Au Pair not keeping their own room clean

[SettlingBackIn]

Does anyone have any wording that they put in their au pair instructions/house rules about cleaning their own room/bathroom and about the host family's right to inspect the room/bathroom from time to time?

Also, does anyone have any wording they use about not gobbling up all the snacks from the larder between meals?
My view is generally that I provide 3 meals a day and anything else they must buy themselves. I've never had to say this explicitly and wouldn't be bothered about the odd biscuit but my most recent one has been comfort-eating and whole packets of jaffa cakes and pizzas have disappeared.

My current au pair is leaving today after just 5 weeks (her choice but we are not too unhappy).
I have had problems with her and a previous au pair not keeping their own room and bathroom clean. The bathroom is a particular issue as on one occasion I had to spend a load of time and effort removing and replacing sealant that they had allowed to go mouldy.
3 other au pairs have managed to keep the bathroom in a reasonable state so I know it is not impossible.
The most recent au pair was also keeping a lot of food in her room and left that and half eaten food lying around.

I wonder how many hours those Aupairs worked/ing in your house? It is possible that they are tired of cleaning the whole day and dont have the strenth to clean theirs!

Maybe you should look at your attitue on this as it seems you werent happy with any of those Aupairs you had. Maybe you are too fussy..?

Lots of assumptions there BlueGreen.

I think that if they are quite young, there needs to be a degree of acceptance of the 'just out of teenage years' behaviour. On a week to week basis it's up to them how their room is surely but I'd expect once a month to see them having a sort out and for the bathroom to be given a wipe round regularly enough that there is no damage.

I don't think you can 'inspect' but you could ask them in a round about way such as "do you need anything added to the shopping list in terms of cleaning things for your room/bathroom?" so they get the idea.

How much cleaning of the main house do they do though?

"How much cleaning of the main house do they do though?" You will be surprised!

Do you already know the answer then BlueGreen? (Am thinking you may have seen other threads by OP and be privy to more info than me)

It is your house and you do have the right to expect the room and bathroom to be clean.

My AP knows that I do random checks - peek through the door to check room doesnt smell and is tidy she has no problems with that.

The bathroom has to be kept tidy as its the 'guest bathroom' so is mostly just her use but when we have guests they use that bathroom too so I expect it to be clean. Since she has been using it she is expected to keep it clean!

Her room and bathroom are cleaned by the cleaner once a week so I know they do get hoovered and tidied!

BlueGreen not everyone treats AP's badly so it isnt fair to assume an AP is a domestic slave!

Hi Settling
The best/easiest way to manage this is by allocating her responsibility for cleaning up her own room most of the time but having your cleaner do her room like once a month. This is what ours does - she doesn't have any general housekeeping responsibilities and as I would have to pay the cleaner extra to do her room all the time (she has an entire floor to herself) I think it is reasonable for her to look after this part of the house herself. With the cleaner going in periodically we can see if anything really scary is developing w/o being too intrusive- I was not by any means the cleanest teen and I agree standards could be lower than an adult's.

Just tell them you want meals eaten in the kitchen/dining room and to bring any plates down.

Not sure what to do about the food thing. Awkward like trying to have that 'we need some couple time' conversation.

Our recent au pairs have been responsible for keeping the whole house clean but during term time there is very little childcare to do as my children don't get home from school till 5:30pm. If they didn't do the cleaning then there would be almost nothing for them to do.
We make it clear before they arrive that they will have to do the cleaning and it's not a huge house. If you crack on with it you could do it all in 1 day which would leave them almost completely free for the rest of the week!
As I said, we've only had this problem with their own room with 2 out of the recent 5 and never had it with the ones we had when the children were tiny even though they had much more work to do.
Also, they are not teenagers, these days we always have people over 23 as we need them to be able to drive here.

I would stick it in the house rules, personally. I don't mind if they want to keep their room a bit messy. But when it is actually dirty (mould, food left in dishes, etc.) then I say something. So I draw the line at hygeine rather than tidiness. In a bathromm which is shared, however, I would expect tidiness as well.

As for food, I would never dream of saying I don't provide snacks. However, I would expect him/her to be considerate of his/her fair share. So, if 5 people live in the house and I buy a packet of 20 posh chocolates, I would expect her not to eat all of them.

In general if I have a nanny/au pair plowing through the convenience food, I find the easiest thing to do is not buy it next week.

Basically I expect them to eat/ration the supplies as i would do my self.

If I buy something for a particular occassion I mark it as such or stick it in a particular place. For example, I used to stick the food I buy for lunches at work in the fridge in the garage and nanny knew that stuff was for work and not for her/kids.

My AP shared a bathroom with DS- I had an ensuite but they both used the 'family' bathroom. So of course it was easy to keep that clean as it was built into her day

I didnt care what she did with her room, I just said if she left it tidy & the door open on Friday the cleaner would do it, otherwise it was down to her. I would never have inspected it!!!

Re the food, they are pretty young and can eat an amazing amount, so I didnt limit snacks as such, but I did buy snack type food and show it to her, saying 'I have bought this for the week'. If she ate it before the end of the week it was tough luck, I wasnt buying more, but I wasnt stingy about it

as I recall she ate about 30 bananas a week tho which I was reallly about

I'm not bothered about the room being untidy - goodness knows my kids rooms are pretty untidy. It was the mould in the bathroom (which is en suite with the au pair room and was brand new before the first of the recent clutch of au pairs arrived), and the half-eaten food lying around that bothered me.

Interestingly the 2 au pairs who couldn't keep the bathroom clean both kept their bedroom door shut the whole time whether they were in there or not. Plus they both had medical training so I would have expected them to be aware of how unhygienic it is to let mould grown in the bathroom.

