Did your family hire a housecleaner when you were growing up?

This thread is going to be about class AND the differences between Brits and Americans. I can't wait.

Our house was too small for that to be a reasonable thing to consider doing.

We did briefly in '68-'70 when my brother and I were both preschool age and my mother was working fulltime. She was sort of a combo nanny/housekeeper/cook.

Also I'm American.

Never. I'm Amurrican.

It would add too many options, but to be complete this should include whether you lived in a single parent home / two parents both with full time jobs / two parents only one worked.

Good call. Two parents, dad worked on the road, mom stayed at home until we were old enough to be home alone and worked part time.

I am American and yes we had someone clean the house once a week but only when both of my parents were working 10+ hour days running a restaurant.

Never, ever, once. Bizarre idea (to me). Two parents, dad away on long Navy tours often while growing up but not after the late eighties or so.

Almost never hired one except maybe before a holiday where people were coming over. One parent working a lot of hours, one working only a little for the first ten years of my life or so, more later (running a business from home). Our house was never very clean though.

What Ned said, the idea is odd to me. I dont think growing up I was aware of anyone with housekeepers either, it would have seemed extreme and wealthy - but I grew up in a regional city and in the 70s-80s where mums were more often at home than not, I guess.

Even now, the very idea of having a maid/cleaner in for anything apart from an end of lease spring clean seems... indulgent, to me. I'd love it though.

I thought this only happened on the Fresh Prince and stuff.

I always got the sense that here in the States it was something only fairly well-off people did.

"I'm American, and we had a housecleaner occasionally."

but really not until my mom started going back to work when i was a teenager, and it was only when the place needed a good scrubbing and we were all too busy to pitch in.

^^ Yeah, that was pretty much our situation. I said once a week but sometimes it wasn't that often.

I'm American, and we had a housecleaner on a regular basis or fairly often.

once a week on the reg. fela (RIP) and then blanca.

(xpost) and we were a small family without that many expenses, so it didn't feel like a huge waste of money. we had an urban apartment; it's not like the housecleaner had a huge palatial estate to contend with.

Gotta say, anyone with a big house you can kind of understand having a maid/cleaner. Theres a lot of work in upkeep on big homes.

I'm American, and we had a housecleaner on a regular basis or fairly often.

after my parents got divorced and my mom was working full time & getting her masters degree, we had a housecleaner come once every two weeks or so. this only went on for a few years until i think the expense began to outweigh the benefit.

also, me and my sister were totally irresponsible and unwilling to be decent and help out.

american, never. I actually went out of my way to make fun of and ridicule a girlfriend who talked openly about her "maid" (she was not american), and a friend who also talked about her housecleaner (she was american). then we hired some when my wife got pregnant/shortly after having the kid and holy crap was it nice, although, the house only maintained that sense of orderliness for about two days. we could use one again I suppose. anyway, the elitist aspect of this lost its sting when I, hypocritically, realized I needed one.

american, never. in fact, my mom was a housecleaner for other people for a number of years during the 70s.

never, too poor

never, too poor

no way. my parents would have thought it was way too bourgeois, even if we could have afforded it.

my wife and i, otoh, both employed full-time, have been paying someone to come in every week or two since our first son was born. i have mixed feelings about it, not least because my stuff keeps getting moved around and sometimes i can't find my shoes.

never.

my granny had one but my immediate family did not

I wouldn't say we were poor, at least not after we got out of the trailer park and my dad started working for a company that actually sent him his paychecks. We watched our expenses and got by. But having a housekeeper would have felt like a completely frivolous expense, or at least one that could be exchanged for a more enjoyable frivolous expense if we'd just pick up after ourselves.

I'm Australian and we had a housecleaner most fortnights. Although my mum always went mad and cleaned up before the cleaner arrived.

I was basically raised by live-in housekeepers until I was about 9, at which point my parents got divorced.

never: my mum had kids instead

I'm Australian or other and no, never. Two working parents.

Although my mum always went mad and cleaned up before the cleaner arrived.

LOL Ive heard this from people before.

I'm American, and my mom would sometimes hire our neighbor to clean the house before the extended family came over for the holidays. Usually, the cleaning was split between me and my siblings.

South African set of choices avoided?

"some other weird nationality" imo

American, cleaning lady once a week from the time I was 10. Our cleaning lady was a good but much older friend of my mother's and we had to pre-clean a bit before she arrived. My mom was in divorceville by then so the need was there.

Best thing about cleaner: she had a checkbook holder that said OH SHIT, IT BOUNCED!

The servants lived downstairs, there was Molly the Maid, Thorpe the Gardner, Billy the Delivery Boy, Edna the House-Keeper and Daniels the Butler. Standard practice in most British households.

No. Saturdays were always 'cleaning day,' everyone in the family had to clean their own room, take care of their laundry, dust, etc. and then do some other cleaning chore (bathroom, vacuuming, mowing grass). It took my dad fifteen years to tell me that my mom wouldn't notice if i didn't air out the rugs.

never, too poor

I'm British btw.

My grandma is a housecleaner, mostly for elderly ladies. She still does it even though technically she's an elderly lady herself now.

Our cleaning lady cost $18 per visit in the '80s. Her presence freed up the household child labour for yard work or snow shoveling.

My mum used to be a cleaner as well but she cleaned a hairdressers, not a house, and just as a second job.

I'm some other weird nationality, and my family was working-class, so no way coud we hire a housecleaner. Personal housecleaners are not that common in Finland anyway, I know that some rich families have them, but even middle-class families rarely do.

Both my mom and I have worked as cleaners, though not as housecleaners.

big difference betw. "never had one" and "almost never had one"

I don't think this is quite the bourgeois luxury that a lot of people are painting it as. And definitely there's a difference between someone who comes for an hour once a week/fortnight and live-in "staff". We weren't exactly wealthy but my mother was out of the house for a hundred hours a week, had uncooperative children and liked it clean when she was home.

That being said, it still made me feel very uncomfortable and I don't think ever do it, no matter how well-off I might be.

