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?

IpsyUpsyDaisyDoos
If the dishwasher is full because it was still running when you went to bed then it can be short term easier to clear dishes to the kitchen, get everyone ready and out the door and then come back later.

The downside is that it's a little irritating to come home to dishes on the kitchen worktop and means that walking in you're reminded that you've got a job to do.

I definitely leave the breakfast dishes until after the school run on busy mornings if I'm coming back home during the day Mumsnet would hate me.

I've mostly found this thread utterly despicable but am glad I caught up with it, against my better judgement. Otherwise, I'd have missed out on the hilarious idea of the Queen getting herself changed and dropping her clothes in a laundry basket 😂😂😂

With a household staff of over 1,000 including lady's maids (plural) as well as Women of the Bedchamber and Ladies of the Bedchamber, queens don't even dress themselves. I'm certain there was no such thing as a laundry basket in her rooms. The King has a similar team, with valets and assorted other functionaries with archaic titles.

A mistake is not lazy! I work a minimum of 42.5hr weeks and care for a 3 year old most of the day. My day starts at 4am and I don't stop till about 8pm earliest, so dont call me lazy when you know nothing of my situation, o and I don't have a cleaner and I don't leave dirty plates all around my house for hours/days on end, and I don't have dirty clothes littering my floors either

I’m a cleaner, I only clean for friends though, I will load her dishwasher and occasionally do some washing for her, and hang it out… I wouldn’t feel comfortable handling someone’s dirty clothes though that I didn’t know so well. I suggest you get a wash basket, put the machine on yourself and have a discussion with your cleaner about whether they’d be happy to hang your already washed clothes on the line/airer.

Same.
my friend has a half loaded dishwasher but then a side full of breakfast stuff, I load it all and turn it on… it’s not finished when I leave…. I always think if they would put their stuff in it and turn it on before they all leave I could happily unload it and pop it all away for them saving them the job when they get in from work. I don’t judge her for not doing it, but it would be easier for her to put a few bowls in and turn it on then it is to unload it all and put everything away.
But I’ve never had one

One of the issues with just leaving clothes on the floor is you are expecting your cleaner to make decisions on what is dirty and what just needs to be folded or hung up.

There are people who will do that but they tend to be full time housekeepers who will get to know you and your preferences/lifestyle. You can't afford than on your current wages, so I suggest you buy a laundry basket and learn how to use it.

I know someone who is like this. She has a well-paid job and pays other people to do a lot of the domestic chores - cleaner, gardener, nanny etc. I sometimes think in a different age they would be called her ‘servants’ - the main difference being they live in their own houses rather than live with her. She bangs on about her left-wing views (while also sending her primary-age kid to private school) but I think there is a deep sense of entitlement in there somewhere that comes from a residual class-based belief that if you have money other people should serve your needs. I understand why people have cleaners - and I understand why people take pride in their jobs as cleaners - but when people can’t be arsed to even pick their clothes off the floor it’s all a bit Downton Abbey at some point isn’t it?

Oh my Lord, I would NEVER expect my cleaner to pick clothes up off the floor, or do my dirty dishes. It's all about respect.

@LolaSmiles Look at the language being used in this thread. Time and again OP is called a lazy, slovenly, entitled slob who has been brought up to expect everything to be done for her, with the added assumption that if her house is untidy the rest of her life is clearly shambolic as well.

I outsource less than most - I even cut my own hair! - but I don’t make character judgements about people based on what they do or don’t pay others to do for them. Neither do I point out how much harder I have it and how much better I handle it as though that makes me inherently superior.

Working til 10pm every day sounds pretty hard to me, so I’m inclined to cut OP (who, it’s worth repeating, admits she’d be embarrassed about her house being in a mess and is only asking about a possibility rather than expecting a service) some slack rather than calling her names and telling her how much better I could do.

(I should point out that I’m not saying you’re doing any of this, @LolaSmiles, just that plenty of others are, and I don’t understand why tidiness seems to have a moral value ascribed to it while other services don’t seem to.)

You explain your situation to any future cleaner, it’s then up to them to say yay or nay. I had a similar situation when I was younger, my cleaner was marvellous.

All the people on here telling Op to get a job with a better work-life balance, these kind of hours are how one gets those ‘six figure’ salaries so often mentioned on here! When you’re starting out in law or finance (that’s my field - well law in finance - so the only one I can really comment on) working those hours is just normal and expected. Even once one is senior, long hours are just part and parcel of the role. The jobs often mean having to live in London, which is expensive, so the salary doesn’t even stretch to a lot of ‘extras’ that people expect, unless you’re in a couple and both earning that, but it does pay for a certain amount of help. Basically, it helps to love your job, because for many years it will BE your life…

9-10 hours? I’m assuming you both have another job aswell or army of children/other responsibilities if not ur just lazy prat’s 🤔

I think there is a deep sense of entitlement in there somewhere that comes from a residual class-based belief that if you have money other people should serve your needs.

