wanting to prioritise family time over cleaning.

Because cleaning is so dull and time consuming, and if you can afford it why wouldn’t you want that time back? We have a cleaner who comes once per week. We still do our own laundry, keep the place tidy, etc. Our cleaner does a deeper clean of the entire house once per week so I never have to do bathrooms, mop or hoover (well hoover the kitchen daily because my dc constantly makes mess). A cleaner doesn’t mean you never do any domestic stuff again, but just lightens the load a bit

Another thought - having a weekly cleaner for 2 hours around here is less than 2 adults smoking 1 packet of cigarettes each a week. It costs considerably less than taking a family of 4 to pizza express or Harvester for dinner 1 night a week (when 2 working parents are too knackered to cook!).

As luxuries go, the costs aren't that high in relation to others and a new generation who are easily able to access cleaners (most cleaners around here are Eastern European - there was a time it was hard to get a cleaner), so why not?

Plus this generation of men aren't getting away with enjoying the increased family income of 2 full time working adults, while still being able to expect their DW does all the domestic chores as if they were a housewife. Hence more men seeing the benefit to paying someone else to do the cleaning....

Read up on comparative advantage... that’s why I have one. No kids and have a cleaner 2 days a week. I’d have her every day if I could. I love coming home to a clean house!

Indeed coffee, though it's still far too often framed as women outsourcing their work, rather than a household doing that. The men hiring cleaners are usually invisible in discussion. With that in mind, it's in a way quite refreshing to hear about a bloke getting needled for doing it instead, and the woman in the setup not mentioned!

Your friend is just the sort of person I'm thinking of soydora. It's interesting as well that outsourcing this aspect of domestic work is so much more controversial than doing the same with eg driving, or cooking, or DIY.

I earn £35 per hour and work long stressful hours, as does my husband. Our cleaner costs £10 per hour (going rate locally). It's a good investment economically as much as anything else!

I don't know anyone In real life that has one!

I have a fortnightly cleaner who comes in and does jobs like hoovering the house and stairs and then mopping the downstairs hard floors. I like coming home to have the floors all done and dried properly and no longer having the issue of soggy socks or keeping ds out of the way whilst I do it.

I work 13 hour shifts so I am out around 14+ hours a day.

I like to use my time off for more fulfilling things than cleaning all weekend.

A lady from the village came to clean the house when I was growing up. It was a large (run down) farmhouse and my mother needed a bit of extra help. I also worked as a part time cleaner when I was completing my education and training. It was commercial cleaning in offices and I found the physical work a welcome relief from study.

I would certainly employ a cleaner if I could afford it.

Some people will turn everything into "class warfare".

My very lovely cleaner is fabulous. She does have a key and I trust her implicitly. She's a single Mum and wants to have a job which allows her to drop her boy at school, get to me for just after 9, do 2.5 hours at my house, another 2.5 hours at another house not far away, then back to get her boy from school. It works perfectly for her, and during school holidays i'm happy to let her bring her son with her and he sits and plays on the Xbox or reads while she's working. Her job solves all of her problems with childcare and flexibility.

I don't see why outsourcing cleaning is so frowned upon by some people. I pay someone to cut my hair. We paid someone to wallpaper my son's bedroom. We paid someone to chop down trees in the garden. I pay people to service my car, wash my windows, fix the boiler, mend a dripping tap....

I'll be hiring a cleaner soon as it makes no sense for me to do my own cleaning.

I work from home and can make much more than the cost of the cleaner in that time.

Also I hate doing housework.

To be crystal clear I have NO issue with people having cleaners . My mum used one and we had one for a while

What rankles is me are the comments about ‘long hours /stressful jobs ‘ and the implicit assumption they work harder than others

Having a cleaner is a privilege but let’s not delude ourselves that the cleaner we use have the same privileges

They probably won’t get national insurance state pension contributions
They won’t have a nice company pension plan , or bonuses
They don’t get paid Holiday and sick pay
And I doubt that £10 and hour adds up to
Much

Sometimes people don’t really appreciate how fortunate they actually are and how unfortunate it might be for some of the cheap labour people use

Some acknowledgement of that is surely decent

Both work full time. Stagger hours so one of of us can do school drop of and the other pick up. I cook, MrsD does laundry. Both do one after school / weekend activity with DS. Cleaning was becoming a bone of contention, both thought we were doing more than other, became initiation point for arguments. It was either a cleaner or a divorce lawyer.

We both work FT with a pretty long commute and a busy life. And I hate cleaning but like a clean house. And I can afford it.

Put another way

If cleaners were paid such that they had a decent annual income , paid their NI contributions and had 4 weeks holidays and sick pay

Not so many of us would be saying ‘I can afford it ‘ !!!

Some people do work harder than others.

My dsis earns four times my salary but I know she works a lot harder than me (has been reduced to tears through exhaustion in the past).

People are mentioning long hours to explain why they value having a cleaner.

You don’t have to be paid much more than a cleaner to value having a cleaner - or even be paid more than a cleaner.

All you need is spare cash - but you can say that about any discretionary purchase.

I'm a single parent and I work full time in a demanding job. I hate gardening and I like my free time to be just that so I pay a gardener and a cleaner. I just wish I had a partner so I could afford more help! My cleaner does 2 hours a week which isn't enough really.