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.

One thing that no one has mentioned is that your au pair is also a role model. I don't think it is unreasonable for a host family to ask an au pair to keep her room ckean and tidy. If she doesn't it sends out a message to your own kids of double standards.

Same with snacks really. Do you let the kids help themselves to anything they want from the cupboards? Your au pair lives as part of the family - so it is double standards if your au pair isn't allowed them. If the kids aren't allowed snacks then I'd agree that your au pair should leave them alone or talk to yo uabout it first. Although if there are snacks in the cupboards that aren't for the kids or au pair, they must be only for the parents and so what message is this sending out..

You don't let your AP eat a few snacks?

I am not surprised she is leaving.

I agree with Treesa, although our children don't go up to the APs room. It is verboten. If hers was an entire state though and they could see it, esp as the children get older, it's hard to see how she would have the credibility to get them to tidy their own space up.

Not sure this entirely applies to the food though. As DIOM said, eating habits can be driven by lots of factors. WHile this can be inconsiderate, unless you are coming home to nothing for dinner or breakfast the next morning, I think you have to leave it. I can say though that we had a nanny with terrible food habits - she used to leave dr pepper and all manner of chemical ali stuff in our cupboards for her lunch. Eating that sort of thing side by side with the children when they are old enough to enquiry why they can't have the same would be a problem. I think if you are looking after children when you are around them you have to accept that 'not just anything' goes. Or don't take the job!

BlueGreen - you said you've worked as an AP for 'families' - I am genuinely curious why you did it more than once if it was so bad?

Sorry - meant to say while plowing through entire boxes of things meant for the whole family to share can be inconsiderate...

Sorry, you sound like the type who runs their finger over picture frames looking for dust, in other people's houses, to chastise them about.

Bluegreen- our au pairs have a lovely year at our house. Some of us are very careful to ensure that it is a two way exchange, you know.

OP- I think it is reasonable for you to expect her to keep her room as clean as you expect of your children. Explain to her about the grouting and mould- they are very young and unused to housekeeping on the whole and require a lot of coaching at first as you know. I personally ban food in rooms for everyone (too many mice in the attic as it is).

Luckily none of this was not an issue for last au pair as she was lovely and just fitted in with how we did things.

reading this something just occured to me
do you treat your aupair like one of the kids? (re helping themselves to snacks....)
or as an adult.

personally i allow my aupair to eat whatever she wants. and i generally buy whatever she wants to eat. she is an adult. (incidentally a very healthy one)

Regarding the room and bathroom i think it is perfectly reasonable to expect them to keep them clean. It is also reasonable to check every 2-3 months, after all you are homeowner you need to be able to see-yourself- all the walls and ceilings in your house. Landlords check the flats every 6 months so i guess a host should do aswell.

Regarding the snacks i would not make an issue. I dont agree with 'i dont allow my dcs to have snacks so why not the AP aswell... '. She is not a child. She is an adult. And she is an adult from abroad. In many countries is hugely embarrasing to make issue around a packet of jaffa cakes and she could be very offended.

Laquitar you arrived just in time!

at Harriet

This is interesting. I have had a number of APs, and only had real issues with one. She was a big girl, ate a lot, but had no energy. I didn't want to make a big issue of it, and so didn't say anything, well not much - just asked her not to eat certain expensive items...until one night I went to get salmon out of the freezer and found she had eaten about 10 steaks. I am afraid I got really cross. I apologised to her for perhaps not making things clear to her (although never been an issue for our 4 previous APs), but said it was unacceptable. I do cook every night for the AP, and we eat as a family.

That one left shortly afterwards. She was just not active enough with our small boys, but the food thing really got to me. I lost 4 kg while she was here because I found her eating habits so off putting! Since then I have been more specific with the new AP, but tbh it wasn't necessary.

Laquitar - I guess families and households are all different. As an adult living with us in my home I think an au pair should follow the same 'rules' as the rest of us. Those 'rules' are something we would sit down and talk about in the first few days along with things like overnight guests etc. If spoken about at teh beginning then it prevents an awkward conversation later that I agree would be hugely embarrasing.

