How much would it cost to outsource ALL housework?

[silvercuckoo]

Asking more out of curiosity, but still.

How much do you think it would cost to outsource all daily household chores (apart from those that are pleasurable / hobbies, like light gardening or walking the dog in good weather?)
Say two young children, single adult, 4 bed house. Cooking, cleaning and tidy-up, laundry / ironing, shopping, household admin etc.

Our Nanny does 3 days per week and keeps on top of kids' laundry, batch cooks for the kids and keeps their rooms tidy. She costs us £1k per month.

Really? What is the hourly rate and are you paying appropriate taxes etc?

The nanny should be cleaning up after the kids. You must be spending a fortune already with the nanny and cleaning so I can see why it would be frustrating to come back to chaos. My life has got a lot easier since I discovered Cook and during the week we use their meals. That might be something that could make your life less stressful.

I think I could buy the following in for about 9k based on what's on offer locally:

4h cleaner per week, to cover cleaning, dishwasher, laundry. 2.4k
2h gardener per week, or handyman. 2k
2h pay week to cover admin. 1.6k
1 cat sitter visit a day to deal with the annoying bits. 3k

Not including childcare because we don't have kids yet but do live directly next to the primary school. Those figures are all based on local prices except the gardener, which I made up to match handyman prices. I don't think our house has enough diy or gardening to do to warrant that much, but it would be balanced by extra cat sitting in holidays.

At the moment we have a cleaner for two hours. I would personally up this to 4 to cover all laundry and dishes, but can't complain. I think the concept of service is undervalued. No wonder people are strung out when they're trying to do it all, when money can be passed around providing work

Oh, and not including cooking, because I enjoy it, when I have time to do it.

If I could pay someone to exercise for me though...

You have a nanny issue, and possibly a cleaner issue.

Nanny should be looking after the dc needs, which includes clearing up behind them, toys away, breakfast/lunch/dinner made and cleared away, and washed up /dishwasher loaded unloaded. Your nanny NEEDS to tidy as she goes.

Cleaner needs clear lists/jobs. An hour for each floor of the house. (we live in a three storey house with three bathrooms and four kids - I can have the whole house cleaned and tidied in three hours).

Put the dishwasher and a machine load of washing on every evening just before bed, then nanny unloads dishwasher in the morning, you unload the washing machine.

If your cleaner does ironing, she should be able to iron 2-3 machine loads of washing in an hour.

Consider splitting your cleaner to two hours twice a week. One day is thorough clean, other day is quick clean over and ironing. The nanny should be able to hoover/sweep up, tidy and wipe down the main living areas everyday in less than 20 mins. If neither of them can manage this, get new people in.

What family house can be thoroughly cleaned in two hours? And who can do a family’s worth of washing in two hours? All for a tenner an hour?

To be fair I am seriously thinking about getting the cleaner to come for an extra hour a day to do dishwasher, washing machine, wipe worktops, plump cushions, etc.

I have always said no to dogs because of the commitment. Hand on heart I reckon the 10 year old cat has cost £10k if I add up his costs over ten years.

So when we lived overseas we had a Amah who worked 13 hours a week - in this time she cleaned, tidied, did the washing and ironing and put everything away, watered the garden and got fresh food from the market. She also said she was happy to prep food for the evening meal - ie peel veg in that time. However, this was a house with no children and no one home through the day - I suspect that you’d need at least double those hours to do the same thing in your setup plus dog walking on top. You might well need absolutely full time if she needs to follow the nanny and children round clearing up behind them!
At £12 an hour 25 hours a week would £1200 a month with the dog walking on top if you could find someone happy to do that. You’d then be employing them so much that you might end up their actual employer as you are with the nanny so all the responsibilities associated with that.

You shouldn't be coming home to ANY child related mess as your nanny should take care of this. So if both your nanny and your cleaner do their jobs properly you should be able to spend the time with your kids rather than housework

I really want to be a nanny/housekeeper. I'd only charge 16k.

