To want a cleaner that will pick my clothes up off the floor?

[Zamphina]

Dp and I work very long hours during the week. We’re out of the house 9-10 minimum. We eat dinner in the office. When we get home we’re exhausted and just want to sleep. So often the kitchen has our breakfast stuff. We’ve left clothes on the floor. There might be sunday’s dishes on the table. The laundry has been left out drying.

We earn an OK salary and have a tiny flat to save money, so a cleaner coming 2-3 times a week for two hours a time won’t be an issue.

But obviously I’m slightly embarrassed for someone to see my home in such a mess. Are there any cleaners who will sort all of this? Pick up the clothes, put them on to wash, load the dishwasher, and clean the bathroom etc?

You need to separate these things, they are not all equally bad:

• worn clothes on the floor - absolute no no. Just don't do it. It's no harder to put them in a laundry basket or on the back of a chair (if you're going to wear them again) than it is to drop them on the floor
• unwashed dishes out - at a push, not the worst offence I've ever seen. But try to at least pile them up in one place. And dispose of any food waste. It would take under a minute to scrape plates and leave them in a pile, even if you didn't then have the time to wash them or load the dishwasher.
• clean laundry on the floor (not sure if there is any), possibly in piles for ironing or putting away - not a hygiene problem, just need to be clear what you expect the cleaner/housekeeper to do about it (put it away? Move it to vacuum underneath then replace?)
• clean laundry out drying - fine. But you need to specify if you expect washing and ironing to be done by the housekeeper, they're different jobs from cleaning.

Yes, you will find people who would do those jobs, if you're clear in your advert about expectations. A standard cleaner wouldn't. But don't leave your dirty clothes on the floor, as a bare minimum use the laundry basket.

If you decide to Have children and pets at some point then you’ll know what exhaustion is!

I’ll let my childfree sibling who is a firefighter know that only parents know what exhaustion is. They need to stop talking to me about their shifts because me taking care of my kid is much more back breaking work than running into burning buildings. Complaining git.

That ‘spot’ where your clothes fall to the floor in exhaustion, put a basket there.

You sound like me. Sounds more like ADHD-tyoe issues with executive function than just being lazy. Being tired after work and just not having the energy to do what you want and know needs doing... if ADHD isn't on your radar, do read up on it. Especially now there's so much more known about how it can manifest in women and people who have been socialised to mask it for decades. Having a full-on job can ruin previous methods that have worked to keep on top of it all.

yes, she has a dangerous job, good for her. Noone is saying she can't be tired. But dangerous work/long hours isn't the same as being a parent.

Is she 3 and half years and going into sleep deprivation all the while being told by society she's doing a shit job and could do better? All whilst she runs the household, takes on the mental load and goes to work all day on top of having to get 2 or 3 dependant humans up, dressed, fed and washed and where they need to be on any given day?

@Zamphina you need to look for a cleaner/ housekeeper. A LOT of people have them these days as life is just busier. Cleaners have adapted to accommodating these changing needs.

It's rare to find underwear on the floor but yes I'm really not that squeamish, I'm cleaning their loos/shower drains too and I have gloves if I thought it was necessary! 😊

@Zamphina however busy you are leaving clothes on the floor is a bit snobby. And dishes can be put in the dishwasher and maybe cleaner can unpack dishwasher? It's good to get organised even if you do have a helper.

I'm out the house from 6am - 8:30pm every Monday - Friday. I then have to make dinner when i am home.
Weekends i'm often out 10-12 hours a day too.

My house is immaculate, i just keep on top of it each day. i could never go to bed without doing the washing up, for example. I just couldn't sleep knowing it was on the side dirty!

I mean personally I would tell your employer to get fucked and go home at a decent hour, but then I worked with too many people burnt out to a shell by the demands of law and finance grad programmes.

Here is the secret - get a laundry bin and a chair. Put both in your bedroom. When you go to bed take off your clothes - put the dirty ones that need washing in the laundry bin, fold the ones that can be reworn and put them on the chair. Takes all of 1 min before you go to bed.

Mr Monkey and I have managed that for years at all hours and in all states of exhaustion/drunkeness.

My dad even managed it coming in at 3am exhausted from a 18 hour shift with lambing sheep.

Fucking hell, only on MN would a women - working up to 15 hours a day! - be told how lazy she is!

And that 'in the time she's posted this, she could have picked up her clothes' - well, maybe she's posting at work? In her lunch break? On the commuter?

As for the poster who thinks only parents can be 'tired', I'm sorry your kids don't sleep. Mine do. Parenting is hard - so is working. It's not a race to the bottom.

She can pay who she likes to do what she wants, but no one is too exhausted to drop their dirty knickers in to a laundry basket.

She is probably working on a very dull company merger not fighting a war or flying a rocket to the moon.

ciderhouserules
To be fair, I'd say it's lazy for anyone to dump their clothes on the floor instead of putting them away.

I include myself in that by the way. When a floordrobe appears it's because I've been lazy.

If OP wants to pay someone to pick up her clothes off the floor for her, she can look for someone who provides that service and pay an appropriate rate. It's entirely up to her.

But the idea that anyone dumping clothes on the floor isn't lazy is silly. It is, regardless of how much you earn.

