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.

OP you have had lots of good advice.
I just wanted to say that I had a maid for a few years and it changed my life. I hadn't wanted one but I would love one now.
It makes an unbelievable difference to living but in the UK only the really well off can afford them.

My guess is that your main problem is the hoarding. Get rid of the clutter! And then constantly throw out things and simply stop buying things!

We live in a small flat and one of the main advantages of both dh and I being in full time work and the dc at school/nursery is that our home does not get messy (excluding weekends but even that is only about half an hour of cleaning on a Sunday night).

As a very lazy person I do not want to spend much time cleaning so I love our minimalist home.

I also don't like to spend much time cooking so I would never bother batch cooking. We just stick to simple stir fries, salads, omelettes etc. Or just chop up some fruit and vegetables and cheese and have a handful of nuts and there is an easy dinner! Takes 30 mins at the end of the day to prepare and clean up and then you are done. Because we like fresh food I do pop to the supermarket a couple of times a week in the early morning before we all head off for the day. I prefer this rather than using our valuable family time on the weekend to shop, and it means we have a range of fresh food in our fridge.

I would say no to a cleaner even if someone offered to pay for one. I wouldn't like the intrusion on our privacy and would feel anxiety about needing to prepare for the cleaner before they came. Would rather keep my house decluttered so I can clean as I go, a few minutes before and after work. A little longer on weekends.

I actually feel sorry for the DC in this situation. Presuming Mother's MH issues especially hoarding makes for an incredibly difficult and chaotic home life. Saying DC is spoilt - whose fault is that ? Also why is DH not bothered about state of home and unhealthy food that the family are eating ? Hope practical suggestions here help.

You need to see your GP and find out what therapy, counselling, etc is available to you. That will do much more for your mental health than employing a maid which isn't really the done thing here and would cost you far more money than you have in any case.

Watch Marie Kondo on Netflix for cleaning and decluttering inspiration.

is there something you could sacfircie for one month.what type of pizza do you get.or wine?something you do that you could take down to the bare essentials. then with whats saved a the end of the month you could get a blitz cleaner in. easier said than done but sometimes when you weigh it up there is something glaringly obvious you colud cut to save a few pennys.not for some obviously.

Its not your fault OP, ultimately your parents didn't equip you for adult life as your maid did everything for you as a child. So the stuff we take for granted you don't know how to do.

But you need to break the cycle with your own child and teach them those skills, how to tidy as you go, how to cook and clean etc.

I think the key is to tackle one area at a time - sort the mess out first. Take some annual leave to get it done and get professional help if necessary.

But you need to get your dc involved in the day to day asap as otherwise they will suffer like you are as an adult.

Lots of helpful replies here.

And some unhelpful and unkind ones. The OP knows she needs to do better and so she has asked for advice. She is not saying she is entitled to a maid. Having a dig at her because of her background is smug and superior.

My parents are from a country where 'everyone has a maid' because they were so cheap, except for those who worked as maids. But the downside to that is those women were not raising their own kids, and they were raising themselves. When my parents came to UK, let's say the shock was 'there'. Its this image that people get in their minds and life in the UK before coming here.

They got organised and were very systematic. Working similar hours to you, and kids the same age, we were taught to do our share. Our rooms left tidy, laundry in the basket and over time we were taught to iron and learnt how to cook ourselves after age 16. When parents would get home, kitchen tidy, rest of house tidy all parents had to do was make dinner shop and do the deep cleans when they felt like it.

Share the load amongst family (at a reasonable rate) take a few days off work to blitz the house. This will give you a head start. If you want maid lifestyle in the UK, you need to start looking for a better paid job unfortunately.

Sorry OP that you feel so bad. You need to seek medical help for your issues as you evidently feel you have no control over your life. Do seek help and you will be able to start improving things. Good luck.

I agree with others OP, see your GP.

You need to realise that leabing behind that system is a good thing.

it is a disgusting system using ( mostly black) underpaid staff to support a spoilt lifestyle.

And no not everyone has a maid in SA- the maids don't- often living is very bad accommodation, poorly underpaid and worling themselves into the ground to support their families.

Why would you think that is a good idea?

This whole system in SA which sees priviledged white people employ black maids is racist. I would play no part in it

hideously perverted system. A system that is rooted in the roughly 350-year-old oppression of black people by white people, and a system from which mostly white people have benefited.

johanfourie.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/the-truth-about-domestic-workers-in-south-africa/

Oh for pity' s sake, the system in sa has huge issues, but it's not as simple as saying hiring a black woman as a domestic worker is exploitation.

The op had a different life before and is working on change.

I have found this thread very offensive as a South African.

Do any of you get your nails done in a nail bar? If so, how do you live with yourselves? A lot of trafficked women are taken to the UK and forced to work as slaves! What about au-pairs who are treated like cheap nannies?

This thread has basically insulted us and grouped us altogether by saying we treat domestics badly and live like kings with slaves. It's like saying, EVERYBODY in the UK are rowdy alcoholics, they drink so much and behave so badly especially when they go abroad, they are ALL over weight as they eat greasy fish and chips everyday and then go to the pub, they ALL live on benefits and are lazy!