@WerewolfNumber1 :O jealous. That's over double my salary 😭😭

Also, OP, I don't know about price but my 2 bed flat would be spotless within 2 hours. I do keep on top of it though

*@Queenie8
“If your cleaner does ironing, she should be able to iron 2-3 machine loads of washing in an hour.”

You must be having a laugh right ?!

Mini2007
No not having a laugh at all. Each machine load is made up of approximately 50% iron able clothes, the rest is pants/socks/teatowels etc, or it is at least in my house......

Wow. What an odd thread.

I would assume anyone caring for children includes as part of that work, cleaning up with, and around the children - part of that is teaching the children that 'we need to tidy this away now, before we do that'.

I pay my cleaner £10ph and she does 2 hours a week and does masses in that time. I can't imagine how she could fill 10 hours a week.

I keep reading this £10 p/h for a cleaner in lots of threads and can't understand where and how Mumsnetters are finding good cleaners for that price? Not in London and it's £15 for half-decent ones who are usually with firms small or large. £10-12 for an unreliable independent one who's off at a few hours' notice every couple of weeks, or who doesn't understand the instructions and gets stuff wrong.

I’m a cleaner in the Suffolk area. I charge £10 an hour. I’m a good cleaner. I pay attention to detail and do my job properly. One of my clients actually referred to me as Mary poppies. I come in. Get stuff done. And get on with it. U can get good cleaners for that price. But you may have to go through a few to get s good one. I don’t belong to an agency. People find me through Facebook or word of mouth. Keep looking. A recommendation from someone is worth a lot to me to keep my money coming In. So I would ask on Facebook if someone has a good cleaner.

I have lived in London for over a decade and never paid for more than 11 an hour for a cleaner- I have had 3 and they have always been entirely reliable.

Persephoneplant - you do realise that not everyone on MN lives in London, don't you ? £10 an hour is pretty normal where I am. My cleaner is self employed, I'm paying her, not agency fees. She is excellent and gets ll her work on recommendations so no advertising either.

Our cleaner comes 4 hours/week and costs £11/hour. We need to do 1 hour of laundry/day (most of that is sorting/folding as we use the dryer). Tidying up at the end of the day is an hour’s work. The kitchen takes about 1.5 hours each day (to clean all 3 meals and finish unstacking the dishwasher in the end). Cooking dinner takes around 1 hour/day (unless you just want to get cook meals and shove them in the oven which would probably be cheaper than paying the labour). Breakfast/lunch are quick and easy.

Online shopping takes maybe 1 hour/week including meal planning. So if all that was done at £11/hour, I’d say 4.5 hours/day*7 =31.5 hours/week, plus 4 hours cleaning weekly and 1 hour online shopping is 36.5 hours domestic chores/week. At £11/hour that’s just over £400/week, so what, £1,700/month? If you’re not paying cash in hand add on VAT or add on PAYE & payroll tax or whatever it is. £2k/month one way or another is probably a fairly cheap option to get all those jobs done. You could pay less I suppose if you paid minimum wage but I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone to do it all for that wage.

Yes, I'm not in London either!

On care.com here there are no cleaners at all under £12 an hour, most are more, and if you phone some from yell listings, only a few are £10, and most of them are fully booked up. There was one who put an ad through the door who charged £10 but she misunderstood several basic instructions.

I don't think any of us have a properly run house OP so no need to let Gordon Ramsey loose just yet 😂. What does astound me is the amount of money some people are willing to pay for this sort of stuff, I would class myself as well off (nice house, car etc) but I would never pay someone £1k of my hard earned money every month for hoovering and polishing!!

Just to echo what pp have said, the nanny should be clearing up after herself and the children!
As for the cleaner, she must be laughing all the way to the bank! I have a cleaner for 2 hours a week, she has priority jobs (eg kitchen, bathrooms) then whatever else she has time for eg. Cleaning inside of windows, emptying dishwasher.
She doesn't do the kids bedrooms though, they have to do that themselves

Where I live cleaners get paid minimum wage. As do a lot of people, including a lot of university graduates.

If only...

That's all I think when I see these threads

I pay DS £1 a week for keeping his room tidy 🤣