(Never going to be at all well-off btw)

I think even a once-per-week cleaner would be considered a bourgeois luxury in here, but I guess it's different in the US?

I think even a once-per-week cleaner would be considered a bourgeois luxury in here, but I guess it's different in the US?

― Tuomas, Tuesday, July 14, 2009 11:14 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

probably not by the bourgeoisie...

We've got a cleaning lady. Two hours, once a fortnight. Not my idea, feel kinda weird about it really. Never had one as a child, and yes, I guess I always viewed it as something strictly for idle posh folks. Was always taught to clean up my own mess, feels a bit decadent to be contracting that out now. However, we both work and have small and impossibly messy kids and don't even have the time to do half the stuff we enjoy doing, let alone polishing the silverware scrubbing out the bog etc.

Thing is though, we can't really afford it at all. It was a bit rash of us to take someone on in the first place (we were struggling with the kids at the time), and now as fully-fledged employers, we can't bring ourselves to lay someone off. So we're stuck with it for the moment.

And yes, we spend more time than ever before tidying up and hoovering etc before the cleaning lady comes.

i hate the poll options

"and we never or almost never had one"

as if never having one or "almost never" having one were basically the same thing which i find completely ignorant. fwiw, my mum was a house cleaner for most the of the time she worked.

I probably would have a cleaner for 3-4 hours a week because of stuff like floor and window washing, which I hate doing because try as I might, I am crap at both. Floor washing in particular makes me feel like Sisyphus.

jed_ otm

They're basically the same thing.

yes never having something and having something some of the time are identical

Never had one. I'm American, grew up until age 14 in a two=parent home, dad was in the Army and frequently away, mom occasionally worked part time.

The very concept of having someone else clean your house would have been inconceivable to my mother. Both mom and dad came from very poor roots.

im not sure what's at stake in this really... it clearly isn't just the amount of money involved. if we did "are you a smoker?" or "do you belong to a gym?" or "do you go on holiday?" it would not be as big a deal to people.

Never ... we weren't particularly messy, and didn't have guests very often. My mom would trade housecleaning work with a divorced male friend of hers for repairs of appliances, cars, etc. ... my dad was/is pretty mechanically inept.

I'm American and grew up in a middle class family with both parents working.

its ilx, we make a big deal out of everything

My take is that 'some of the time' is the second option. Third "almost never" option (I'm guessing) allows for one or two exceptions though it wasn't something you "did" so much.

Poll ignores the option of people who lived in several different countries while growing up. :-(

Not when we were growing up. After moving out we had one for about six months in 2003, but that was three blokes living in squalor and she was a posh lady so that made it okay.

Go for citizenship, Kate.

I'm sure in my mom's case, Una (our cleaner) offered her a hand in the aftermath of my dad leaving. My mom can do her own repairs and DIY (she goes insane if wallpaper does not match perfectly, for example, so does not delegate decorating). She remains a hard worker but she grew up with twice-weekly home help because her mother was in and out of psych hospitals during her childhood, so asking for paid help ain't no thing for not-rich mom.

kate has double citizenship iirc?

lol @ people fuming over "almost never"

Nope, do not have double citizenship. Am UK citizen only. We had a maid (and a cook and a gardener) when we lived in South Africa. We only had an au pair when we lived in the UK, but she helped with a lot of household tasks. Had no household help at all when we lived in the States. Which option do I pick?

you could pick all of them!

I picked the first American option as the cleaner had her regular, scheduled hours for a number of years, although it wasn't a forever thing. Once I went to college and my sister moved her mess to the basement, my mom did not need cleaning help. I think first British option is closest for Kate.

right, why is that funny? "never" is the answer for most people, the vast proportion of people, even in the west so why have all three of the options as "yes" with "no" just as a subset of one of them? even if you have no moral objection to having a cleaner it's just completely myopic.

xxxpost

I'm going to average it out and pick the middle British option. Because it certainly wasn't any kind of regular thing after the age of 9.

i think the third option is the no option, but for whatever reason hurting wanted to allow for that one time the family hired a cleaner to prepare for relatives visiting or whatever. almost never to me = once or twice, which over the span of decades means nothing more or less

I am British and only had a cleaner when I lived with yuppies for three months in 2007 but for the purposes of this poll I am voting that I am an Australian with lots of cleaners

mate

poll needs curvy colombian wife option

Jed, could you elaborate on moral objections to having a cleaner? I don't personally see a big problem with the whole concept - it's a service like any other - but I do find attitudes around it fascinating.

im not sure what the "moral objection" is to having a cleaner.

(i say this having grown up in a house where we let out two rooms to students, entailing cleaning, cooking, etc., for my both fully-employed parents.)

xpost

poll needs curvy colombian wife option

yeah I've been saying this about all the polls

i will admit to thinking single people in smallish urban apartments who hire cleaning services to be disgustingly clean savages but lol capitalism

poll needs curvy colombian wife option

As in, she has debilitating curvature of the spine and thus a housecleaner is necessary?

no there's nothing wrong with her she puts the flowers of indie rock womanhood to shame we've been through this gah

Never when we were growing up (British). Have someone come in once a week now. We both work full time and have a small child. I think it's much more common now, but that's probably just because it is now MUCH more common to have two (paid) working parents, and tbh, it's a hell of a lot of work. We still do loads of cleaning!

It's also some weird irrational (and probably middle class) hang-up to see it as a decadent luxury, although I think I felt a bit uncomfortable about the idea myself. There's plenty of stuff that you could do yourself, but you pay other people to do. Would you never go to a cafe, because you can fry an egg yourself? As a proportion of overall household costs, it's small.

The idea that it's equivalent to having a live-in housekeeper or maid is also a bit weird, imo.

If we're going to get into the morality, I think from a feminist perspective, ending the distinction between paid work and domestic work would be a good thing. The fact that there is a cultural prejudice that you should do certain kinds of work yourself, but pay for other kinds of work, and that the majority of the domestic work is traditionally done by women, is pretty obviously repugnant. Gardening doesn't fit this theory, I accept!

ie if there's going to be exploitation, the exploitation of a paid cleaner (almost certainly a woman) is a bit more obvious than the exploitation of a wife/partner etc.

