au pair

[phraedd]

i have a lovely au pair who is 5 hours a day/ 5 days a week. She is lovely but...i feel that i am spending my weekends doing housework that she could be doing during the week.

Should i have to spend the weekends tidying and cleaning the childrens bedrooms because they haven't been done? The bathroom that she and the children use is looking pretty grim (I cleaned it last weekend and she hasn't done it since)

Am i being petty or can i ask her to make sure that on a friday she cleans the childrens rooms and the bathroom so that i don't have to spend my time with the children doing it?

I don't really want to be cleaning a bathroom that i never use and that it used my another adult. If she lived by herself she would be keeping her bathroom clean.

please tell me if i am being petty though as i don't want her to feel "put upon"

thank you

Well when she first arrived and you went through her list of duties did you explain to her (and show her) that it is her responsibility to once a week clean the shared bathroom and to ensure the children's bedrooms are clean and tidy by Friday night? If you did tell her this then you need to "remind" her and tell her again what you expect. If you didn't tell her then you are being unreasonable as she isn't a mind reader and AP's being young girls will rarely take initiative. In this instance you need to explain to her that these are her responsibility, but be prepared for her to feel "put upon" because they weren't mentioned at the start.

I don't expect AP to tidy/clean DS room other than if they are playing in there I expect her to put the toys away after (with DS help). I do expect her to clean the shared bathroom and right from the beginning this has been Tuesday's housework task.

I like a lot of major jobs done on a Friday, so that I don't feel I have to do them over the weekend. So bathroom / upstairs hoovering / kitchen floor mopping etc should all be done on a Friday. I would definitely ask her - just do a rough list of jobs against each day.

Before you do that though, should she have time to do it? My ap does no regular childcare - possibly 15 minutes here and there if I'm dropping DS1 to nursery and DS2 is asleep or something. Therefore, she should have 25 hours per week to do housework. If I was also asking for 3 hours a day of childcare, I wouldn't expect as much housework to be done.