PJP is getting tough now - Au pairs grrrrr......

[potentialJP]

Have just spent 3 hours cleaning last au pairs room and I'm really fed up. Au pair was brilliant but left her place a complete tip - mouldy plates in the sink, a bathroom which couldn't have been cleaned in the last six months (dust and hair everywhere), papers and a basket full of dirty bedlinen (no wonder I had no single sheets left).

Is it unreasonable to put into the contract that the au pair should keep her place in a reasonable state?

No it is not. I have always said in my au pairs and nannies contracts that their accomodation is to be cleaned once a week and from time to time I will check if I think it is not.

make it clear right form the start what you expect. I had one once where I cleaned 14 bags of rubbish from her room..........including nearly 20 empty pizza boxes and she only came for 8 weeks !!

Wow. And I thoguht my room was bad! I just have papers and clothes everywhere

I would expect you to charge them for cleaning costs if they did that! I had £10 deducted from me when I finished working for PGL because of my roommate's tip (it had nothing to do with the full door poster we stuck on with double sided tape of course )!

That's disgusting!
No you wouldn't be unreasonable to put that

I always put a clause in my contract that said, the room, car etc needed to returned to it's original state when they leave.

We ask them to respect their room etc. in either the contract or manual (can't remember which) but last AP ignored that..room looked superficially clean (although she had stuck photos directly onto the wallpaper and sellotaped things to the (lovely new painted wood) furniture . Once she left we found that she had also broken a knob from her (lovely new) desk, blocked the shower drain and broken the toilet seat. Dh had to race around to fix it all before new AP arrived.
So...yes you can put something in but don't expect that it will stop it happening again!

On the blutacked walls: I didn't even think of it before I started working here and my host parents know about my pictures and post-its being everywhere and haven't said anything... I feel a bit worried now! ;D Reckon I should offer to paint it before I leave? Is there any way to get the residue off?

no don't worry pixi... I didn't worry about blutack on walls. That's just general wear and tear imo... unless you have totally and utterly ignored a great big pin board?

Lol, no pin board that they provided me with! Just my one from home with badges galore (I didn't think I'd dare try pinning those onto the wall )

I'm going to be rearranging my photos soon and adding more, so I hope there isn't too much damage

Though I will paint the walls if they ask me too, I'd happily offer as well! I may even put on some old clothes, douse myself with paint and run into walls (I have done this before, albeit not with wall paint but washable!)

Pixi - my AP ignored the big corkboard and chose to stick photos on the wallpapered wall - wouldn't be so precious if it were a painted wall, or if she hadn't ignored the board. I was worried we would be left with a load of holes ripped in the wallpaper (as it is we escaped that but do have damage to the furniture caused by sellotape and by burning candles without putting anything under them (and we have wax drops stuck in the carpet) - I did provide coasters for hot cups/night lights etc..found them shoved in the bottom of a drawer.
(I am not that house-proud honest..it's just that we tried very hard to make AP's room pretty and comfy - compared to the rest of our scruffy house)

I'm not overly houseproud, but it was the fact that she hadn't even bothered to wash up for what looked like weeks or wash her used bedding. I think that's just taking the mick really.

Millarkie - Oh. That's not good! How can people not respect the space they are temporarily staying in?!

Mine did at least bring down the dirty crockery and put it in the dishwasher. Commiserations PJP.

PJP, maybe you should 'randomly inspect' the APs room in the future? Not so they know what it is, but, like my MB will come up to my room once every few weeks to chat to me and if I'm hiding my main room she knows that it's a tip and will ask me to just keep it a bit clean, or clean enough that I can quickly finish it if someone comes to view the house or something, which I think is fair enough, I'm so bad at keeping my own stuff tidy! (That's what my boyfriend is for! )

But maybe that's just an idea, going up to see how things are with any future APs everyb once in a while It certainly embarrasses me that MB always seems to come up after a bad week for me! :D

Hey - I'm over my grrrrr now. Au pair was brilliant with the dc's so I can forgive her the extra cleaning. This has given me food for thought though and I will put something in the au pair manual which I'm updating!

Thanks DIOM for the gross misconduct parts.