Gay couples ALWAYS have cleaners, before anyone raises them as an objection.

no there's nothing wrong with her she puts the flowers of indie rock womanhood to shame we've been through this gah

sorry, I couldn't find any evidence of spine curvature/spina biffita one way or the other ... maybe I'm just searching wrong :/

Jamie, it is a total middle-class hangup. My best friend's family was probably the richest in our town (although if you were looking for the signifiers of wealth you would not find them at her house, her folks drove an ancient Suburban and her dad pottered around various workshops in the house) but they never had a cleaner and expected N to roll up her sleeves and scrub whatever, whenever. Now she is having to delegate home nursing help for her dad in Mpls and a cleaner for her back East (3 kids, husband w/mobility issues) and finds it angsty to have to set boundaries and/or tell employees in the home what to do in ways that would not bedevil her in a workplace. That freaks her out.

sorry, I couldn't find any evidence of spine curvature/spina biffita one way or the other ... maybe I'm just searching wrong :/

yeah well I'm married to a limping, crescent-shaped aberration so the flowers o

There's plenty of stuff that you could do yourself, but you pay other people to do. Would you never go to a cafe, because you can fry an egg yourself?

This is not the same really. When going to a cafe, the milieu is different from your home, you can socialize with people, and the food is probably better made too. The service you pay for is not the same as what you would get at home. Whereas with cleaning yourself or having someone clean for you, the end result is the same. I'm not saying that hiring a cleaner because you can afford one is inherently wrong, but a system where this sort of division of labour is commonplace is also a system where the division of income is highly inequal, and that I think is wrong.

I'm Australian or some other weird nationality and we had a housecleaner occasionally.

yes, weekly, she was shit.

Chilean side of my family mainly have domestic servants, there is nothing more bitching than waking up in the morning and having the clothes you wore the day before washed and ironed and sitting in a pile on a table outside your room.

I'm Australian or some other weird nationality and we had a housecleaner occasionally.

Well someone had to dry-clean the cape.

ahahahahaha

American, my family had full-time housecleaners both times my dad was posted in India, where it was the thing to do. A lot of families had cooks too but my mom wanted to cook so we just had a woman who cleaned. Our diplomatic apartment even came with servant's quarters. We never had housecleaners in the U.S. or other countries.

American, and growing up I thought that housekeepers/housecleaners were something that people on tv had (like on Different Strokes or Mr. Belvedere) but not something that people in real life had.

American, frequently -- from age 9 on, when my dad moved me & my older brother out of his parents' house into our own house, we had a housecleaner very often. Single parent who was running a small business & travelling to trade shows and such, my dad was also accustomed to having clean surroundings and was willing to pay for them. This basically continued through high-school, with different housecleaners every couple of years.

We had a cleaner for four hours a week when we were growing up (in Britain), after my Mum went back to work. After my sister and I left home, Mum went back to doing it all herself. Dad never lifted a finger until he retired, when he began doing the washing up every night, and he practically requests a medal for his efforts.

We also had a window cleaner and took the car to be valeted every so often. No gardener, because gardening is one of my parents' favourite pastimes.

My mum hired an old lady from down the street (in NZ) to clean for us every fortnight for my basically my entire life. She did the floors and the bathroom and stuff.

The very idea is weird to me. Americans seem to have bigger houses generally, so might need some outside help?

but that's probably just because it is now MUCH more common to have two (paid) working parents

Amongst the middle classes, yes

I'm not convinced about this "middle class hangup" thing. Are you saying that it's actually really common for working class households to have a housecleaner and it's just middle class liberals that have a hang up about it? Cos that doesn't seem very likely to me.

In my experience, it's working class people who have a hang up about being "waited on"

wtf @ "only middle-class women work"

xposts

No, not that, just that working class women have always worked

... well, not all of them, but more likely to

I'm not convinced about this "middle class hangup" thing. Are you saying that it's actually really common for working class households to have a housecleaner and it's just middle class liberals that have a hang up about it? Cos that doesn't seem very likely to me.

Working class people can't afford to have housecleaners. Upper-class people are used of getting their arses wiped by servants, so they probably have no hang-ups about cleaners. So that leaves only the middle class.

American, never. I'll echo those who've said they thought it was something that only rich people did.

(xx-post)

Yeah, both of my (working-class) parents worked, and the idea of a housecleaner would've still probably been totally far-fetched to them.

How much does one of these arse-wipers cost?

i ran into our old cleaner on the bus yesterday! she was an artist's model, that was her true vocation, but also she came and cleaned to make ends meet. My mother hates cleaning, my father needs to be badgered into doing it, and we children being children weren't much use, so it made sense - so long as you're paying the person decent money for their time and labour.

oh i think she was an actress as well, sometimes. she was always doing interesting stuff.

not voting cos of dumb list of nationalities

My mom has a semi-regular cleaning lady now, she's hilarious! She's Polish and has a very broad sense of humor. Also she and my mom are pals, and since my mom only learns things from first-hand anecdotes (since the rest of the time she's sipping the conservative Kool-Aid), it does a WORLD of good for her to have an immigrant friend who has struggled and tells about it.

Also, it puts money in Eva's pocket and the contact that the two women have gives them both a friend they would otherwise not have met. I know the sitch is probably atypical but it's a good arrangement.

i'm trying to think if any of my friends had housecleaners when i was growing up. i don't remember anyone ever mentioning it. some of my friends lived in big mcmansion-type houses, but if they had anyone in to clean i wasn't aware of it.

my wife's biggest argument in favor of having someone come for 4 hrs a week is that the floors won't ever get cleaned otherwise. which is a fair enough point -- i'm not big on mopping. and with two sub-5-yr-olds in the house, the floors accumulate detritus at a rapid clip.

and even though we only pay her like $13/hr, it was brought home to me how much she probably needs the money one week when she was sick and instead of just canceling she sent her teenage kids to clean. they did a good job.

