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 feel for you OP, not because you don’t have a maid but because you have MH problems and feel overwhelmed. You clearly need more help. Your DH and DC must start doing their share.

People suggesting the OP should get a cleaner, au pair (why on earth anyway, child is13!?) and all the rest of it are forgetting household has a combined income of £40k. There have been a lot of constructive suggestions on this thread, I hope some are of use to you OP.

twitter I do agree. I tried to recruit a housekeeper for five hours a week who could just keep things going for us and it was impossible.

I was happy to pay good money. But there are cleaners. There are childminders. There are agencies who will deep clean your house.

But a mother’s help type - I gave up!

I agree with Clionba - batch cooking is something to work towards. It's really intimidating to be faced with three meals worth of ingredients when you've been used to just popping a frozen pizza in the oven. And trying to do something and failing at it is a sure fire way to feel even worse about yourself

"Batch cooking is easy, everyone on MN does it. Why can't I? I'm useless"

Poor you, you are not being at all unreasonable to find your situation hard.

Leaving all the stuff about a maid aside. You are living away from your family and struggling with mental health and it seems like you do not feel supported by your partner and DC

If you were not so tired and depressed I would suggest:

Kondo your home
Try to find a different job that pays more or has a shorter commute (I know I know, easy for me to say)
Get a cleaner for three hours a week - but no point doing this til post-Kondo

Watch the Kondo Netflix and see if you can feel inspired

You sound low, and are not unreasonable to want change in your life

If you only have one child that is 13 it isn’t going to be that long until you can go out in the evening and leave him on his own. Soon enough he will be out and about with friends anyway and you won’t see much of him. Does one child of that age cause much mess? I have 3 and work but timetable 30 mins of chores in the morning and an hour in the evening so that the house doesn’t get too bad.

If this is true

1 .. first world probs

2 I’ll whip out the worlds smallest violin

3 get out of your bubble

4 as corrupt as the U.K. is SA is 1000 times worse

1. England is a lot safer.

Think I covered everything there?

Perhaps donate to a charity aimed at helping South African maids out of poverty for a start.

.....they have a job. And it can pay well, by local standards. Oh yes, I’m sure they’d rather crumbs/dependency on handouts from charitable organizations than the dignity of work.

Unemployment is so much better

there's a real gap in the market for help / maid's work / housekeeping that would make all the difference to working families

There sure is! A lot of people would benefit from having this type of casual work.

love how some posters are huffing and puffing in jealousy at the idea of someone having a maid,
but are happily living in a country with a royal family grin

Well I wouldn’t say ‘happily’ living with a royal family as much as, ‘can’t do anything about it and hate the concept of it, but at least the servants get paid and get to go home to their families’ living with a royal family.

@whatamessitsallis
That sounds like me. What can I do about it though?

Decorations are down .

Thanks for all the support. (I got my butler to type this for me obviously).

Just sayin'

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.
You are the products of your culture and upbringing - a lot of people born and bred in the UK are guilty of this too.

It sounds like you haven't got over the full 'culture shock' though and it may well be contributing hugely to your MH issues.

The three of you have no choice really other than to start taking more personal responsibility - your dc especially unless you want him to be like this as an adult as well?
The lifestyle you've been accustomed to would require a housekeeper in the uk.
A cleaner (£10 an hour?) can only clean a decluttered space so you still need to work on that.

My MiL arrived in UK from the African country where she had grown up with maids, gardeners, drivers, cooks the lot. Her family hadlived the colonial dream and she had never done a day's work in her life. She had three DC in 3 years and was pregnant with a fourth. She had a nervous breakdown when it became clear that while DFiL had managed to get a decent job here, it wouldn't pay enough to replicate the lifestyle they were used to. She never really got over it tbh and in later years when they could afford it sent all the laundry out and had a "daily" and a gardener.

OP

loving your butler comment! Glad you are feeling a bit better after getting decs down. Hopefully you will find some useful tips here. I am seeing mum later in the week so I can ask if she remembers how she figured stuff out when she came here but she is 80 so it's a long shot after 60 years!

Interestingly, like a pp, mum's brother in India also pays for the maid's children's education and various other things. I was born and raised here so won't pretend to know what's normal with the culture of domestic staff, but my uncle has had the same 2 people for years and years and would always pay for medical care and stuff.

Hoarding is a serious MH issue but there is help available try life-pod.co.uk

Fellow Saffa here and we always had a live in cleaner growing up and also when we moved back to SA three years ago. It was such a great help. So now we have just moved back to the UK again as prev poster said you sacrifice things. I guess things like or what we are used to in SA dont exist here in the UK....would be so much easier coming home to a lovely clean house, clothes all ironed! Dont worry, we all suffer around this time when the winter seems as if its going on for 100 years and its so hot back home. Dont worry the mood will change hopefully

Food shop online & get it delivered. Don't iron anything, buy poly cotton mixed & shake out & hang on hanger to dry. (silk, linen & pure cotton are creasing hell). Get once a week cleaner to hoover whole house & do kitchen & bathroom. Then you dust & wipe surfaces inbetween. Teen keeps their room clean and sets & clears dinner table. Your hoarding presumably makes it more than normal mess? So see GP re psych help. Good luck.

