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Housekeeping

Find cleaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Housekeeping forum.

If you work full-time, when do you do the housework?

37 replies

Mumpbump · 09/10/2006 20:38

I am puzzling over this question as I find it really difficult to find the energy to start doing housework when I get home and don't want to spend all weekend doing it either as ds spends all week in nursery. Any tips for fitting housework in??

OP posts:
Judy1234 · 15/10/2006 21:57

My sister is a single mother. She has a cleaner once a week. What she pays her cleaner per hour is less than she earns per hour so there's no contest on whether it's worth having. Lots of single professionals in London in tiny flats have cleaners... opps can't help thinking of that judge who moved in with him who then blackmailed him now...

Depends where you live. If you live in an area with lots of people looing for work you'd get someone on the minimum hourly wage I expect. We had a lot of years of having to spend our evenings cleaning because we couldn't afford a cleaner. It's hard when you're tired and just back from work.

80sMum · 15/10/2006 22:07

I work 50+ hours a week and Dh at least 60 and neither of us has much energy left for housework. We don't have a cleaner, mostly because I don't have a clue how to go about getting one but also I don't like the idea of giving a complete stranger the key to my house. Anyway, in spite of the fact that neither of us spends much time at home, our house is still a tip and I think what we really need is a tidy-upper rather than a cleaner! If the house were tidy it would be quick and easy to whip round with a Hoover and duster. But I presume cleaners don't do tidying up, do they? They just clean?

holidaysoon · 15/10/2006 22:28

When the kids sleep and at the weekends. Laundry virtually every night and now winters coming it's going to take DAYS to dry!!

Judy1234 · 16/10/2006 13:07

Ours is a tidy upper. It saved our lives with the older 3 as teenagers, no need to nag them to clean their rooms because the cleaner tidied each day. I still need sometimes to put things away in the right place and sort things out and throw things out but it's good and I think some (but by no means all) of the children and definitely me are very tidy anyway so we try to put things away as we go along.

It's certainly a balance - I never seem to be here in the house without a cleaner or someone looking after the children, sometimes it seems but on the other hand I can cope with that given that then means I don't have to clean.

justaphase · 16/10/2006 13:24

Both me and dp work FT. We have a cleaner who comes for 2.5 hours every week. We live in a tiny 2 bedroom flat and it has never been a problem to her. She is brilliant, does some emergency baby-sitting too. We pay her £8ph (this is in London).
Our nanny does the washing and she vacuums the living room every day and takes all garbage out. We mostly don't do ironing, just work stuff in the morning. Dh does the shopping on Sat early morning.

jura · 16/10/2006 14:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CheesyFeetcomingtoGETyou · 16/10/2006 14:40

Haven't read the thread so apologies if I am repeating...

I do a lot in the evenings to try and keep the weekends as free as possible.

However, this weekend, Saturday was spent cleaning the house and shopping and Sunday was spent sorting the garden out.

If we do this kind of weekend once a month then we keep on top of it. The house just isn't always as clean as I would like it.

I multitask ()at times - like cleaning the loo while dd is in the bath or wiping round the kitchen and washing up whilst cooking. The most important thing is to tidy as you go otherwise it quickly gets out of hand.

Another thing I try and do is to wash and iron a load every day so it doesn't accumulate.

It's not ideal as on our busy housework weekend dd is a bit neglected but she is happy to "help" now that she's getting bigger. We had loads of fun with the leaves in the garden

Uwila · 16/10/2006 15:00

Clean house? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Judy1234 · 16/10/2006 22:27

And I haven't ironed in 22 years and we all look pretty smart.

hatwoman · 16/10/2006 22:40

pay for a cleaner - it's buying time which is the most important thing you can buy.

kid · 16/10/2006 22:42

I do mine at the weekend. The plus side of working full-time is I'm not at home to make a mess.

trixymalixy · 17/10/2006 15:14

We both have full time jobs and until last week we had a cleaner who did 2 hours a week at £6 ph, she found a full time job unfortunately.

We tended to tidy the house the night before she came leaving the weekends free for DIY etc.

Am trying to find another cleaner as we just don't have the time to clean and renovate our house at the weekends.

She didn't do as good a job as I would myself but it just meant that everything was kept on top of and forced us to tidy up once a week.

Plus you would spend £12 without thinking on around of drinks on a night out, so didn't seem a lot for the extra time it seemed to give us at the weekends.

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