I sometimes wonder how I would have turned out differently if I had chores to do growing up -- I feel it took me a long time to acquire the basic skills & daily habits that go with a clean living space. If I have any bourgie hang-ups abt having housecleaners it would be that they I sometimes feel they undermined the development of a healthy work ethic. I turned out ok, though.

ha. yeah i was sort of shocked at college to meet people who had never washed or folded their own clothes. hilarious mishaps in the laundry room.

Elmo, I'm sympathetic to that learning curve -- I've had a long string of roommates who think that "cleaning the bathroom" means wiping out the sink. The current one put a 100% WOOL HANDMADE BLANKET into the washing machine while I was out of town, and when I came back, she was so pleased she had washed my blanket. Oy gevalt. People mean well, but HOW do they get to be 30 without basic life skills like not washing wool in hot water? xp to tipsy!

I guess it's a joke on me that I consider fiber care a basic life skill. But we ARE talking about cleaning house, here, and other domestic basics.

vacuum cleaners are a fiendish invention they will bite and claw u as soon as your back is turned...

Even though we did have a cleaner, I def. had to do chores growing up. Also, almost every single memory of my mother that takes place inside the house includes her cleaning or doing some type of housework. She also worked full-time. So I think the every-fortnight cleaning lady visit was intended more to make sure things were taken care of regularly and give her a bit of a rest. My dad would help with dishes and did the yardwork.

Also, Elmo: even thought I had to do chores growing up, I now have a terrible work ethic and am a fairly awful housekeeper. So don't beat yourself up. xpost

yeah, having a cleaner doesn't mean there aren't chores for kids to do! The people i knew who got to college age still unable to do the washing properly were more likely to have mums who did all the domestic work and were proud and efficient about it, and presumably felt it a waste of time to make their children do the laundry at home when they were just going to get it wrong.

living with my boyfriend has been a pretty significant catalyst in getting my domestic skills in place and raising my standards of cleanliness -- i had been living with the aforementioned older bro who was an incorrigable slob (maybe more spoiled by the housecleaner treatment than me), and my bf was basically his family's housecleaner growing up. quite an improvement, really.

Yah I still did chores when we had cleaning ladies.

The person I had the original argument with said that in their country of origin it was more common to have a housecleaner even if you didn't have a lot of money -- just something people prioritized. I do think a lot of Americans who can hypothetically otherwise afford it have some kind of a cultural thing against it. I don't really think it's "unethical" to hire a housecleaner (though I used to buy into the "exploitation" argument), but I think it makes Americans feel icky somehow because it reminds them of class divisions and makes them feel lazy and spoiled.

I'm sure "didn't have a lot of money" was relative in this conversation though -- I mean I don't think the housecleaners had housecleaners.

Judging by this thread, it seems more common in the US than the UK

I understand most kids had chores growing up, but for me there was almost always someone on hand to take care of it -- if not the housekeeper then my grandmother. Not saying my experience is typical.

My mom would trade housecleaning work with a divorced male friend of hers for repairs of appliances, cars, etc. ... my dad was/is pretty mechanically inept.

I sense MORE BEHIND THIS STORY

^^I don't. My mom was fantastic at getting men to help her do stuff w/o putting out, a valuable life skill worth having.

Despite the cleaner I had tons of household chores and zero pocket money.

both parents worked full time and we had a large house (lol sheffield property market in the 70s) so we had a weekly cleaner until they got divorced, moved to smaller places, and had less money. they didn't have any hangups or guilt about it afaik, and i certainly wouldn't if i had a big enough house/bank balance to justify it.

For my dad hiring a housekeeper to maintain the place was both for his benefit, since he couldn't be bothered, and as a way of providing his kids with a clean, stable environment. My grandmother always took up domestic tasks out as a way of caring for me & my bro, I guess. Maybe that means I was coddled or spoiled but I can't change it now -- and besides, I do pretty well at looking after myself these days.

For background, my grandmother cleaned houses for a living for a period of time, and I would go along with her whenever I was around.

Once my mom and my stepfather moved in together when I was about 11, my mom hired a housecleaner because my mother was the primary breadwinner in a very stressful job yet she and my stepfather occupied very traditional gender roles. If I was home when the housecleaner came, my mother would leave me a list of tasks that I was to perform to help the housecleaner. Eventually, my mom hired a retired friend of the family who cleaned houses for supplemental income. She stayed on in an increasingly diminished capacity, eventually just coming every other week to iron clothes (which, as my mom was still working a full time job and the second shift, was A-OK with her) until she had a stroke in our kitchen and had to retire. Currently, my mother pays her sister-in-law (my aunt's husband's sister) to clean their house. The distribution of household labor has become more equitable over the years, but now my mother is caring for her aging (and in the case of my grandfather, actively dying) parents who live with her, and working a full time job so she still needs help.

Supplemental background: I cleaned houses during and after college, PRN, with a friend who operated her own housecleaning business to pay for grad school, and was employed as part of a cleaning team at a northern CA ski resort for a period of time.

Okay, so Jeff and I have also hired someone to come clean our house, on and off depending on finances and need, for the last six years or so. Jeff and I really work hard to achieve an equitable division of household labor, but we both work full time and have hobbies/extra-curriculars, so having someone clean the house is a pretty awesome thing. I am adamant about hiring someone who is self-employed, and I will absolutely never hire Merry Maids or some other wage slave organization.

Here is why I have no class guilt about it: I come from a family of people who cleaned houses for a living, and I have cleaned houses for a living. I don't look at it as dirty work or demeaning because I don't thinking cleaning house is beneath us (we clean in between housecleaner visits, plus there are cleaning chores that we would not ask the housecleaner to do) and because I am grateful almost (and sometimes literally) unto tears when I come home from work and find the house is neat and clean and smells of chemical lemons. Cleaning houses is a sweet way to make good money for yourself with very little overhead and a flexible, self-set schedule and I'm happy to be a part of that economy. I see people who clean houses for a living as professionals and independent business people who perform a needed and very, very much appreciated service in exchange for renumeration, not my own twice a week for a couple of hours house servants.

