Should nanny tidy up toys before going home

[treeliver]

And in general during the day ? I had a nanny before and she kind of automatically did this...

However she did only look after 1 child. New nanny is looking after my two.

But I felt a bit miffed when I had welcomed her in this morning to quite a tidy house and obviously it got completely trashed and she just left, without lifting a finger.

I get that it gets messy, but the last 30 minutes she was just chatting to me anyway, whilst the older one was watching cartoons and younger one was just hanging out.

I don't know if she would have tried to tidy up, had I not come in and had a chat with her. Does it send mixed signals ?

She hasn't really tidied up much otherwise either to be honest. But I noticed it more today because I left the house especially tidy this morning for her.

Also, random question, but emptying the bin is not part of what the nanny should do right ? Previous one used to do it, if I hadn't got to it on the odd occasion ( maybe 3 times in a year ) she also used to occasionally hoover up after the my son, if he'd made a mess on the floor with play doh. Current nanny just leaves the play doh on the floor ( well she did today ) and didn't tell older child to tidy it away and close the pots. So basically the house was trashed and play doh everywhere.

I feel a bit miffed but perhaps it was caused by me being there for the last 30 minutes ? We were just catching up on the day and I started prepping dinner.

I'm not sure if it's me or her and how to say it to her in a nice way.

I bet they weren't compensated for being a housekeeper as well as a nanny. They probably needed their jobs too much to say no to overly entitled parents. Putting the shopping away indeed 🙄

Yes, nanny should tidy up after kids. When we had a nanny, I was conscious that our house was her work place, so we made sure it was tidy on her arrival, and expected to find it roughly as we’d left it when she finished for the day. I wouldn’t expect her to vacuum, but would expect play dough to be off the floor. I think this is fairly standard.

They were very well paid, and there was no sense at all that they 'needed their jobs too much to say no'. The children absolutely adored them, and they were part of the mechanism which enabled family life to function, along with cleaners and gardeners and so on.

Ex Nanny here, I prided myself on my ‘parents’ coming home to a very tidy house. My charges had been fed and I cleared up and we’d be on wind down hour with either tv, books or a activity like colouring etc. This was with a 3 year old, 20 month old and 6 month old.
No need for mess left.

I think something like this is the way to go forward.

"Hey nanny, I only realised after you'd left yesterday, how much tidying up needed to be done. I presume you were planning to use that last half hour to tidy up, until I came in and interrupted with chit chat, so apologies for that. I prefer that Johnny puts away one activity/toy before getting another out but as long as everything is tidied away by the end of the day I don't mind how you structure the play. If I interrupt your work flow in future then feel free to ask me to go away, I won't mind!"

If you take the "blame" for her not having tidied up this time as you distracted her from the routine (because you are sure she would have tidied up and not left the place a tip if she had been given the time to do so) it doesn't come across as lecturing as you're accepting that you may have had an impact on the outcome, and gives her a way to save face for having not tidied up. But, it then sets the expectation that in future you expect her to tidy up before she leaves and there are no excuses for it not being done going forward. If she still doesn't do it then you can bring it up and say "I did ask that you tidied up at the end of the day and it's still not being done"

I agree with this. The nanny is responsible for the mess and the nanny should supervise/achieve tidying up. There's no reason why not. My children attend nursery and they are expected to tidy up there (and they tidy up with me supervising/helping at home).

The older child should be tidying up but supervised and encouraged by the nanny.

Yes. Of course. It’s part of the childcare.

Our nanny not only tidied up after the kid (and teaches him to help and do it) she does the laundry, changes beds, tidies and cleans the playroom, rearranging to freshen it when necessary, cooks and cleans up for him, and I have to stop her from cleaning up after us.

It’s part of the job.

Anyone can watch a kid fuck a house up, you pay premium amounts for a nanny.

You can spot the people who’ve not employed nannies

I used to nanny and I would never dream of finishing for the day without tidying away. Even if the children were still playing I would tidy away as much as I could, leaving only a small amount for the children or parent to finish off. In regards to the bin common sense would make me empty it however I will be completely honest and say that emptying the bin is not a job I like so would try and leave it until I had no other choice. When I first started nannying it was one thing that one of my first families had to ask me to do as I never thought to do it. Perhaps your new nanny doesn't realise and you may need to have a word with them.

