AIBU to struggle without a maid

[WobbleBottomBum]

NC because I know I will be flamed but am genuinely seeking advice.

I grew up in South Africa. Everyone has either a maid or extended family to help with housework and childcare.

I've been in England for years. My DC is 13.
I have struggled with depression, hoarding and anorexia all my adult life.

I go home for visits but my husband's job does not really exist there, and DC is settled so we are unlikely to go there to live.

When we see friends there they don't realise how lucky they are. They can go out when they want, there is always childcare. A quick overnight trip away is no big deal.

Wake up in the morning and breakfast is cooked, come home from work and dinner is made. Clothes are ironed and put away. DC room tidy, floors are hoovered, bathroom cleaned. Children's tutors are cheap.

Our joint household income is about £40k. We could never afford that in England.
DH has to leave the house at 7 and is back around 7 . I leave at 8 back at 6. We are exhausted, the house is a mess, we just have a ready meal. We don't really have friends and the house is too messy for anyone to come.

In an ideal world I would have someone in for one hour each morning and one hour each evening, but no-one would work those shifts and I couldn't afford that anyway.

I struggle and don't know what to do.

I think you need to address your problems and not wallow in what might have been. In reality your average South African these days does not have the full time help that you describe and as others have said, that is not an easy or nice life for the employee, only the employer.

You are not on top of your house because of your hoarding and you need to address this first.

I recommend you look at someone like Marie Kondo (she has a series on Netflix at the moment) and sort all your things out. Then go from there.

Could you get your DC interested in cooking, are there classes at school, maybe you could both look at evening classes, ready meals and pizza work out expensive. Pp have great ideas, a trip to the doctor to look at your low energy, hoarding, there are many groups that can help you.

Is your partner doing his fair share? It’s no good recommending rotas, schedules and batch cooking if you are picking up after a grown adult male as well.
Why are you both on such low pay working long hours? Could you both look for something more financially rewarding and use the extra money for help in the home?

I really struggle without domestic help but it’s better than moving to South Africa.

I understand it is very unfair on the maids themselves.

Thank you for all the suggestions. We will have to have a serious family discussion.

The hours we work are brutal, I'm including commute time in that though.

DC is very spoilt. Partly from when we lived with my mum. The effort in getting DC to help is like pulling teeth so I usually just do it myself in the end. DH also grew up not lifting a finger. He does try but it does not come naturally to any of us due to how we grew up.

Is your income mentioned an after-tax and NI contributions and pension income? ie, what you actually have coming into your bank account? Or is it your joint official salaries pre any deductions?

It’s a big change but do-able.

I think if you feel better, it will seem less daunting. Take some vit D and try to eat good quality protein every meal.

You need to feed your child well. Batch cooking just needs planning. We made soup tonight and it will do us three days. We did extra potatoes for fish cakes tomorrow night.

We both work and have three kids, two dogs and no family help. We juggle. We do have a cleaner once a fortnight though

I think a cleaner is your best bet. I had one when I worked, they came twice a week , six hours in total and did ironing too. It’s lovely to come home to a clean, tidy house and just be able to relax.
i’d still like one but would feel guilty as I don’t work any more, kids grown up and left and it’s just DH and me. And he does a lot round the house. But still....
previously, before kids, I lived in SA for a year as a single person and had young women call round at my apartment every day looking for work . Eventually I hired a young woman for a few hours a week as she was desperate for work. Gave her extras in the form of tea and sugar (which she asked for) and it worked OK . I didn’t really need her — but as you say, everyone had maids, gardeners etc. It was the norm.

is it because you have let your house get in an absolute state and now it’s overwhelming to try and get it clean and tidy because it’s just so messy? what do you do on weekends? could you not say that every saturday morning you will spend an hour or two catching up on housework? saturday mornings i clean the bathroom and strip the beds and dust the house. it takes about an hour at most. once you are on top of the cleaning it takes no time at all to run a vacuum round. why can your husband and 13yr old not help? why not spend one weekend all of you getting on top of the housework. i’m sure once it’s tidier it will be easier to manage

It's not just South Africa, many expats struggle massively when they come back and lose all the help they used to have. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Cleaner, au-pairs, all valid options.

You can employ consultant (Marie Kondo style) to help you get your house back into order, and make it much easier to maintain it.

You can order things like Gousto or Hello Fresh to ease you into cooking.

You should get help about your depression.

OP, YANBU to struggle with MH issues.

Hoarding is a MH issue.

Go to your GP and talk more about it..