We never had a housecleaner when I was growing up.

Yeah I really think for me its a matter of prioritizing your life. Growing up we never had a cleaner and I used to do all the vacuuming, ironed all the clothes for 4 people, washed 3 cars and generally picked up[ the house once a week but I still remember my mom always cleaning (after working min 50 hrs a week) and always being angry about it. Now i have a husband and a kid and a full time job I know why she was so angry. If you count up the hours you get maybe 3 days a week with your kid when you work full time. If you want to spend the majority of that time telling your kid to get out of the room because you need to clean the floor or i cant play with you because im exhausted thats fine but it seems like bullshit to me. We dont have a cleaner because together we can generally keep on top of it but with the 2nd kid coming i dont know. Ive definitely been thinking about it. Mostly for floors, the bathrooms and windows etc every two or three weeks. The rest is pretty easy.

I'm increasingly in favor of wealth redistribution via a service economy.

Having read the thread, I have some observations:

My family lived in a trailer when we first hired a housecleaner.

I think it might be more common and less an upper class thing in the US maybe because people work longer hours? Like remember when 40 hour weeks used to mean working 9-5, and then all of a sudden, shifts expanded to 9-6, with an unpaid hour for lunch? Then add in commute time (even for someone like me who lives in a tightly packed urban area it still takes 45 minutes to get home on public transit) and you're looking at eleven hours outside of the hour on a regular basis. Add in fewer paid holidays and less vacation, and you can kind of see why USA-ers are so fiercely protective of their free time.

We have a small urban apartment and I will cop to being "disgustingly clean."

Now i have a husband and a kid and a full time job I know why she was so angry.

I have a husband who really does try, no kids, and a full time job and I get (literally) cabinet-slammingly furious about it. I feel you for real.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but in case my "it might be more common and less an upper class thing in the US" comes across as really tone deaf, I want to clarify that I meant hiring house keepers might be more common among middle-class folks and less an upper class exclusive thing. I totally am not operating under some ridiculous idea that in America, EVERYBODY can afford housecleaners!!!! You just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and hire one!!!!! I know that my whole "sufficient money, insufficient free time" "problem" is definitely a product of srs class privilege.

American, never had one, knew people growing up who did, dont think its a big deal. In total agreement w/Jenny about the fact that it is a totally acceptable way for people to make a living, and that the "victimization" argument hinges on some weird subconscious idea that cleaning up after other people is something that is embarrassing or shameful, which is bullshit.

American, never. I'll echo those who've said they thought it was something that only rich people did.

^yes this, except in HS my friend who had a crappier house than mine and whose parents made about the same as mine had weekly housekeeping service, so that changed my perceptions a little. Well okay no it just made me think his mom was lazy.

I had a jr high friend whose fam hired a weekly cleaner and I thought it meant her parents loved her more because they didn't believe she should spend her weekend doing chores. Unlike MY parents, who I was sure had birthed us all as slave labor.

Ummmmmm...sorry, Mom!

Jenny, who are you using now? Feel free to e-mail me. Kr and I have talked about hiring someone because, while we can keep the apartment more or less tidy, it would really benefit from a deep clean every month -- esp. for things like dusty floorboards that I just don't have time to deal with.

I'll email you!

Now i have a husband and a kid and a full time job I know why she was so angry. If you count up the hours you get maybe 3 days a week with your kid when you work full time. If you want to spend the majority of that time telling your kid to get out of the room because you need to clean the floor or i cant play with you because im exhausted thats fine but it seems like bullshit to me. We dont have a cleaner because together we can generally keep on top of it but with the 2nd kid coming i dont know. Ive definitely been thinking about it. Mostly for floors, the bathrooms and windows etc every two or three weeks.

Yeah, if I had the money I definitely would hire one. It's frustrating to come home after working 8+ hours and then have to spend at least an hour every night cleaning or doing housework.

The thought of my parents using a house cleaner when I was growing up can only be described as lolworthy, right up there with their hiring a butler and a chambermaid.

I'm white btw

American and no - when I was very young, my mother stayed home and managed all the housework. A neighbor who needed the money came in occasionally to do the ironing. Later when my mother was single-parenting and working multiple jobs, the housework and cooking fell to me and my sister (mostly me since I was older).

i grew up in a rural area and no one one that i knew hired housecleaners, or at least i don't ever recall anyone talking about it.

I'm American and my ultimate bourgeois fantasy is to be able to hire a housecleaner someday.

Unhappy spouses, spend the money you'd spend on a prostitute or an affair and use that money to pay a housecleaner. All problems ---solved---.

abbott xp otm

I've often stated my longterm career goal as the ability to one day have a housekeeper

It wouldn't be that expensive! $100-200 a month, depending on what you want done. I was spending a lot more than that on cigarettes when I smoked, and getting cancer instead of a clean house.

We did briefly in '68-'70 when my brother and I were both preschool age and my mother was working fulltime. She was sort of a combo nanny/housekeeper/cook.

― Beanbag the Gardener (WmC), Monday, July 13, 2009 10:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ this when i was like 4. i think she only came once a week or so (an I'm not sure I remember any cooking). i think the other week days i was stashed at an aunt's, neighbor's or similarly aged friend's house.

not voting becuz i'm from a weird country and don't want to be lumped in with australia fyi

for six months last year i lived in a shared house with one. she came every two weeks and it was an extra £15 on the monthly rent per person for the four of us. totally worth it.

My mom would trade housecleaning work with a divorced male friend of hers for repairs of appliances, cars, etc. ... my dad was/is pretty mechanically inept.

I sense MORE BEHIND THIS STORY

Ha ... I did/do wonder on occasion if they were having an affair. My mom was his bookkeeper/office manager before he retired. But it was pretty much a fair exchange - she'd clean his house, or one of his rental units, and he'd fix the dishwasher or install a new garage door opener. He was my mom's introduction to the wacky world of conservative Republicans - her family was pretty liberal. The Clint Eastwood character in Grand Torino reminded her of this guy.