I would never try to make a scene over a packet of jaffa cakes but if this became a normal occurence I would have a word and ask her to be more discrete in front of the children, as they are told not to help themselves to more than just one or two a day when they are home from school.

I'd lambast DH for eating a whole pack of Jaffa cakes, or squirrelling food away in our room...

I agree about 'be more discrete in front of the children'.
If OP had said ie that the AP eats jaffa cakes when the children have tea i would say that she (the op) is right to be angry and i think most posters would say the same.

But OP didn't mention anything about the children. She said she provides 3 meals and expects her AP to buy her own snacks. Which i think is a bit mean as the pay for APs is tiny comparing to live out wages based on the assumption that food is provided.

Personally i would rather die than argue about a pack of jaffa cakes and i wouldn't dream of telling a grown up -including my dh- what he is allowed to eat or not. Monitoring another adult's food and counting his bites is never right in my book.

Just to clarify it's not that I monitor his food! It's more that it's really not very polite to open up and polish off a whole pack of Jaffa cakes! I'd want him to share or leave them open in the cupboard so I could have a few...

If a whole packet disappeared - and by disappeared I'm taking that to mean there one minute, completely gone the next - then I'd be pissed and tell him he wasn't being very nice.

OTOH if he polishes off an entire Camembert or a packet of salami I couldn't give a monkeys about it.

I think the OP is more making a point about the type and quantity of food that's going walks. The odd biscuit is fine, but snafong huge amounts of food isn't polite for anyone.

Going for walks
Snaffling

Fat fingers, me

frak i didn't say that you do . Sorry if it seemed like i meant you.
My dh doesn't like sweets so they are all mine

obviously the ap should keep her room and bathroom clean and tidyish

snacks - i help myself at work, just as i do at home and would be very offended if i wasnt allowed too - obv you dont want ap to eat all the snacks - op says she is comfort eating - why? is she homesick/miserable in job etc-i would see if there is a deeper problem

obv as frakk said if dh ate a whole packet of jaffa cakes and didnt share,we would be having words

can i add that yesterday i found a glass in spare bedroom where friend had slept the other weekend and she took a glass of water up with her (to avoid the morning hangover ) and the water has spores growing on it

Hmm. I think that it depends on your mutual understanding of the au pair role. Is she an adult (temporary) member of the household or not? Do you see her solely as an employee? If you do, fair enough. But she may have a different understanding what it means to be an au pair.

We took on an AP to be genuinely part of the family and spent a lot of time making sure we got the right person.

Our AP is fab with DD and we are delighted that she wants to extend for another year and work for us while doing a diploma course here.

However, she is also a typical 21 year old and her room and bathroom were always a total mess. She also eats like a horse / teenager.

She recently moved into a student flat down the road (she's Finnish and gets a grant from her government even if studying abroad). In the event, it actually only took her a couple of afternoons to clean out her messy room so it can't have been as bad as it looked.... And I think the amount she eats is par for the course with a healthy young person, to be honest.

We made it a bit of a joke that we had acquired a teenage daughter at the same time as a baby. I treat her as I would a younger sibling or niece. She can help herself to whatever she wants, whenever she wants, from the kitchen but must tell me or leave the packet out when she finishes stuff so that I know to buy more.

DD loves her and I trust her with DD. I was willing to trade a bit of mess for a year for this.

If your bathroom is going mouldy it doesn't have sufficient ventilation. If your AP needs to open the window/leave the fan on, then you need to tell her that - she's not going to know otherwise.

I think it's stingy beyond words to expect your AP to pay for her own snacks - they are supposed to be a member of your family, not a low paid servant.

"BlueGreen - you said you've worked as an AP for 'families' - I am genuinely curious why you did it more than once if it was so bad?"

I had to! I was on Aupair visa and coulnd't speak much English.

