What do you spend on household maintenance and support?

[project54]

Hello,
Currently my husband and I spend £0pcm on house maintenance / cleaning help / gardening.

We live in London. He works full time, I home educate our three children (8, 6 and 3). I don't do any work with a paid salary.
We live in a 5 bed house with good sized garden and are halfway through the world's slowest renovation.
My mental health is suffering with all there is to do. We also currently have no help with childcare. Sometimes we have had a part time nanny or mothers' helpers. Neither of us have family close enough or able enough to support us on a regular basis.

I'm curious about what proportion of your household income you might use to support the running of your home.

What do you spend on cleaners, gardeners, childcare, school fees (if any?). What proportion of your income is this? If you don't spend anything on support, how many hours would you guess that your household/you spend doing it yourself? I appreciate we're all in different situations here, but I can't carry on doing it all, and I'd like to make some proper investment in long-term support.

To clarify, I'm not looking for alternative strategies for me doing less. I'm looking specifically here for an idea of what kind of spend I could prepare us for, as a proportion of our income.

I don't have any external

I know someone who has a weekly cleaner, gardener & a local person who they can contact for small DIY repairs

Cleaner £100 per month
Ironing £60 per month
Gardener £50 per month
Decorator ad hoc. About £600 so far this year.
Not London.

Gardener, cleaner and window cleaner total about £700/ month. Childcare about 1k (4 nursery sessions/Week + some babysitting).
It's a small proportion of our income. We've only got one baby so far so no school fees.

If the budget was tighter, I'd probably still get the cleaner (for fewer hours) and a gardener once a fortnight.

Thanks all, it's good to get some perspective. Yes the childcare costs push it up a lot, don't they.

Each month;
Cleaner £100
Ironing £50
Gardening £50
Windows £15

Painting, new furniture, bedding, accessories etc around £4000 a year.

Cleaner 160£ month
Gardener 30-50£ a month
Shirts all dry cleaned
Childcare costs @900£ month

Cleaner £160pcm (5 bed house)
Gardening £120pcm (fortnightly, reasonably large garden)
Windows £25pcm every 6 weeks

If I were you I'd get a cleaner first.

I'm sure there are people who spend 0 on the above but it sounds like you're running yourself into the ground with all the stuff you're doing. Are you looking to get some help on board again?

Cleaner around £125 a month. No other expenses. If I did it myself it would be 3 hours a week. (My cleaner does it in 2, but it takes me longer.) I hope you can restructure your workload so you get a bit more me time and are less stressed.

Cleaner £195 pcm
Gardener (hopefully starting soon!) £30 pcm
Xx

Childcare £2500 per month (2 kids)
Nothing on any other maintenance. But the house is empty all day every day with kids at nursery and us at work, and we only cook one meal a day so cleaning and tidying is limited to the mess we can create in the few hours we are there.

I think in you're shoes I'd struggle to not spend anything. If you can spend a little on childcare then the rest you can do yourself as a bit of a break from parenting.

So in answer to your question £2500 childcare costs is about a third of our combined take home pay. We both work full time, which is different to your situation.

We could probably do with getting a cleaner but we are not at home we don't 'see the dirt' as much. When I was on maternity leave I spent much more energy trying to keep on top of the house and felt more stressed out and frazzled when I couldn't because of the kids!

Cleaner is the best money I've ever spent (£25 a week). Can't remember the last time I argued with DH, we used to bicker about whose turn it was to do things and whether it was up to (my) standard.

"What do you spend on cleaners, gardeners, childcare, school fees (if any?)"

Cleaners (4-bedroom house, once a week): £156 per month

Window cleaning: £18 every 6 weeks

Gardener: Greenthumb for £11.25 per month; I do all the rest including lawn mowing, which I love; garden is small and low maintenance

Childcare: 10yo DD; we get a babysitter maybe twice a year for £9 an hour

We used to send DD to full time nursery for £870 a month minus childcare vouchers worth £124

School fees: £16k a year for private school

"What proportion of your income is this?"

It's about 20% of my take home pay (school fees calculated per month, Greenthumb, window cleaning and cleaners).

DH is self employed with variable pay that's about a fifth what I earn, so I've not included it in calculating proportion of income.

No cleaner or gardener. Window cleaner is £20 pcm. I have a car cleaner at £42.50 pcm.

General house maintenance, gutter repairs, replacing blown double glazing etc, plumbing, is roughly £300 pcm this year. We had to get fencing replaced too so that has pushed the cost up.

One set of school fees is just under £24k (secondary) and two at university who need assistance with accommodation costs - about 18k between them.

We have our own business so income varies but this year it’s around 20% of pre tax income.

Hours spent on cleaning and gardening? I reckon about four hours a day including washing, ironing.

thanks everyone. We've recently rearranged our finances so I have better access to the budget, so yes in answer to @JoJoSM2, I am looking at getting more help; but I guess I'm not really sure what help I need most. Sounds like people rate their cleaner top of the list, after childcare, if it's needed.

Our gardener is double the price of our cleaner so I'd prioritise 4h of cleaning over 2h of gardening.

However, I imagine that childcare is an important one for you- otherwise you'll probably never get a break from your children? It's very different from families whose children are in school/nursery.

Cleaner £0
Gardener £0
Childcare £0
House maintenance £0

We clean and tidy as we go between us. Both work full time but dh hours are a lot more at moment so more left to me.

To make it easier we bought an upstairs and downstairs hoover and a cordless stick.

A dishwasher and the dc have a morning Rota on who's turn to empty it.

Whichever parent gets in first starts tea and lunches and then the other one mucks in as soon as they get in.

Same with dog walking. The dc help if only one parent around.

I have two slow cookers and an instant pot and plan and prep meals the night before.

The one job I hate the most is ironing so I made dh out me a tv in the kitchen and I iron whilst catching up with stuff.

Is pretty organised but it works and means we all get some chill out time

Op when my dc were younger and we were renovating etc it was stressful so we had a cleaner and someone to cut the grass and bushes once a month to take the pressure off.

It does get easier

Hi @project54

We are in south west London, 4 bed house, two working parents and one son:

Expenses per month:
Nanny: £1,300
Nursery: £876
Cleaner: £200

Mortgage: £1,900
Bills: £550

We get about £2,000 cash to spend after all the family expenses.

Hope this helps.

No cleaner, gardener or school fees.

Dp is a builder so we save money on home renovations there.

Kids - around £600 per month on childcare. About 12% of take home pay.