You are both working very long hours for a combined income of £40k. Any chance of one of you getting a higher paid job or a job with a shorter journey to work?

I know not everyone has a maid, I should not have phrased it like that.

There is more community though. Many extended family members often live together especially when unemployed. The flip side of that is many hands helping at home.

I'm not saying 'yes it's good that people are exploited'. I'm saying 'this is my situation today and I don't know how to cope'.

I read another thread here about low wages and it struck a chord. We will try to earn more but it's not easy.

We don't have a spare room for an ap.

I agree with the posters feeling sorry for the maids. I had to sit through a dinner party once listening to a vile SA woman saying how unfair it was she couldn't pay staff peanuts in the UK. I've never forgotten it. Pardon me if I don't lose any sleep over your "problem."

First address the hoarding. Then everything else will start to fall into place more easily in my view. You can't get on top of the dirt and other problems with a house full of unnecessary stuff. Employ a de-clutterer for half a day and see if things look brighter.

Can you add up hoe much you spend in groceries each week.
Then do a meal plan (or ask on here for some ideas) followed by an online shop.
What's the £ difference between your current spend and an online shop spend?
However small the difference is, it will soon add up to enough to outsource a chore (ironing, cleaning, service wash at laundrette etc). That could be something to look forward to.
Take it in turns to cook the evening meal (all 3 of you) and do 1 batch cook every Sunday. You'll soon build up a freezer full of healthy meals
Look at Joe Wicks recipe books - he does really healthy, tasty meals that take 15 mins.
But most of all I think you should address your depression, anorexia and hoarding. You sound very unhappy and that's no way to live a life. Can you go back to the docs and explain everything?
You sound exhausted. It must all seem overwhelming. Take one small step forward at a time. It will be worth it.

There are a few things you can do to make life easier. Firstly, you all need to pull your weight including your DC. Secondly, exhaustion etc - I get it, I do. So what I do is: I do a tray bake - some chicken breasts, new potatoes, veggies etc, bit of olive oil, herbs and lemon, stick it in the oven and set a timer for 30 mins, and for that 30 mins I clean and tidy as much as I can, but only for 30 mins. Then we have dinner, then after dinner DH does his 30 mins, which includes the washing up.

Wow how the other half live to actually get to experience a ‘maid’. Also no doubt that kind of upbringing had a direct impact on your ability to do it yourself which is why you’re eating ready meals when a risotto takes twenty mins to make.

There are a ton of quick easy meals out there. Try to get yourself some help for the medical issues, then try setting yourself a routine and getting somecooking classes.

Even simple things like if you go from one room to another you can take something to put away helps. Also slow cookers are a god send

No it’s not that hard to manage you just need to get your stuff in order.

I will try vitamins, thanks.

I'm too embarrassed to get a cleaner even once a week because of how untidy the place is.

Also, fuck off Daily Mail.

I think getting some paid help and DH to deal with the hoard/too much stuff you have will really help. Having far far less "stuff" really reduces my anxiety it's liberating to not need to keep stuff you have no room for.

Your DS is 13 let him cooks some basic meals for himself, they soon learn. One of mine is going through an instant noodle phase...

Batch cooking - mumsnet answer to anything and everything

I am sorry but your hours are not brutal, they are perfectly normal. Put South Africa to one side, forget comparing your lives with people living there (and profiting from others' suffering). Engage your DH and child in a new plan of how to manage housework cooking etc and get medical help for your issues: this is totally doable and you can do this, but stir thinking about South Africa and start realising you guys need to do the work, and its not unmanageable for two adults and a 13 yo.

The reason we don't tend to have maids in the UK is becaus hat sort of work tends to be paid well and those workers have rights and are entitled to fair treatment.

Take heart from the fact you aren't exploiting someone so you can sit on your arse........then have a huge we clutter. I really find that helps massively.

Get a company in for a one off clean then go.from there.

Dh and I both have demanding stressful jobs. It's hard juggling family life and work. We drop the ball all the time and make cock ups both in our family life and work. Extra help would be amazing but we don't have the money or the space to have an au pair.

I knew a lovely South African who shared her experience of having a maid/gardener/cook/nanny. It sounded awful 😢. In their eyes they thought they were doing good giving people work and money and a roof over their head (albeit in a shed at the bottom of their garden). To me it felt terribly exploitive and wrong on so many levels.

I would rather continue to be a stressed struggling parent/employee than have servants. A cleaner/au pair would be good if we could afford it but that is an employer/employee relationship rather than the master/servant model that was common in South Africa.