Our nanny would always tidy majority of mess up and Hoover. She’d get the kids to help (had them ages 11 months -4). Sometimes the kids would need a lot at the end of the day so the last activity might get left out but she kind of got them to tidy as they went so only one activity out at a time. She would never leave something like play doh out. She would load the dishwasher but wouldn’t hand wash anything. Where I am, most contracts will state “tidying related to children.”

I have a friend who used to be a nanny and she said she was expected to tidy up after the children and do the children's laundry and supervise their homework if they were of the age to have homework. She would heat up meals that had already been prepared (and obviously feed and supervise eating and tidy up), however would not cook meals for the children from scratch.

One of the skills you expect a nanny to have is how to manage a child's time and behavior so they are tidying up their toys at the end of the day.

Just say to her I'd like to encourage tidy up time at the end of the day so please get the kids to help out their toys away.

As a parent of a toddler I find it hard to clean and tidy until he’s in bed because he just further trashes what I’m tidying so I wouldn’t have higher expectations of a nanny than I would of myself. Unless I bung him in a cot/play time with some screen time while I go over and mop which presumably you wouldn’t want her to do either?

I would say she should have tidied up the toys and sorted out the playdoh. I had student nannies on placement years ago when mine were little and the lady who came round to vet me told me what was and wasn't acceptable to ask a nanny to do. Anything child related was fine, so kids washing and ironing, kids meals, inc washing up and putting away, kids bedrooms tidying, changing sheets etc, cleaning up after them was all acceptable as it was to do with the child.

Tidying the toys up is a perfectly reasonable expectation from you. Maybe she was just chatting, but I'd be worried she's a slacker if that was her first day when you'd think she'd be on her best behaviour.

Yes she should. If mess is made on her watch she should deal with it. Our nanny got gradually more sloppy. She would come with her own two children, make dinner for them, her and my youngest and just leave the mess everywhere for me to deal with when I got home whilst she walked off back to her nice clean tidy house. I'd remind her to please put the dishes in the dishwasher and give the table a quick wipe but she'd giggle and say "oh I forgot". Then came the pandemic, paid her for 6 months then made her redundant. Just couldn't face the thought of coming back to that mess again after a long day at work.

what does it say in her contract?

Yes, she is responsible for the mess on her watch.
Although I would also expect that she shows/encourages the children to tidy up after themselves.

I think you sent mixed messages with the chit chat.
I would definitely expect the toys to be tidied away either by the children with encouragement or by the nanny depending on age, apart from those in use.
On the bin I think common sense applies. My husband would generally bring ours out at night so it would be rare that she would need to do anything,but if the kitchen bin / recycling became full during the day I would expect that she'd put in in the wheelie bin.

I’ve had a number of nannies over the years and they always cleared up after the DC as well as other child related chores.

toys should be put away, if there’s play doh on the floor it needs to be swept/hoovered.

DCs beds should be changed once a week, towels hung up after bath time, pans washed up after their dinner is cooked.

I’ve had nannies that have been more rigid than others but generally I think flexibility in the relationship works better. It does have to be both ways though.

I'm flexible and I was actually tidying away the nannies stuff too whilst cooking and chatting. She was just sitting down whilst I was moving around, cleaning the table / cooking..

I've just found a cup she's used on the side and it's given me the rage, as I also cleared some wrappers off the table that she'd left there and I also did some of the washing up after the kids lunch that she had not done..I have been doing stuff like that since she started. Nothing is ever done 100 percent. The house is a constant tip.

I will need to do something about this because I shouldn't have to tidy up after her, as well as my kids. She's supposed to make my life a bit easier.

I think it depends on what you discussed with the nanny when she started. At her old job tidying up might not have been a requirement.
Ultimately she's there to look after the children.
I would say bins is not the nanny's job. She may choose to do them but it's not her role.

Yes your nanny should tidy up the toys and children’s meals and any other child related mess from the day. Particularly if you’d left the house tidy this morning, ideally you should be coming home to the house in the same condition.

I don’t think nannies should be expected to do any housework not relating to the children however ie emptying the bin. Our wonderful nanny used to kindly unload and reload the dishwasher and occasionally unpack the food shop, which we were very grateful for. But it wasn’t at all expected nor was it in her contract.

I agree OP. We had a few nannies over the years and I don't think it's unreasonable to want to come home to a reasonably tidy house and not need to be cleaning up after her. When our kids got a bit older we had a nanny-housekeeper because our nanny didn't want to do cleaning and I drew the line at paying for 2 people to be in my house while the kids were at school!

Tidying away kids toys and a cleanish kitchen are pretty basic nanny duties I would say.

Don't be ridiculous.