Yes but working 15 hours a day is unnecessary and insane
Also leaves you time to pick your clothes off the floor

Yeah, you can find them - we used to have one who’d tidy brilliantly when we were at a similar stage of our careers. Obviously you have to pay more.

You do have to be careful though. The ones we have now drive me mad - they sweep stuff off surfaces and throw it anywhere else so that they can dust. Not mess though, stuff that we’ve left out deliberately because we use it. For example I can’t find the pot of sudocream that sits on my son’s changing table because they’ve chucked it somewhere and I don’t know where. They expect to have completely clear surfaces rather than clean round stuff, which just isn’t achievable.

Just pick up your clothes!! You’re an adult , stop behaving like a teenage slob!

Put the dishes into the dishwasher as you finish!

We all have jobs you know!! My house is never a tip! You’re making excuses for being lazy!

( by all means get a cleaner , but there is no excuse for living like you do!)

And the "parents have it worse than everyone, no exceptions" fallacy raises its head again.

Kinship carers of adult disabled people do this kind of "always-on" work in the home too.

There are plenty of health care professionals who end up working two consecutive 12 hour shifts because the person meant to relieve them phoned in sick. IT professionals are perpetually one major incident away from cancelling weekends and sleep. My at-desk record to date during an MI is 48 hours.

This kind of "can you stay late to deal with X?" work always falls to the childless and childfree because the parents have to leave to deal with their children. What parents don't see, because they exempted themselves from this, is that the more senior and experienced the childless/free person, the more likely they are to get the out-of-hours phone call. You remember being a junior technician and think "I didn't get called out" and don't realise that that gets worse with age in certain fields.

The OP obviously has time to hang up clothes/put away or drop into laundry basket.

After all, they surely shower, clean teeth, dry hair and get dressed! These actions take time but sorting worn clothes appropriately would add all of 30 seconds max to that time.

I think a PP has it right - these 2 knobheads are used to Mummy clearing up after them and aren't willing to grow up yet.

These threads always annoy me. People being so outraged that people might want help cleaning or are too lazy or too busy or too bad at things. And it's always only the things that are usually the preserve of women - household stuff.

OP, of course there are cleaners who will do this. But you need to make it clear up front and as others have said, it's sort of a cross between a cleaner and a housekeeper's job. When you're looking for someone, explain the reality that you're not very tidy and you need help with that as much as you do with the actual cleaning. Some will say no problem, to do all that will take xx hours. Others will say no.

🙄 It just takes a few minutes to take clothes off and put in laundry basket.

I’m sure if you pay them enough they’ll be happy to.

Our cleaner is happy to do that - I wash/ dry clothes and she irons them for us every week but she’s told me she’s more than happy to do the washing and drying too if necessary. I think you need to find the right person and be upfront about it from the start. I might be wrong but I think you’ll be more lucky with someone who doesn’t come from an agency. (Also please ignore the judgmental comments from people on this thread who know nothing about your life).

Yes but working 15 hours a day is unnecessary and insane
Also leaves you time to pick your clothes off the floor

Who are you to say it’s unnecessary?
If I’ve guessed correctly what kind of job OP is in, it tends to be really, really intense for a few years at a junior level, then becomes more manageable as you get more senior. And you reap the financial rewards of having put the hours in when you were junior.

Then other people get jealous of your salary even though they were never willing to work those hours on the basis that it was ‘unnecessary and insane’.

But sure, go around telling women to limit their financial prospects so that they can focus more on housework.

We have a cleaner / tidier.

DH and I both keep our clothes under control, but our teenage DCs with ADHD do not always do so. I remind, shout, and if necessary whip round their rooms before the cleaner comes, but if I am on an early day I'm out by 6am and have no control over what they do between 6am and going out to school.

If there are clothes left on the floor in their rooms, our brilliant cleaner will pick everything up and shove it in the washing basket without exception. She doesn't do a sniff test or check anything. Any stray clothes get put to be washed again. The DCs are slowly learning that if they left a favourite top out on the cleaning day it is likely to be some time before they get it back as it will need to go through the laundry cycle.

It is improving but definitely a work in progress...

@Confusion101

That's absolutely not the only bit that people on this thread are jumping on. It's the most common bit (for a reason), but people have been outraged that OP doesn't have time to wash up, that she's got dirty plates on the side, and that she's not got time to do laundry. I was pointing out that my cleaner does all the that stuff and more.

Do we leave clothes on the floor? Sort of and sometimes. The vast majority goes in baskets but there are exceptions. The baby's laundry goes on the floor next to the washing machine if it's full at the time (otherwise straight in). Rather than taking it upstairs to bring back down again. Tea towels as well. And swimming stuff. Also, if I'm having a shower in the evening, those clothes sometimes also go next to the washing machine, rather than in the basket.

Also, we are not saints and are busy. I can't promise that nothing else has EVER been dropped on the floor rather than put in a laundry basket. Vast majority in the baskets though (and I have them throughout the house to make that easy. As otherwise I suspect things would end up on the floor, especially from the older children).

Also, more relevant to OP. If stuff was on the floor, I suspect my cleaner wouldn't bat an eyelid, she'd just put it in the washing machine. But I do agree that largely a basket is as easy as the floor. Which I why I suggested OP do that.