We have a cleaner who comes once a week for a couple of hours. Does the ironing and gives our flat a deep clean. She gets transport money and food. She gets the same pay as a person in any service job. We DO NOT treat her like a slave. In fact we tidy up before she comes. We employed her as we both have mental health conditions and this helps us cope and keep things in order.

Please look at your own country before making assumptions and insults of which you have no idea what you're talking about.

Au-Pairs UK
www.bbk.ac.uk/news/au-pairing-in-the-uk-2013-an-open-door-to-exploitation

Modern Slavery - UK
www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-45130589

www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/slavery-uk/

We have a cleaner who comes once a week for a couple of hours. Does the ironing and gives our flat a deep clean. She gets transport money and food. She gets the same pay as a person in any service job

That is fine, people here do the same and as long as they are properly paid and respected then great, everybody is happy. It's not the same as a maid though which is a different kettle of fish altogether.

@Timmytoo Less well off minorities are the ones who tend to work the jobs in the UK too. No one here is tarnishing SA with one brush. Having said that, you may treat your maid well, in your opinion. But how many others actually do? You cannot deny that in SA it is an overwhelming majority of people who do these types of jobs. Pitfalls of capitalism I guess. One man's gain is another man's misery. Instead of getting offended, have a good look around. Your neighbours area and the types of people you associate with. Who are their maids, and how are they treated. How do you friends believe they ought to be treated. If your maid lives in, and she has kids of her own, who do you thinking is raising them. What do you think will become of a child who learns to grow up 'on the streets'. Then complaints will arise about this same child because they are involved in gangs drugs etc. And you'll feel frightened when you come across them. It's a similar pattern here. An absent parent can't 'parent'.

As for trafficking etc, it's up to the government to control that not the consumer. Although we can and do play a role when it's brought to light.

We call domestic workers maids as well regardless of how many hours they've worked. To be honest, I don't know anyone who mistreats their cleaner at all. In fact the opposite. Here are typical requests for people looking for positions as a domestic

Gosh yes.... if only we had an oppressed population we could abuse and exploit for our own comfort
You poor thing.

Don't hold your breath MissMisery, with 175,00 jobs on high street being dispensed with this year, plus expected Brexit fallout, we'll be having plenty of that fairly shortly. Progress. Wonderful innit?

Aside from the thread topic... What’s all this ‘very long hours for £20k’ stuff?

8-6 including commute is pretty normal for a standard 9-5 job. Ok, it isn’t the MN std salary, where everyone has a phd and is a captain of industry, but guess what? Some people have pretty average jobs and earn basic salaries.

My family came from SA. Where everyone lived in dire, horrific poverty.

So yeah, yabu. If we can come over and go from living without a toilet to having a toilet we have to clean, you can organise your lives without a maid.

Most domestic workers are black as they're the ones who apply.

🤦🏽‍♀️

We have the fullest employment in the UK since the 1950s and certainly in the SE pressure on wages and fairly full employment (although I realise not all parts of the UK are in the same position).

the UK used to have loads of live in servants. Even my parents' m odest 4 bed house in the NE had a small upstairs bed room (which became mine) which orginally in 1928 was a live in servant's room and our house even originally had the bell in the living room you could press to call a servant (not that we had a servant) from the kitchen. Then fewer and fewer wanted to work in those jobs particularly live in ones, they got better jobs and the "servant problem" (hard to find servants) kicked in but then we got much btter appliances so technology - the hoover etc made it not so necessary. We got central heating when I was a little girl so all that work on coal fires my parents had to do went out of the window.

reading my 80s and 90s diaries recently (I have been scanning them) as we both worked full time we needed someone to mind the 2 week old baby etc. It was so expensive and is so today too because UK workers have relatively high wages and where we live there was always a lot of competition for workers. It was 50% of each of our full time net pay when I first started work. Worth it because we both could build careers, but very expensive.

I have lived in countries with cheap labour and have had a maid (pre-DC) and have friends and colleagues who have them.
Where I lived (unlike S. Africa) you couldn't do all the housework and cooking unless for a very small family, if working long hours - no supermarkets etc. My housekeeper spent a lot of time going round the markets. But it means I have no worries outsourcing cleaning etc.
My friends with DCs in developing countries are basically expected to drop them with the maid and go straight back to work. And I'm not convinced that the not very well educated or old housekeeper that some of them employ (because THEY are not paid well by Western standards even as professionals) are doing the best for the DCs even with things like hygiene as babies.
So it's not all rosy - both from the housekeeper's POV and the employer.

I feel sorry for your DC tbh. Think you need to stop fantasising about a lifestyle you can't afford, and start providing DC with a nice environment to live in, that they can being back friends too etc. When you had a child, you took on responsibility to look after them, start giving him proper food, proper dinners etc.

You know, irrespective of your issues, nothing will change till you start doing things differently. You owe it to your son to change things, and ensure he knows how to manage house, cook etc by time he leaves home.

Strange how almost all maids in SA are black,
And most people that employ maids are white.

And that's not racism?