@DonCorleoneTheThird what are non royalists supposed to ? Emigrate en masse? The royal family have staff, we live in the same country, ergo we approve of servants? ?

Why did you make choices that took you away from what you need? Love doesn’t conquer all

Your title is unfortunate. If you've been on MN a while, it was fairly predictable that too many people don't read what the OP is actually saying, but leap on to a word or phrase and ignore everything else that has been said.

It does sound like you are both out the house long hours for not huge wages. There is often a race to the bottom on here, and posters telling us how they work 18 hours a day for £12K a year, but, interestingly, another thread running at the moment, which asked what hours people worked, is stuffed full of replies saying 'I work 20 hours a week and dh works 36' type replies.

I obviously don't know what part of the country you live / what your mortgage and other expenses are, but if there any way you can find £20 a week (£90 a month) for a cleaner, to keep the house clean, and commit both you and your dh to each putting in a 3 hour stint every weekend to declutter, you'd see SUCH a difference in a really short space of time.
Or,
(Depending how your mind works) - take a day's annual leave, and tackle a room, or two rooms, and actually take stuff to the charity shop or the tip, so it literally clears some space in your house.. This would work better for me, as I'd know I had to get it done in that fixed time.... on a weekend, I'd be thinking 'Oh, I'll do it later / tomorrow', but others might find it easier to do a small bit every week.
Find the right cleaner and they will not fret about your clutter.
Or, clear the kitchen and bathroom and just get them to do those at first, then add on rooms when you clear them.

Foodshop online, plan meals do you don't have to think. Mix of real 'cheat' meals (pizza) etc and maybe some stews, or meatballs in sauce that you could put in an electric slow cooker (about £40) in the morning and then you'd at least come home to some hot dinner.

No need to iron, most clothes can drip dry or tumble dry and if carefully hung to dry won't need ironing. If ironed shirts are essential you can often buy in local ironing services for around £1.50 per shirt, and they collect and deliver. Independents are cheaper usually than big laundry companies.

If you can tackle the big mess one weekend, or at least one room, then eventually you could maybe get a cleaner for a couple of hours a week (costs vary but £9-£15/hr depending on location).

Extra help in mornings and afternoons is practically impossible we found as those who wanted part-time jobs generally had their own children so were only available during school hours. A 13 year old is quite old and should be able to sort themselves out really. Even my 5 year is capable of getting dressed and washed, laying table for family, getting his own breakfast, and often helps gather dirty laundry, hang wet clothes, putting away clean clothes etc. The only possibility is if you're near a university you might be able to get a student to help in the afternoons (not much chance in the mornings!!).

Are you for real? Why should anyone feel the slightest bit of sympathy for you? Welcome to the real world without exploitation of the most economically vulnerable. Guess what, this is the norm for a lot of people.

I think this is m0re about your mh issues which need to be addressed. But in the short term, decluttering will make a huge difference. I am from sa and the thing I found hardest is the space. It's a lot easier to keep things tidy and clean when there's more space. With a lack of space, it becomes about not having too much space and clever storage (we build masses of built in cupboards which I know aren't that popular here but they have been amazing for us).

I would agree with everyone else that a cleaner for a few hours a week would be beneficial to you.

Also look into mothers help. Often students who come for a couple of hours in pm. Oversee homework, do some cooking, and very basic tidying.

OP's life in SA > OP's UK life >>>>> OP's former maid's life.

Knowing what pampered, undeserving (i.e.couldn't replicate anything like the same lifestyle in the real world) fools 'their' white population is, in a very real way, helps drive the ridiculous levels of crime, resentment, and whatnot that exists over there.

*I have struggled with depression, hoarding and anorexia all my adult life.

I feel like this is your problem not the lack of a maid.*

Yes I agree, I think the maid is a red herring really. If you were healthy then you might feel a bit envious occasionally of your SA friends but then you’d buck up and get on with it. It’s the MH issues which are stopping this, I think it’s these which mean you’ve (all of you) let it get a bit out of control.

Do you have anyone who can come and help you “blitz” one weekend? If not a friend or family member then perhaps someone you would have to pay - there are professional declutterers out there, or maybe a cleaner who wouldn’t mind showing you the ropes on cleaning and getting stuck in to some decluttering too.

Also, regarding the DC being spoiled and it’s more effort to make them do things - stop that now! I know it’s a battle but if you win the battle now it will make your life easier - and more importantly your DC will be a nicer and more competent person - in the long term.

Also agree with the suggestion of Vitamin D. Not just any old supplement, you need the mega dose ones. There are some you spray into your mouth which are supposed to be good.

helps drive the ridiculous levels of crime, resentment, and whatnot that exists over there.
Rattus so you think if all the white people left there would be far less crime?