I was v v poor, working class, etc and we never ever had a cleaning lady, AND I never had chores. I had to pick up my toys if I got them out, but I never had to clean anything, mainly because my mom was crazy and thought we did everything wrong. This caused me to be both crazy and have a terrible work ethic and not understand how anything worked including laundry until I was 18 and thrust into the real world. I still "rebel" by doing laundry.

I'm increasingly in favor of wealth redistribution via a service economy.

Except that cleaners have one of worst paid jobs, even though it's one of the most exhausting. I know this, because I've worked as a cleaner myself. And from what I've gathered, many housecleaners are (illegal) immigrants who might get paid even less than the minimum wage. Of course it's not anyone's fault that system is like this, and cleaners still need their jobs, so I'm not blaming anyone for hiring one. But personally I wouldn't feel comfortable hiring a cleaner, unless she'd get at least the same pay as I do from my comfortable office job.

Hey where's the option Belgian and have a house cleaner?

I was about 17 when my mom got a housecleaner. She ran our shop and it was hellish combing that (seven days a week) AND clean (AND cook AND raise me). Her friend suggested she take her house cleaner. Is it weird? Everyone seems to think so until you have one for more than a year. ;-) I know my husband found it weird but after a month didn'ty complain at all. Especially since he knows I hate cleaning. I just don't like it. what can I say, I'm a slob. I prefer to work in the shop. I work six to seven days a week (and a household, kids,....). As long as I can afford it, I'll definitely have a house cleaner.

It seems common here but that's mostly the self-employed I know... My friends don't have housecleaners but then they all work five days a week. *shrug* Whatever. I don't have any problem with you (or anyone else) judging me. We all make choices.

The chapter on housecleaners in Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickled and Dimed" is even more depressing than the chapter on Wal-Mart. It deals with a Merry Maids-type operations, so obviously there are differences between that and a homeowner hiring an individual directly, but it's still just terrible to read about.

Yeah, I love that book (my mom earned it as an Xmas present after bitching one time too many about her life) and Barbara Ehrenreich rocks.

My mom would trade housecleaning work with a divorced male friend of hers for repairs of appliances, cars, etc. ... my dad was/is pretty mechanically inept.

"Okay! Since you can't do anything right, I'm going over to STEVE'S to clean his toilets. Have fun watching The Golf Channel!"
"Hey, can you ask him if he can do anything with grass trimmer? That little string won't come back out."

Barbara Ehrenreich really is the most depressing writer in the world.

I got the creeping horrors when she said there were homeowners who would SWEEP PILES OF DIRT UNDER THE EDGES OF THE RUG to see if you cleaned far enough under it. And then the woman standing there drinking a glass of water in her kitchen while BE scrubs on her hands and knees and isn't allowed to ask for even a paper cup.... We're all fucked, aren't we.

Barbara Ehrenreich's written output is one of the reasons I went into labor and employment law, and Nickled and Dimed is why I will never financially support a Merry Maids-type maid service. I've also been witness to human trafficking/wage-slave cleaning service schemes wherein a person in the US will offer to pay travel expenses, housing costs, and sub-minimum US wages to people, bring them into the US, and then basically keep them in situations of indentured servitude with threats of lawsuits, immigration, and sometimes bodily harm.

The take home lesson from this as it relates to an individual who wants to hire a housecleaner in the USA, is that due diligence is essential. Look for a person who owns his/her own business and does the cleaning him/herself - basically a self-employed business owner. If you are considering paying a service, ask what the service pays the people who clean and whether they provide health insurance (I did this when looking in North Carolina and the person on the phone threatened me with a lawsuit for asking oy). Check with your state workers' comp commission to verify that the service carries workers' comp insurance - most states have a searchable on-line database for this purpose. Ask whether the service classifies its cleaners as employees or independent contractors (misclassifying employees as independent contractors as a favorite way for shit employers to attempt to circumvent already paltry US labor and employment laws, and employers who do this should burn in hell), because barring some unusual circumstances, there is about a 99% chance that the housecleaners are employees, regardless of what the cleaning service claims.

Oh also, speaking to the potential of housecleaning as an empowering/enriching career choice, members of a workers' center I'm involved with are organizing a cleaning collective, which will give the members the flexibility of self-employment as well as the strength of numbers and the potential to buy group health coverage. So that will be pretty sweet, too.

I guess my general thesis here is that housecleaning, like any profession in the US labor market (in any similarly deeply capitalist system, probs), can be very easily exploited and the workers very easily oppressed, but insomuch as you can operate within an oppressive system in a non-oppressive way, there are ways to mitigate the negative impact of your involvement in the housecleaning economy.

We are lower middle class, and no way would my mom have a cleaner in the house, my parents are control freaks. However, our neighborhood is not at all wealthy but when I was growing up I often saw the "cleaning ladies" at other neighbor's houses.

Probably not a huge extravagance if they are over for one afternoon a week - not for a typical middle-class family. A lot of people in my neighborhood use landscapers and lawn mowers.

The owner of the radio station I used to work for is a millionaire several times over. One slow day, I accompanied his assistant to an elderly friend of his, a recent widow. She lived in a condo behind a huge gate, and while I was there to carry boxes, she she showed us the mural on the ceiling and the fancy hot tubs.

My jaw dropped however when we came down this marble staircase and in the utility room was a frumpy black woman wearing the maid uniform that Hazel used to wear, ironing shirts. It was something that seemed so anachronistic even in 1998, that I still haven't got over that.

Is there any other profession that requires a uniform even outside of the public eye? I suppose that as a guest, I was considered the public, but still.

I'm in the UK and we had a weekly cleaner for a couple of months when my mum did her back in so badly she was stuck in bed for weeks on end, but the cleaner complained every week about there being too much clutter to tidy, so me and dad ended up tidying frantically the night before her arrival, as did my mother as soon as she could move at all. This was worse for backs than the usual housework (we've never been a very tidy family), so no more cleaner.