I want to avoid having this problem in the future if possible. It would be nice to think I could rely on common sense and au pairs understanding what is reasonable but it's beginning to seem like that's not possible. I don't want to present them with a list of rules as long as my arm the moment they walk in the door though.

I think your comlaints are totally reasonable. I am with you on mold and half eaten food. I would add it to the contract, and also mention that any damage to the room will be deducted from final paycheque. And I would put something brief in the house rules.

OP - some details on what you mean by "keeping the whole house clean".

I am a live in nanny and must say that my bedroom often looks chaotic - mb has a closet in my room so sometimes she has to go in - she asks first and I know as a "neat freak" she does take a big breath before she goes in

However main reasons for my room being a mess is 1, it's small and theres not much storage space 2, it's almost an extension of work ie I will have my planning, dc's scrapbooks, photograph albums, my work handbag etc all out as I continue to do these things in my evenings 3, because we have a small house I take a cup of tea and maybe a snack to my room and yes sometimes the cup or the glass of water is still there the next day but it eventually comes down at some point the next day etc.

So, you are already checking! her ensuite bathroom. You might as well ask her to stop eating and tidy up her room.

Do you ask your kids to stop eating?

I would certainly have words with my kids if they ate a whole packet of jaffa cakes in a couple of days! Or left open packets of popcorn, crisps, bits of cake, apple cores and more lying around their room.

The odd cup or glass left overnight or for a day or two isn't a problem - my kids do that too although I do chide them for it.

As she was living in our house I am entitled to check that she was not doing permanent damage to any part of it. Accidental damage is one thing, that could happen to anyone, but damage through slobbish neglect is another.

She has gone now anyway but I'm trying to decide how specific I need to be about this kind of thing when the next one arrives.

I hope for the sake of the family she has gone to that all this was just as a result of her getting depressed while she was here and that the depression will go now she's moved to a family who need more hands-on childcare.

In our house how tidy the au pairs keep their room is entirely up to them, it is their room and if they want their clothes all over the floor that is their choice.

Food and drinks left in the room for ages is a different matter, I have had this problem with one in the past, had to be constantly on to her to bring stuff down, to be fair when told to she did but it gets a bit wearing.

The bathroom thing doesn't apply as they share with the kids (though this is about to change - one to look out for I guess) but damage to property through neglect would be unacceptable in my book.

As for the comfort eating current AP goes through phases, and it is usually eveidence of a different problem, one of the kids has been a bit much or some other problem that needs to be talked through.

BlueGreen you make some pretty damning statements - have you previously been an au pair and had a family overwork you?

And I'm sure she is now happy and not depressed thinking that she has been used as a cleaner! God help your next Aupair! Poor girl or guy her/his only fault(if it is ) not to be able to speak the language and open to be taking advantage of! Told not to eat much( I wonder what is next? Maybe dont go to loo as you flushing the toilet too offen) Actually, you should add that to your Aupair manual too.
Do not go to loo more then 3 times as you are wasting water!
Do not eat snacks as they are belong to my family!
Do leave your door room open as I want to go to your room straigh away dont make me waste time by opening it!
Do leave your room dor open so that I can check when you are not around!
Get lost when you finished all your cleaning and tidying up. So that, I can have some "family time!" with my husband!

And the list goes on and on and on....

Please, please god help her new Aupair and the other Aupairs that they have host family like her!!!

I wonder how you would feel if your own kids was Aupair and treated like this!?

BlueGreen as I just said - "you make some pretty damning statements - have you previously been an au pair and had a family overwork you?"

to be fair to the OP i think she has made it reasonably clear that she would raise these points with her own children so i don't think she is treating the au pair unfairly at all. i assume the duties were explained before the job began and the au pair agreed to it. i'm not sure why Blue Green feels that the au pair is being exploited - there's no evidence on this thread. i can see that the job was not necessariy what the au pair wanted if it was primarily cleaning not childcare - but she did take it and it's not the OP's responsibility to change it to suit the au pair's preferences.

DadInsteadofMum, FYI yes I was an Aupair once and none of the families I worked for were not even close to "nice". They gave me stunning references. You know why cause I worked my .... off I couldnt even go to college as there wasnt time for me to attent the class. Didnt have any friends because I wasnt socilising. I was on call included weekends. Once I met next door Aupair and went out for shopping(she took me as I didint know where or how to go!) And then I received a call from host family asking me to come back because they have a guest from US and they wanted to go out! I didint know English enough to defend myself or ask my rights and they were happly toke this as an advantage!

MrsWobble, " i'm not sure why Blue Green feels that the au pair is being exploited - there's no evidence on this thread. "

Yes. There is no evidence as the Aupair isnt here to tell us her story and we only reading what the OP tells us and want us to belive.

BlueGreen in that case I can understand your bitterness, and I know from stories my own AP brings home that there are still families out there that expect a lot of hours from their APs.

However, we are not all like that and I think it is a little unfair to jump to that conclusion about the OP.

I have seen other hosts come on here and say AIBU to expect my AP to do this, and everybody to come back and say yes you are being unreasonable, that hasn't happened here and I try and and keep an open mind.

I have an au pair and I certainly would never stop her from eating anything in the house or insist she tidy her room. Her room is her domain and retreat from our household and how she keeps it is completely up to her.

Do you stop your children eating snacks between meals? Can an aupair really afford to waste her money buying snacks because you don't want her to eat yours?

The snacks thing is difficult. On one hand you don't want to deprive her of food, but in the other she did seem to be eating an excessive amount and if you'd tell the DC off for it then is fair to expect the AP to do the same. Plus it sounds pretty unhealthy stuff which is a bad example for the DCs.

I would write something in the house rules that she is expected to keep her own room and bathroom clean and is responsible for ensuring all cups etc are brought down as you don't have an unlimited supply of crockery!