Forced to have MIL as our cleaner. Now she says the flat is filthy and disgusting.

[AmandaCooper]

Just to set the scene, I work out of the house about 45 hours a week. Travel there and back takes about 1.5 hours a day. DH works from home similar hours. No DC. I do 95% of the housework.

DH (MIL?) has recently decided that MIL should be our cleaner. DH has agreed to pay her a "good rate" and apparently she badly needs the money. Although I was very uncomfortable with the idea, she has now been and cleaned our flat twice, both times while I was at work and without any warning whatsoever.

DH and I had a huge fight last night over this which culminated in me packing a bag to leave, but not leaving. During the argument, DH kept saying that the flat was "filthy and disgusting". I am confident that he is repeating what he has heard MIL say. She used to say the same thing about the "disgusting state" we left the house in when we lived with her.

I feel awful about MIL coming in my home when I'm not expecting it and criticising my housekeeping to DH. It's not the immaculate show home that her house is, but it's not filthy and disgusting.

What would you do?

hang on...so he spends all day in this filthy and disgusting pit so it must be mainly him creating the filth...no!

can't believe we are living in the 21st century and still suffering men who consider their mess to be someone else's responsibility.

these values are never going to change until we question them.

perhaps if the darling mil had told her son he had to clean up after himself you wouldn't be having to work a full time job and then come home and be told you have to skivvy around to clean up your joint home.

outrageous.

Get her to fucking clean it then! That's what you're paying her for isn't it?

Amanda, didn't you post about it once before? So why she has only cleaned the flat twice since?

i think redheels has a point. if you are employing her as a cleaner then she needs to do it on days that you specify, not when she has some free time and feels like it.

otherwise there's no way you can plan, eg you might have just done a spring clean and then she'll turn up; or you will leaving and cleaning thinking that she'll do it and she won't be there.

i think there also ought to be some ground rules about what she doesn't do, eg clean cupboards, wardrobes, throw anything away except things in bins..... Agree that her money will be put in a specific place and that if you want any particular jobs done that week you will make a list - that way you are in charge.

and all those people having a go about her son not doing stuff - in an ideal world yes he should...but maybe he does loads of other things instead.

kepler
OP doesn't like her DH doing the cleaning.....so he has found a solution...albeit not a good one, but a solution.....

sorry but why doesn't OP like DH doing the cleaning? is he disabled or ill? i can't see any other reason.

You complained she came 'while I was at work', surely with your long hours that's the best time? I'm a very private person and rubbish at doing housework so understand (I think) completely, but I'd hate to have a mil doing housework while I was in the next room. Imagine the guilt, how quiet & well behaved you'd have to be, or all friendly camaraderie - making cups of tea & working together, but her way.

Could you limit the rooms she's allowed to clean to downstairs, or ask her to do deep cleans of specific things? Send dh out on a long shopping trip & sneakily hire your own cleaner? If she's struggling financially could you get a pet & ask her to pet-sit occasionally & pay generously for this?

Don't envy you this one, dp genuinely hates my parents having anything to do with our house though I sometimes could do with no-nonsense parental help & advice.

im confused. is mil suggesting you clean the house BEFORE she arrives so she can just drink tea and flit about with a duster?

Sorry for the long absence, I've been working! I did post about this before, as I really didn't want this arrangement and DH knew that. I'm mostly upset that there was no warning whatsoever and she's been in every room. I'd have liked to have put certain things away. I'd just like to have known.

MIL's house is so immaculate, all she does is clean. She goes into the bathroom after you use the loo to clean and bleach the toilet. You could happily eat off her floor. If you move a cushion in the lounge she goes mad about the mess. God only knows what she thinks of my skirting boards. I really don't want her to think I'm a slattern.

DH can't possibly clean during his working day by the way, he has a very demanding job and when he's at work he needs to focus on that. This is fair enough.

I don't want to pay a cleaner because it will cost me £8.50 an hour and I'm desperately trying to shift law school debts. DH only wants to pay a cleaner if it's MIL. Until yesterday he's always said he's perfectly happy with the state of the flat. It's not filthy and disgusting by any normal standards, but it could be tidier.

id rather pay £8.50 ( bargain btw) to a cleaner 2 or 3 times a week than any relative.

my dh said to my SIL that i wanted a cleaner and that it would be perfect for her....i could immediatley see nothing but problems

how would i tell her that she hadn't done something properly? you can't fire your SIL!

i would find a way of getting out of this - and find £20 to hire a cleaner

Sungirltan I imagine MIL was appalled at the state I'd let it get to, we'd been away for the weekend and because I wasn't expecting visitors I'd chosen to spend Sunday afternoon washing and ironing rather than dusting and mopping the floors.

Anyone who said such rude things about my home particularly if it wasn't true certainly wouldn't be allowed back in. Only after a massive apology.

It's difficult to explain. My approach to housework is to clean, which I get on with on my own without bothering him. DH's approach is to tidy up and put things away, which is fine, except he does it by saying to me "what's this?" "do you want this?" "where does this go?", "what shall I do with this?" which I find stressful because I'm a terrible procrastinator and don't know where to put the spare batteries, or the novelty soap, or the screws from the broken clock.

DH doesn't do cleaning and I don't do tidying up. We drive each other mad with it.

Clearly this is not a problem compared to most "relationships" threads, I do realise this. The advice is very helpful though and I'm grateful.

Do what I do, have a box or allocate a drawer for Miscellaneous Stuff and all the bits and pieces you don't know what to do with in there :D This only works up to a point of course, eventually you have to sort out the box, but it solves the immediate problem!

Maybe you need to have a talk about dividing up the housework, i.e. he does some of the cleaning that you currently do (because that's usually harder work and more unpleasant than just tidying, so you should share it out) and you agree to be a bit tidier, pick up after yourself and put stuff away when you've finished with it etc?

if it's so filthy and disgusting it means you have a crap cleaner. Tell DH if it's so bad that you want to fire her and get someone who'll do the job properly!

i don't think it is fair of your m in law to criticise when you are out of the house and you DH is not. at least your DH is there and he could put the occasional wash on, tidy kitchen etc.

i know he has a busy job but even so.

sounds like a nightmare arrangement to me

You're making me think now! It is mostly my stuff that is left lying about to be honest, and i know it irritates DH but I really have no idea where to put it, so I think I do the ironing, change the beds, mop the floor, etc. to compensate.

Maybe MIL can help me to find a place for it all.

A trip to Ikea, perhaps to look at boxes, drawers etc? Although my MIL and I have a difference of opinion. She thinks I have way too many books that 'collect dust' . Not that I have ever asked her to dust them, mind you

Maybe you and your DH need to discuss the difference between 'tidy' and 'clean.'

Lol - my late MIL once cleaned our house while dh and I were students. She had a key as she was landlady. She was so horrified she wrote us a very long letter letting us know how filthy and disgusting it was and went as far as to say that we ought to be careful about getting ill because 'men in white coats' would have to be called in as we likely to catch a notifiable disease.

It was studenty. There was jam on the shelf next to the jam jar. It wasn't that bad.

Anyway, you have to decide. Clean it yourself, clean it together or let someone else do it. Family/friend cleaners rarely work.

I'm only assuming that she said it. I might be being paranoid. DH has a habit of representing other people's views as his own in these situations, he's a beggar for it.