The people i knew who got to college age still unable to do the washing properly were more likely to have mums who did all the domestic work and were proud and efficient about it, presumably felt it a waste of time to make their children do the laundry at home when they were just going to get it wrong

Yeah, even without a regular cleaner or a very houseproud mother I got away with very few chores, I think because my parents were scared I would break/ruin things. And yes, I do regret this now! (Was not total washing incompetent then or now, but would really like a "hey, I should really not put stuff all over the floor, just in case anyone happens to drop by" attitude to come a bit more naturally)

PP, I guess...doormen? At hotels and also at the kind of apartment buildings that have doormen in the first place... Also, of course, a ton of tradesmen still wear uniforms of one kind or another (as do waitstaff, although waitstaff not usually coming to your HOUSE) -- electricians, meter readers, plumbers, etc have uniforms if they work for a company? In general I'd say uniforms are a hazard of the service industry, some of those services just happen to be performed in your home.

But all those professions you described are "public". I mean, the doormen serve as the public representative of whatever building they're standing in front of. The hotel maids deal with the public as they walk down the hallways to their continental breakfasts. Meter readers and cable guys wear uniforms since they're running around back and forth between the street and people's private homes all day. The FedEx guy wears a uniform because you'd feel kinda funny giving your packages away to some guy wearing a Megadeth t-shirt.

The maid that I saw still strikes me since the only person I would assume she comes in contact during her workday is "the lady of the house", the woman paying her to straighten those sheets. It's not like she needs the uniform to designate her service to the lady. I mean, I suppose it's necessary if she's answering the door, to avoid confusion that -- oh my gosh -- she's the tenant of the house.

I guess having a maid, for me, would seem like such a private extravagance that it would seem strange for such a person to be required to wear some sort of formal uniform while performing their tasks within my four walls all day.

Yeah, even without a regular cleaner or a very houseproud mother I got away with very few chores, I think because my parents were scared I would break/ruin things. And yes, I do regret this now! (Was not total washing incompetent then or now, but would really like a "hey, I should really not put stuff all over the floor, just in case anyone happens to drop by" attitude to come a bit more naturally)

And this. Me too. You don't get a lot of sympathy from people when you say things like "But I don't know how to mop!" but it's true. My mother did all the chores, saying that we should just enjoy our childhoods and be lucky we had such a loving mother, and as soon as I got in the real world, pow, my room looked like one of those abandoned squatters with the empty Coors cans and newspapers strewn about. I had to teach myself how to have the discipline to not live in a pig sty.

Even today, Sunny will say something like "It doesn't bother you that there are crunched up leaves on the staircase" and I don't she believes me when I honestly reply, "I really have never given it a second thought."

You don't get a lot of sympathy from people when you say things like "But I don't know how to mop!"

There's an understatement.

Re uniforms: that's true about maids not being out in public anyway, but I'm proposing that the distinction is being in the service industry, not whether "public" or private.

Fair enough. To completely contradict myself, I was disappointed that the nurses at my clinic wore scrubs with cartoon characters on them instead of Nurse Ratchet uniforms.

See, because the uniforms are a holdover from when a household might have a whole "staff", who ALL wore uniforms.

Oh god you should have heard a relative of mine go BATSHIT that nurses are allowed to wear scrubs now, how unprofessional that is, and how people just can't even TELL who's a doctor and who's a nurse anymore, I mean HOW are you supposed to know who to show RESPECT TO if you can't tell who went to med school and who didnt?!?!??

Fuck that crazy bat a million times, I am so glad to have her out of my life.

I'd be more at ease with the doctors putting a little more effort into dressing up than the nurses, though my surgeon had a good point when he told me that he was tired of cleaning blood off of his loafers.

Loafers are supposed to be the colour of dried blood for a reason!

You don't get a lot of sympathy from people when you say things like "But I don't know how to mop!"

See, this shit used to drive me CRAZY.

When I was in college, I was in a fraternity. Part of living in the house was learning how to do the house chores - we were not one of the fraternities with enough money to get a cleaning service more than two or three times a semester.

And this doing of the chores was one of the biggest divides in the house. You could totally tell the kids who were from homes where they had no part in cleaning. Some - most, actually - were totally cool about it, and treated it like another skill to learn. "Hmm! Now I know how to trim shrubs!"

Others, and I can still see their faces, acted as if housework of any type was below them. And that any requests for them to do their chores - "JARED! Will you PLEASE mop the fucking bathroom?!?!? ONCE, during your assigned week?!?! FUCK!" - were an affront to their existence.

Man, I do not miss the cleanliness standards in that house at all.

I am now calling cordovan shoes 'surgery colored.'

Keep in mind that he was a colon doc, so it wasn't just blood on his shoes.

Despite not knowing how to clean properly, I do try to learn a little bit. But folks shouldn't get too upset with me when I put Palmolive in the dishwasher instead of Cascade.

I hope you act like Amelia Bedilia.

Hahaha Amelia Bedelia ruled.

Speaking of Amelia Bedilia, in first grade we had a 'visit' from Amelia Bedilia, who was like a large black woman in a maid uniform (lol Idaho) but we did not give a fuck at the lack of verisimilitude bcz it was fucking Amelia Bedilia and now I am wondering if she was the only person w/a maid costume in town.

But folks shouldn't get too upset with me when I put Palmolive in the dishwasher instead of Cascade.

Yes. Yes "they" should.

"People shouldn't get too upset with me when I am told to use the Palmolive for handwashing the dishes and then I handwash the dishes when I use my palm to rub them with olives."

Even though the sponge cake had cut up sponges in it, Amelia Bedilia still had a proper cake of her own made when her employers got home, and if she didn't know how to "dress" a turkey, she made something else for dinner instead. And the lightbulbs could be taken off the washing line, no harm done.

