I've just fired my cleaner and I feel terrible and need to share to make sure I'm not BU. She has been with us for 5 years and has always been an ok cleaner, not amazing but ok. She is very sweet, reliable and trustworthy. I had some time off over the last 6 months and as I had time to pay some attention I realised she was a bit meh. So I had a chat (via text - her English is pretty much zero) and asked her to change afew bits and she hasn't really taken it onboard. Some examples: (1) not to water(or kill) the houseplants - I have had to throw out a number of plants over the years as they rotted from her severe overwatering (2) not to vacuum the skirting boards with the hard edge of the vacuum cleaner - she has marked every single wall and skirting board in the house by doing this every week. We only moved in 3 years ago to fresh house and already the paintwork on every single skirting board and wall needs to be redone because of this (3) the floors are regularly left dirty even though she vacuums them - I don't know how she manages to push dirt about? Then the dirty floors are lightly mopped (4) loos are not wiped down on the outside. I have small boys who are not great at peeing "in" to the toilet and so this is a key need on a weekly basis. I realised when the kids loo was a bit stinky that she just ignores this (5) she doesn't wipe down the table or counter properly, just a light wipe (how do you even do that?) (6) she puts away dirty chopping boards in the the cupboard - as in breakfast dirty, crumbs, jam - it was generally the only thing left out from breakfast each week as we would have everything else tidied away by the time she came so that she could "clean not tidy".
It had come to the stage where I was cleaning up after her each week to get to the level of clean I wanted. I am not too up my own backside to clean, but I am too knackered from a busy job and 3 kids. This is my payment to me each week to get some rest from the neverending task that is housework. My husband does a lot of things but cleaning is not his forte. If I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done really and the house would be a pigsty. Over the last 5 years we have paid her religiously, even in lockdown when she couldn't come (for months) to make sure she wasn't out of pocket. I recommended her to a friend who was desperate for a cleaner and she only lasted a week as my friend who I trust simply said "she's crap". I have had enough. She doesn't speak English so I texted her to tell her - shitty I know but we always communicate via text as otherwise it's impossible to communicate. I offered her 2 weeks payment to cover her for a bit. I think that's reasonable as she's a service provider not an employee.
Am I terrible? Should I just stay with reliable and trustworthy and suck up the issues? We're just over covid (all 5 of us at once) and I'm so knackered I don't know if I'm being too picky or unreasonable and feeling quite emotional about all of this.