DH, housework and hired help

[TirisfalPumpkin]

Hi,

First world problem incoming.

Background - we currently hire an agency cleaner to clean our house every fortnight. DH wants to up this to weekly. I don’t really want to have a cleaner at all, and we can’t agree on what to do.

If relevant, we are early 30s, married, no kids, pretty comfortable financially but not loaded. We work a comparable amount of hours, although he works a lot of his from home.

His reasons

• We can easily afford it so why wouldn’t we
• He values the time/not having to do the job more than the money, so would rather outsource it to someone who values the money
• Knowing he will have to clean makes him dread/feel depressed about the weekends. He has diagnosed depression, although in treatment and doing better lately.
• It means we get to do more fun things at the weekend instead of spending half of Saturday cleaning
• He has floated the idea of hiring a friend (who does house cleaning, gardening etc for a few clients) rather than an agency - this would save more money

My reasons

• I think cleaning your living space is something adults do - we don’t outsource cooking, laundry, wiping our arse etc.
• We can afford it, but it means we are deprioritising other things. I would rather live as simply as possible with few outgoings in case work situation changes.
• Privacy - I don’t like a relative stranger, however trustworthy, being in my space. I have Aspergers and home being ‘safe’ is important to me.
• I worry hiring someone we know would be even worse as I wouldn’t want our friendship to be affected by employer/employee dynamic or her being disgusted at our sloppiness, etc
• He doesn’t tidy pre-clean, and doesn’t seem to understand that the cleaner is a cleaner not a tidier, so putting things away so she can get at the surfaces tends to fall to me. Once I’ve done this I might as well clean as well.

We fell out over it, I said he sounded like a teenager who missed his mum picking up his socks, which he really didn’t like. He told me I couldn’t make unilateral decisions and I wasn’t being fair or reasonable. I felt shouted down and was having a hard time articulating why I wasn’t happy so I ended up agreeing to a trial of weekly cleans by our friend.

The only other way forward I can see is that I do everything, but that doesn’t seem very fair either. I don’t actually love cleaning, I just see it as something that needs to be done.

I guess I also have some thoughts about sexist dynamics and women ‘liberating’ themselves by dumping the shit work onto a lower paid woman, which doesn’t sit right with me. DH argues that our friend is self employed and sets her own rates, and we would treat her well and not exploit her - which is true, but I still don’t really feel comfortable about the situation.

It is not making me admire him very much, which is why I feel it’s a relationship problem rather than AIBU - although I am prepared to be told that I am.

The biggest thing I think he needs to compromise on is the tidying. Cleaners clean not tidy. The reason you don’t like it is because by the time you have tidied you might as well clean

Cleaners deep clean do the heavy lifting. You need to do the tidying and day to day stuff. Having a cleaner doesn’t absolve you of all chores

We have a cleaner. I don't really agree with your reasons not to have one. Our cleaner tidies up as well, changes the beds, cleans everything. We still have to wash clothes, husband does this and put dishwasher on, I occasionally do it.

It works for us because he's tidier and I wouldn't want him to feel he did everything.

I dunno, seems unreasonable to not want one when you can afford it and it makes life easier

Thanks Quartz - this is a good point. I think he sees it as an opt out of housework rather than paying someone to do the heavier jobs/scrubbing/disinfecting etc.

I totally agree with all his points and all of your points! This is the most unhelpful response... I don't have a cleaner so I guess your points win for me. It's a tough one alright. I am just procrastinating as I actually need to clean and tidy my house. Can someone just tell me to get on with it...

Give a cleaner more hours.
A lot of women clean because they can fit it in around school hours, they can not have to deal with office politics, and they enjoy cleaning.

He clearly does see it as an opt-out of all the chores - full disclosure, I've had a cleaner almost all of my adult life but when it was just me and DH I only had them in once a fortnight. That's enough to cover the heavy stuff, with two reasonable adults picking up after themselves.

I think your compromise - we do this fortnightly, the rest of the time we pick up and keep the house tidy - is a good one. Your DH sounds really lazy actually - and again, I have a cleaner and have prioritised my cleaner over other bills in the past.

Here's my suggestion that should suit both of you.

He pays for a cleaner once a fortnight out of his own personal spending money.

You do all the cleaning the other weekend and save your personal spending money.

In accordance with your need to feel safe, one of you agrees to always be present when the cleaner is in, once a fortnight.

All other non-cleaner tasks (e.g. laundry) to be split 50/50, as I assume they already are.

I'm personally with him. You can say that about anything. You pay someone else to grow crops that you could grow yourself. You pay someone else to sew clothes that you could sew yourself etc. If you have the means and would rather not do the job then it's perfectly reasonable to pay for someone to do it. If he dreads his weekends because it means housework then I understand why he wants a cleaner every week. You could compromise by each of you tidying up before the cleaner comes on alternate weeks?

Neither of you are wrong about this. Before having kids I was more like you, but these days I'm definitely on your husband's side!

It's not worth falling out over. Try to find a compromise like the ones suggested above.