My friend sewed a maid uniform because she was the MAID of honor at our wedding, do you see how far I will go in honor of a bad pun.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/1114/wesandersonposter.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

xp about the cleaning lady uniform -- I'm sure part of it hearkens back to "the old days" when rich people had servants that wore matching outfits/uniforms, but part of it could considerably be advertising for the company she works for, if the uniform has a company logo or something on it. I'm sure another aspect is that the company owners don't exactly trust the judgment of their employees, and they don't want their staff showing up in a blingee tribute t-shirt to a dead relative or something "in poor taste" so the client complains.

I was disappointed that the nurses at my clinic wore scrubs with cartoon characters on them instead of Nurse Ratchet uniforms.

I sort of agree.

House cleaner necessary for continued marital happiness.

thats one hell of a personal ad a++++

In my experience, people who don't know how to mop don't know they don't know how to mop. I used to live with a girl who would put a great deal of effort into mopping the kitchen floor -- all completely wasted because she hadn't swept first ffs.

Maybe, just maybe, the uniform is down to the idea that the cleaner will have something to change into so they don't get their street clothes all dirty from cleaning?

Yeah, totally, I love it when class angst trumps the practicals. That almost never happens.

Do you wear a uniform when you clean your house? Do you think the cleaning lady wears a uniform when she cleans her own house? She's wearing a uniform because she is employed to clean and it's company rules. Why they made those rules and the semiotics of the uniform or particular design elements of said uniform are debatable, but I seriously doubt it has to do with her getting her street clothes dirty.

I do have certain clothes that I wear when I clean the house, so I don't get nasty bleach and unmentionable stains all over my street clothes, yes. I'm not saying that this is the only reason for uniforms, but I do think that there is the potential for simple practicality, along the lines of scrubs for medical professionals and overalls for mechanics, as opposed to automatically reading negative intentions into everything.

The overalls for mechanics is a similar thing ... when I take my car to the shop the mechanics wear coveralls or uniforms. When I get a friend of mine to fix my car, he's usually wearing grubby jeans and a sweatshirt or flannel or t-shirt, which is pretty much what the guys I know wear when they work on their own cars.

The uniform is functional, yes, but there is more to it than just function. It signifies professionalism, that this person is paid to do this work - which isn't necessarily a negative connotation. If you perceive lack of choice in workwear as a sign that someone is being exploited, or if you view someone wearing a uniform with their employer's logo on it or of a design/color associated with that employer - thus being in some way a walking advertisement for said employer - as a sign of exploitation - then yes, the uniform has definite negative connotations.

Hell, there are people that see someone in a uniform and respond as if they are inferior to them or unintelligent. I've experienced this first hand -- doing the same work in a uniform in some places and in a suit in others. It certainly was a lot more comfortable wearing the uniform, but the suit commanded more respect.

Do you wear a uniform when you clean your house?

I know someone who did. Of course she had a cleaner herself and would "clean" alongside her cleaning lady. She also had purple hair.

that's pretty awesome.

The funniest moment was when some art students (from the nearby highschool) sat on her pavement. She objected. They sang Purple Rain in retort.

I'm from a weird country and I can only think of one person who I know for sure employs a cleaner at all, and that's my aunt who makes fuckloads of $$$. I remember feeling a bit annoyed about that when I found out, cos it's not like she or her husband work loads of hours each week and can't just do the cleaning themselves, but I figure someone's getting a paycheque out of it, and they probably need the money more than rich aunt does.

I clean in just my underwear bcz I don't like messing up clothes (I don't really have any schlubby clothes); painting likewise.

"scrubs with cartoon characters on them instead of Nurse Ratchet"

Nurse Ratchet would be an AWESOME cartoon character

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b259/baroness01/nurserat.jpg

wtf???

omg furry fan art

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2287/2167233568_6f41f6949a.jpg?v=0

morelike nurse raggett

what happened to that New Yorker captions contest?

or maybe

http://dimpost.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/joker-nurse-the-dark-knight.jpg

Sorry, housecleaning right. What you guys think of roombas displacing housecleaners. Less class-stress and whatnot but what will cleaners do for $?

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/06/26/dd-walle27__ph4_0498697523.jpg

wld hire this guy

http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs022.snc1/2646_55823783955_840803955_1400828_7097863_n.jpg

sorry to go off the housekeeper thing again but i just want to point out that autobot nurse is sitting on M.A.S.K. bedspread.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The overalls for mechanics is a similar thing ... when I take my car to the shop the mechanics wear coveralls or uniforms. When I get a friend of mine to fix my car, he's usually wearing grubby jeans and a sweatshirt or flannel or t-shirt, which is pretty much what the guys I know wear when they work on their own cars.

The uniform is functional, yes, but there is more to it than just function. It signifies professionalism, that this person is paid to do this work - which isn't necessarily a negative connotation.

There's that, yes, but there's also the fact that non-professional people aren't going to go out and buy a mechanics uniform (or maid's uniform) to wear while working on cars because they already have grubby jeans etc which can also be used in other situations. I mean I don't go out and buy an official basketball uniform, a tennis getup, a baseball uni, a track outfit, etc, not because I don't want to be confused with a pro (because that would be awesome), I buy all-purpose shorts/pants and shirts because then I can them wear doing any of those activities.

ok that was mangled. i need a nap.

it's not the worst post you've ever written.

hahaha

the poll demonstrates conclusively that australians and people of other weird nationalities are very posh.

Definitely no house keepers out on our goat farm. Are there housekeepers that you can pay with food stamps?

I'm finding the whole uniform discussion a bit weird because I've never known a cleaner who wore one (I'm talking about the people employed by my parents, their friends and my friends). The cleaners at work do, but for houses I've only seen people wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

When I worked for the ski resort, I wore a uniform - khaki pants, I think some sort of collared golf shirt with the resorts name and logo on it. I also got a resort-branded jacket (which made hitching to and from work super easy). When I freelance cleaned, I just wore whatever and every housecleaner I or my parents have ever hired just wear street clothes.

All I know is that this thread has really made me want to see a version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest enacted entirely by bears.

oh, Alice!

http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/1/13839/19_2007/Ann_B._Davis.gif