Maybe this is what the differences of opinion in this thread boil down to: whether you think someone is outsourcing a task because they don’t want to do it or don’t have time for it, or you think they’re outsourcing it because they think it’s beneath them.

Most of the time we outsource tasks to people who can do it better than us, so why would we assume someone is outsourcing a task because they think they’re above doing it themselves? I realise the issue here is that literally anyone can pick their clothes up off the floor so it’s not like we need someone with that particular skill to do it for us, but how is that different to paying for childcare - if a parent is capable of looking after their child and has the time to do it, why would they ever pay someone else to do it? Do they think childcare is beneath them?

This idea of entitlement seems to come from the idea that you don’t do something yourself because you assume someone else will do it for you. It’s perfectly possible to not do something without this assumption: the alternative is that you don’t do something and you accept that that thing will not get done (or at least that that thing will get put off). This is why there isn’t necessarily a correlation between leaving stuff lying around at home and leaving stuff lying around in public: I will always pick up after myself on someone else’s property because I realise they will have to do it if I don’t, but my house is a mess because there is a level of untidiness I can accept and I’m not forcing anyone else to deal with it.

There seems to be a lot of speculation about motivation happening here. And, like@GarlicGrace, I am vastly amused by the idea of the Queen outsourcing literally everything she does and still being infinitely superior to those of us who sometimes leave our socks on the floor.

No, they're out at work from 9 am - 10 pm every day. Clearly you're too much of a lazy prat to read properly.

Rubbish. You've simply gotten into a slovenly routine (or never got out of it from your teenage years). You need to grow up and become more responsible for yourselves.

I don't think anyone has an issue with you having some domestic help, I have friends where they have someone come in that cleans, washes up, changes and washes bedding etc, but you guys need to be responsible for the basic level of tidiness such as not dumping clothes on the floor, leaving pots hanging around and general slovenly behaviour.

How on earth are you going to cope when you maybe start with a family!!!!

@AllTheChaos you are absolutely right, these sort of hours and this sort of commitment is absolutely normal for a number of sectors, particularly in the early years. This is why the salaries are high.

A lot of people talk about the unjustness of high salaries without any recognition of the extent of which these sort of jobs completely take over your life.

It does sound as though you might need a housekeeper/cleaner combo, as cleaners (in my experience anyway) usually need things tidied away for them to be able to clean properly. But if you have the money and find someone who is happy to do this I say go for it; make things easier for yourselves. I don’t get all the weird judgement on this. Me and DP are both tidy people and we don’t struggle to keep our house in order but I work a standard 8 hour day with some days WFH so putting washing on etc in lunch break much easier to do!

For those of you saying it's disrespectful to leave dirty clothes on the floor for a cleaner (who has agreed) to pick up - does your cleaner clean your toilet?

If you have a cleaner coming in 2-3 times a week for 2 hours at a time to clean a tiny flat then I think the cleaner would be glad of something to do to pass the time. 4-6 hours a week sounds way too much time. I have a large 5 bed house and it doesnt take me 6 hours to clean it and do all the washing and ironing. As others have said put your clothes in the wash basket at leave everything else to the cleaner.

I find it hilarious that people thinks it’s disrespectful for a cleaner to pick up socks but are quite happy for a cleaner to deal with their literal shit.

op loads of people on this thread are buying into the lie all women get sold that there is some sort of inherent moral value in cleaning your house.

So what stops you tidying & cleaning on the weekends, like the rest of us?? There are 2 of you to do it, you live in a 'tiny flat' & it takes literally seconds to put your clothes in a wash basket rather than the floor! 🤷‍♀️

She doesn't want to, or need to. She has a fantastic job and earns a lot more than most. Why do you think she needs you to tell her how to live?

Is this a genuine question?

She works long hours during the week and wants to do something other than clean at the weekend. Obviously.

Yabu
you need to hire a housekeeper, not a cleaner

I dont have a cleaner but if I did my toilet wouldn't be left in a disgusting state. Quite frankly I have too much self respect to leave marks in a toilet because I don't want to use a dirty toilet myself.

Again it doesn't take more than a minute to swish a brush around the toilet pan. And if u can put those bleach blocks into ur cistern it gets cleaned every flush anyway