I will tell you the best! experience I had. I went to Germany for holiday and got sick and admitted to hospital. Called my host family to let them know that I'm in the hospital and doctors had asked me to stay to do some tests. Therefore, I wont be able to come on the days I suppost to. They said fine. And when I went back they were decoration my room so that their daughter can move to the room i was staying. They told me that they werent expecting me(probably, they thought 3 baskets of ironing, cleaning the whole house top to bottom every week and their 3 spoiled(2 were teenage)kids were enough for me to run away). Anyway, I asked them where am I going to stay? And all they said was " well we are decorating the room and dont have spare room, dont you have friends that you can stay with them until you find another family? Called a friend asked her help and she came and asked them "how would you feel if someone did this to your daugther?" They coulndt say a word!

IF I could speak the language abit better I would find other jobs like cleaning working in MC Donalds but I woulndt worked as an Aupair ever again! As I had had enough of the families who thought Aupairs are slave. That is why when people come on here and moan about how their Aupairs not cleaning their room or bathroom, how they are eating their precious! snacks, how she want a family time with her husband but the Aupair is always there!!! makes my blood boils!

And honesty saying I never ever heard from any Aupair that they were happy with their host families. And they worked alot more then 25 hours a week. Some of them even looked after 9-12 months old babies for full time for £70 or £80 a week.

So there you go.

togarama - but that isn't the point of APs is it? They are supposed to be members of the family, not low-paid employees so not 'fair enough' for the OP or anyone else to treat them like that at all.

I heard a programme about a book on APs in the UK on the radio a couple of weeks ago and I have to say it made me ashamed to be British :(

Tbh the happy ones I know are the ones whose host families had thought it all through, employed the au pair properly with a contract and a set of expectations and set things out like 'in this house snacking between meals isn't encouraged, we provide 3 meals a day and you're welcome to have biscuits or a piece of fruit with your coffee and some chocolate in the evening but all the food is communal so please respect that'. If the rules are laid down (which is what the OP is trying to do) that's fine!

The exploitation problem has roots in the abolition of the genuine au pair scheme as far as most nationalities are concerned, meaning almost anyone with the right to work can do an au pair job but it's legal for them to look after children of any age for unlimited hours. It was just completely deregulated with no guidance on pay so people go by the old pocket money advice and the new working rules!

HeadlessLadyBiscuit: Sorry, I used that phrase too casually. What I was trying to convey is that for some APs and families it does seem to be seen as more of a business arrangement with detailed contracts that reflect this (eg specifying that family won't go in AP's room without permission, that AP will clean x, y and z twice a week etc.).

If someone knowingly signs up for this kind of arrangement then it's not the same as someone who thinks they will be treated like a member of the family but then finds that their eating habits and personal space are being closely monitored.

Our AP came over to the uk to au pair at the same time as several of her friends. We've had all of them to stay at different times and they're lovely girls. Their AP experiences were radically different but the two who were happiest were ours (we believe her on the grounds that she's staying on for another year and encourages others to try APing...) and a girl who was in a v. businesslike arrangement as described above. The others had some real horror stories. The worst was where the family had lied in their online profile and the AP found herself faced with 4 children rather than 2, one of whom was autistic. They expected her to look after the kids, dogs, clean the house every day (and grandma's house at the weekend!). They lived in the middle of nowhere, gave 1 day off per week and paid the princely sum of £55pw. When she gave notice they kicked her out and she stayed with us for a few weeks.

The girl with the civil, negotiated businesslike placement just regarded it as work. She was treated respectfully and paid appropriately. It's not an approach I would choose but it did seem to work for all concerned in this instance.

Togarama
I think you are completely right about getting the expectations right. We are probably closer to the 'businesslike' arrangement - it has to be in some sense because our AP works alongside a nanny (who obviously has a contract and specific responsibilities and needs someone to help her who is clear about her responsibilities.) Also we are very busy and just not around a lot - not because we're cutting her out deliberately and doing things w/o her but because of work, children's activities etc. So, we need someone who is a self-starter and able to fend for herself quite a bit of the time. I don't think some girls appreciate exactly that peoiple get APs BECAUSE they are busy and need help, even if they are well intentioned about including them/not deliberately NOT spending time with them.

We are very clear about these arrangements at the interview stage and in the invitation letter. So, I think as long as you are upfront and the situation when the AP arrives is as described, this reasonable and the girl needs to decide for herself if it's suitable.