PS I do agree with you about not hiring a friend, I think that can get very awkward.

His reasons
- We can easily afford it so why wouldn’t we
I agree with him on this one.
But your reasons are also valid.
You need to reach a compromise.
He needs to start tidying.
I run around like a blue-arsed fly on Monday morning, tidying ready for the cleaner!
It's just what you have to do.
I don't clean but I certainly tidy.

If he works from home a lot I really see his point.

I also work from home, so the little things job spend all day looking at me, while the kids and DP swan off to school/office and don't have to look at it. Knowing that those little things aren't my problem, that I'm not just putting them off to do later once I've finished work helps me to ignore them during the day - otherwise they're just looming in my mind.

Personally, I think cleaners are great, and I employ ones that are tidiers too where I can, because I would prefer to enjoy my time and pay someone else to do the boring bits. I don't have a cleaner right now, but have done a few times in the past, and it's so lovely coming back to a clean and tidy house, that I didn't have to clean and tidy (my favourite was when we had a 'mothers help' who did the washing too.. I hate folding and putting away washing!)

It is good to hear how other people make this work. Also reassuring that it isn’t actually a huge deal - in my mind it was starting to turn into a ‘we have different values and are therefore incompatible’.

Re. his working from home - I was more thinking it was relevant as he has around 6-8 less commute hours than I do per week, so while we work the same hours and earn about the same, he ends up with more free time. Fair point though about he has to ‘live in’ the house more than I do.

Hellsbells, your blue arsed fly comment accurately describes my Monday mornings too!

Not sure if this will help, I am naturally a tidy person. However I hate loathe and despise cleaning. To the point I would dread a Sunday morning getting up and doing the "big clean" so I got a cleaner because it honestly made me happier. So I really do see your partners point.

The thing is he can't use it as an excuse to just never ever do anything.

For reference I am totally single and live alone and still want the cleaner :-)

Horses - I don’t think hating cleaning, particularly at the weekend, is an unpopular view at all :)

I guess, for me, the issue is why does his happiness seem to trump mine. The ‘coming home to a clean house’ feeling isn’t joyful for me, it feels violating. I feel like my space has been invaded. The cat is with me on this.

I have a cleaner and v likely ASD too

My cleaner runs her own business. It is her job and she employs someone else too. She is good at it and the hours suit her family. She also tidies and does our laundry!

I hate cleaning, DH hates cleaning, I don't want to come home and do it after being at work and DH is shit at it. It spoils all our weekends - we'd rather spend our time together.

This arrangement suits me and the cleaner.

The only thing I disagree with your DH on is hiring a friend. I'd hire a non-agency cleaner but not a friend. If you want to complain or sack her it's awkward.

I am of your DH's view here. I also work from home, and find working when there are small chores to be done extremely difficult. It really affects my state of mind - I just can't concentrate. We have just cancelled our cleaner for financial reasons (we agreed jointly that we needed to) and I completely underestimated the impact this would have on my wellbeing. I think when you don't have to tidy up every week for a cleaner, you get messier, too - or at least we have! That said, I do get some of your points.

Could you suggest a compromise:

1. hire a cleaner but it has to be a stranger - I agree having a friend is v difficult in terms of boundaries.
2. limit cleaning to downstairs or more "public" areas, so your bedroom, for example, is out of bounds and still a safe space.
3. make it conditional on him helping to tidy beforehand. If, after a month, he hasn't been helping, then you lose the cleaner.
4. draw up a rota for the areas the cleaner doesn't do, so that way you maybe each get jobs you don't mind as much. Eg my DH likes vacuuming but I would rather pull out my own teeth!

I also wouldn't worry about the moral side of hiring a cleaner. I used to think like this but I think it was a bizarre kind of snobbery - because I hated cleaning, I assumed it was beneath everyone. In fact, our former cleaner genuinely loved cleaning and found it a great, flexible job for her lifestyle. She was gutted when we had to let her go and I actually feel far worse about removing the work from her than I did about hiring her!

DH would rather pay for a cleaner than do it himself, fair enough, but I feel the cleaners I have had in the past, are quite superficial, so ended up doing the more in depth stuff myself, but that's a different story.

As we live in a fairly small area where you are only a couple of people removed from anyone else, I decided to ask the cleaner not to bother with our bedroom, I am sure the cleaners would have been discreet, but felt the need. Would this be a compromise for you to still have your 'safe' home?

You both have good reasons for wanting / not wanting a cleaner.

I'd try to reframe the problem, so it's not about cleaning or dreading cleaning or feeling violated. You could:

• see it as giving someone who needs employment, a job

• pay someone a decent wage so you don't feel you're exploiting them

• paying money to stave off depression relapses

• have a room (your bedroom?) that's totally off-limits to the cleaner, which only you clean as often as you like

It's very unhelpful to effectively accuse him of behaving like a teenager (he's not; he just doesn't like cleaning). It's very unhelpful of him to ignore feeling like your home's been violated or that a stranger has been through your stuff. You both need to accept the other has valid feelings on these points.

