To ask DH’s cleaner to help me as well

[Suefr]

We are a large blended family with 5 children in total, but no joint children. DH’s children (secondary school) are slightly older than mine (primary school) but we all get on well. His children come and stay with us on alternative weeks and his system works well for us.

As I am a SAHM I do most of the housework and cooking, and I am fine with this. However, a few months ago I became annoyed at the amount of housework I was expected to do and the lack of support from DH. In particular, he was annoyed that I wasn’t ironing his clothes and I was upset at being treated like a maid.
As a compromise, DH hired a neighbour’s cleaner to help. She can only do 1 hour twice a week. She comes to our house when she finishes at our neighbour’s. In these 2 hours she will wash and iron DH & his children’s clothes, and tidy his office and their bedrooms. However, she will politely decline any requests I make for help. I have spoken to DH and he has fobbed me off, telling me that she is helping us out. But it’s obvious, she is there only to help him out and not me.

I know it's a bit radical, but perhaps he gets to share his life with the woman he loves.

Sorry but what? You're at home all day whilst he's out working -earning? I work FT and manage to deal with everything so what exactly are you doing that requires you to ask the cleaner, you're working partner pays for, to help you out with??
Leave her alone, you're making her uncomfortable while she trying to fucking work.

@Pupinskipops the cleaners washes and irons the husband's shirts, his kids clothes, clean his office and the kids' bedrooms!! How much free time do you think she gets if she only has one hour to do all that?

Compared to the at least 5 free hours OP gets daily when the kids are at school?

@Pupinskipops OP says in one post that he puts his clothes in washer and dryer himself. It's her that seems to be singling out his bits not to do.
I maintain that I feel sorry for him. He's paid for someone to do the things she won't and still she wants more.

She objected to doung the ironing, and she's upset about the amount of housework expected of her. Despite being at home all day with children in school. That's her words.

So, he gets someone in to do the ironing and clean his office and kids' rooms. And she's still asking the cleaner for more. Doesn't sound like someone who wants to do housework to me.

Regardless, if she wants more help beyond the hours paid for already, the cleaner should be paid for more time. That seems common sense.

OP has failed to answer the basic question which is "is there money in the family budget for them to hire a cleaner for extra hours a week to reduce some of OP's workload?" If the family are rolling in cash, then, yes DH is being petty.

If the 2 hours already spent on a cleaner are all the money available, then it seems that OP is saying that she simply wants to do less cleaning and DH to do more cleaning, ignoring the massive imbalance that already exists between their working days.

Why is he being petty? He already supports her and her children and enables her to be a SAHM and a carer for her mum. He's paying to offload some of his chores and ease her burden. He should also pay so some of her chores can be done too?

How is it petty? She’s paid to do a certain amount of laundry in 2hrs. Is she supposed to remove the laundry she’s getting paid for to pick up other’s laundry, which bits should she pick up (of others who are not paying for her service) and what would she leave in the laundry bin of her actual client?

If I had paid for 2hrs worth of laundry and ironing for myself and my children as I worked full time and then my husband who was unemployed demanded that he should get his and his children’s clothes done too at my expense whilst I was paying for his rent, food, utility bills for him and his children - I’d be very pissed off!!

FWIW, I also didn't say any housework. I referred to specific housework chores, she doesn't want to do. Which is why my post said 'the housework'.

She made the distinction between his and hers when she didn't want to do things specifically for him. So he hired someone to take on the extra work created by him and his children. She's basically doing only what she would be doing if it were just her and her children in the home. Except then she'd have to work and do those things.

Also this.

No, he hired (and paid) the cleaner to do specific tasks. OP tried to add extra tasks to the cleaner's workload. Tasks which the cleaner isn't paid to do. The cleaner only has so much time.

Also, why should he pay for a cleaner (especially for OP's stuff) when OP is home all day without kids?

Of counts it isn’t petty! It’s literally saying ‘I’m taking a load off you! You don’t need to wash my clothes, you don’t need to iron my clothes, you don’t need to tidy up after two extra children that aren’t yours.’
Frankly the work OP is being left with is basically the same amount of work she would need to do if she was still a single parent with her own children, except she has no bills to pay!

You’re the one making it separate, you could just as easily say he hired a cleaner to clean 2/5 bedrooms for her and 1/4 of the laundry.

You’re not pulling your weight. Get a job or do more with your 6 hours a day that you have to yourself. If the roles were reversed you’d be called a cocklodger by many on this site.

I clearly said it was petty to make OP do housework if the family was rolling in cash. Well off people don't do their own housework, they pay for other people to do it.

If OP (as seems likely) is not in this income bracket, then absolutely she should get on and do it herself.

Probably none - I don't know any more than you do. But the issue isn't time, it's about the fact that the cleaner appears to be told they are not allowed to do anything for The Controller's partner.

Yes, in principle I agree that the more work for the cleaner = more paid time, but you're hazarding a guess that the OP's askng the cleaner to do more than they've been asked to do in their alloted time. We don't know that.

But what do you mean by "being home all day". I don't think she did say that, did she? We know that she does do most of the housework and the cooking (and has no complaints about that) along with caring for her parents. But she's also entitled to a life as well.

I'm frankly amazed at the number of people who think that him choosing (presumably) to enter into a relationship which involved her being a SAHM and him working, by agreement presumably, is somehow the same as a contractual arrangement with an employee, and that she's not allowed a life outside the home until she's carried out the duties for which she's being paid. It's just ludicrous. And it's controlling.

@Pupinskipops the Controller? You mean ... the person that employed her and pays her? He doesn't have to explicitly tell her not to do something. She has a list of things to do. She was hired to do them. She can't leave those things to do some other random jobs because someone else has asked her to and not actually do her job.

Do you often do work for other people in your working hours? If not, why not?

Well now that you put it like that, I agree - it is a bit much to expect a man to endure the hardship of putting his laundry into the washing machine all by himself after a hard day's work. Fair point.

I honestly think he's a mug paying for everything. They're not even his children. But he must think it's worth it.

@Pupinskipops you really are distorting things now. Strongly suspect that you are OP with a name change, or you know her.
You're vociferously and irrationally defending the OP. Who disappeared long ago, or did she!???

And that is exactly my point. He should have hired a cleaner to do a proportion of the household's cleaning within the number of hours paid, because it is a shared house inhabited by a blended family headed by a partnership.

Instead he employed somebody to do his cleaning in his areas of the house, under the strict instructions, it appears, not to do any of hers, to make a point. He's behaving like a petulant child. This is a household of six children and one adult, it seems.

I've addressed these tedious points numerous times now...

She didn't say she didn't want to do things specifically for him. He complained that she wasn't ironing his clothes. I imagine she probably wasn't doing any ironing at all because she was doing other things and ironing fell by the wayside.

"As I am a SAHM I do most of the housework and cooking, and I am fine with this. However, a few months ago I became annoyed at the amount of housework I was expected to do and the lack of support from DH. In particular, he was annoyed that I wasn’t ironing his clothes and I was upset at being treated like a maid."

@Pupinskipops this really is ridiculous now. And tedious.
He employed a cleaner to do his stuff specifically because those were the things that OP didn't want to do.
Why on earth should he pay the cleaner to do her stuff too when she's at home child free 6 hours a day, financially supported by him. He'd have to be a total mug.
You are definitely the OP, with a name change.