Your feelings trump his on the friend taking on the cleaning issue, because this one could easily be sorted with no loss of 'what he wants'. You do not like the personal aspect, so you outsource what cleaning you do eventually decide on to a NON-friend. This is obvious. If he argues that not only does he want more cleaning but he demands that a friend do it when that actually makes you unhappy = totally unreasonable. Cancel the friend trial right now.

You're also right about the tidying. Cleaners clean, they do not TIDY! Sorry, he's on a sticky wicket here. The cleaner isn't necessarily the issue, though he'd love it to be... the actual problem is that you're doing his tidying. Agree to more cleaning hours, but wanr him that you will no longer be picking up his socks under the sofa, his pens and papers and wrappers and shit from everywhere. Sit back and see what happens... he won't get his 'come home to a clean house feeling.' Because that only partly comes from the cleaner!!

I think I'd show him this thread. You're already meeting him here far more than halfway - you're doing half it it, the cleaner is doing the rest - he's only getting his spring fresh experience every time he walks in the door because he's not pulling his weight on the everyday adulting bit. He has to. Or alongside losing the spring fresh feeling, he's also going to lose your respect.

Sort that, and I think you will probably be able to come to a good cleaning compromise - you don't actually sound like you need a lot more cleaner hours to be able to free up those weekends nicely (which I agree with him on!)

He won't want to hear any of this though - which is why you should show him this thread - as others will also agree that there's just no way out of the conclusion at least partly being that he has to start picking up his shit like a grown up, or he's not going to have a happy home.

I agree on getting over yourself on the moral snobbery about cleaning.

When my DM lost her job, she set up as a cleaner. She did not like cleaning but she was good at it and made good money at it cleaning for some vair vair posh people.

She also became very good friends with some of them and 20 years after she retired from it, is still going round their houses, going to WI with them, going to lunch with them and so on.

And she and my DF did not see it as 'charity' but v good fortune that they got bequeathed a lot of high quality castoff clothing that they would never have afforded, esp as my DF was v tall and hard to fit. Luckily my DM cleaned for an ex-Grenadier Guards Colonel which was a stroke of luck.

So please no snobbery about exploiting the working classes or outsourcing labour. This paid for our home, our clothes and sent me to a v expensive school and through university.

There is a lot of stuff to think about here - thank you all. I might actually show him the thread, or at least a digest of the main points. I think that would be quite productive as it’s not just a wall of ‘see, wife is right’ and there’s much sympathy/understanding of his POV too.

Anna - apologies if I came across as a snob. I might be, although I have done domestic cleaning as a job before and I certainly don’t see it as demeaning or in any way not a ‘valid’ way of making a living. I think my objection is a result of reading Germaine Greer and/or realising that most of the men in my life get all the shitwork done for them by women, either paid or unpaid. It’s more of a sex inequality issue for me than a social class one, although I do take your point about getting over it and focusing on the actual needs of the humans present rather than theoretical concepts.

It probably was not helpful of me to call him a teenager, accepted. I have probably got a few issues due to my ex h who was a textbook manchild. I am maybe a bit hyper-aware around any sign of similar behaviour so might be unfairly tarring DH with that brush.

There are gendered splits in labour. But I also get other bits of shitwork done for me - I pay someone to paint my shed even though I could paint it myself. The person I pay is a man.

Ditto the person I pay repeatedly to unblock my sink is a man. And person who fixes my car is a man. All a bit gender stereotypes.

DH and I are probably quite capable of doing things like this ourselves. But we would rather not and can afford not to so we don't.

We can't change the patriarchy single-handedly but we can do things like pay people fairly for the work they do and treat them with respect - unlike in the past when you could have treated your domestic servant like a slave.

Agree he's using a cleaner to opt out of his domestic responsibilities.

It's very telling that he won't tidy up for the cleaner coming. And he's training you to start picking up his slack by not pulling his weight.

I'd think very carefully about a future with him. What happens when you can't afford a cleaner? Or if you have maternity leave - will he leave all the household stuff to you?

He's just avoiding responsibility, which can be a feature of depression.

Don't have kids with him! He is very simply just lazy.
He doesn't want to learn how to clean/tidy up after himself or even compromise considering a big part of your aversion to having someone else being in your personal space is due to being an aspie.

i'm aspie too and i absolutely hate having anyone other than close friends in my home.
i work as a cleaner but there is no way i'd hire one to clean my home - it feels like too much of an invasion of my privacy and puts me out of sorts.

you both need to compromise though.
i.e your bedroom is off limits to the cleaner so you take it in turns to clean your bedroom.
Does he do his share of changing the bedding, putting on a wash and sorting out laundry, washing dishes/wiping down counter tops etc?

I'm always rather mystified by these cleaner threads, two working adults with no kids; just how would your house need so much cleaning? I've brought up 4 kids/ always worked and never set aside days for cleaning, you do it as you go. Maybe everybody lives in a castle 🙄