Thoughts on the first housecleaner visit after a year of “doing it ourselves”:
• I do it better
• but that would mean I’d have to do it
• which I don’t entirely mind doing! some of it is kind of satisfying, actually!
• but I do mind doing everyone else’s share for them, while they don’t do anything and/or have to be constantly directed/nagged to do anything
I’d been thinking of hiring housecleaners as something that we do for ME, something in MY favor, something that was a bargaining chip for ME—but actually it turns out we are hiring the housecleaners so that my husband and children don’t have to do their share.
I don’t disagree with you. My big complaint is that, whenever I do some chore, my husband thanks me and praises my effort. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t want THANKS, I want HELP. I don’t feel appreciated, I feel LIKE A SUCKER. “Hey, honey, thanks for spending an hour on the filthy bathroom [so I didn’t have to do it.]” And then I get this one: Wow, you spent three hours doing yard work, but I know you really love it. Well, yes, I do love being outside, but if the garden fairy came along and weeded my whole freaking entire yard for me, I would love spending those three hours, oh I don’t know, kayaking? Reading? Napping? Oh, and by the way, he is RETIRED. And not OLD, just RETIRED. And I am not. Just to put things in perspective.
Why don’t you just let him do it, you ask? One, he wouldn’t. Two, he would do such a piss poor half assed job that it just wouldn’t be worth it, and I am not a perfectionist by any means, just take a look around.
I’m sorry, Swistle. I have it easy: just a retired guy and a few cats. You have SEVEN people. You deserve all the housecleaners and more.
Hello major perspective shift. I felt so happy! And now I feel… grim.
(I appreciate the perspective shift.)
Ack.
Perhaps you can think of it as something you do for you, so you don’t have to go to jail for shoving mops up 6 people’s noses.
This made me laugh out loud.
You’ve got it exactly right, BUT..
I have housecleaners because if not my family would be dead.
Not gonna fight or feel resentful about them not cleaning up after themselves..just going to enjoy someone else coming to do it every other week and get on with my life. (Also, closing their doors helps)
(I do clean on the off week and vacuum every day because >>> DOG)
I say, you keep the housecleaners for them and you find something semi-equivalent for you. Maybe it is time to sign up for another pottery class (or two). Maybe you even sign up for something you’ve always wanted to do but never did (sign language, dance, drama, etc).
Also, start leveraging the house cleaners in a way you find satisfying. Maybe you do a quick clean before they come and have them do a deep clean on the really disgusting bits (cleaning the garbage cans, tub/toilet, etc.).
Or just even straighten up/organize the parts of your house that are making it more difficult for them to truly clean. For me, that would be the random assortment of items I ‘store’ in the corner of my bedroom that should be elsewhere, makes me feel cluttered and makes it difficult to truly mop in there.
Or maybe you can more clearly organize and label certain parts of your house — the linen closet, dresser drawers/closet, kitchen cabinets — so they can more easily follow my (I mean your) system. For instance, I like certain plates, mugs, Tupperware to go in certain drawers that makes the most sense but most other people don’t realize.
Also, thanks for the update. Your posts always make me happy and often give me something to ponder. 🤔
Once again, Swistle and her commenters are making me feel reassured and depressed, all at once.
After a few wildly unsuccessful go-rounds with hired housecleaners (not just “I would do it better” but “This is making my life harder because you keep moving my clean breast pump parts/using something that makes our hardwoods slimy/dusting surfaces and creating tidy-looking piles rather than vacuuming thoroughly”), we switched to DIY. My husband does most of the cleaning, generally poorly but it’s better than nothing. What can I say? He is not observant, he has no understanding of the physical world, and he’s squeamish. I do the deep cleaning in a sort of cycle. The result is bearable.
But I am at the point where I can’t help noticing that while my life would not be better without all these other humans in it, it would certainly be easier. Two of us were just barely able to manage life with little kids. Next year there’ll only be one kid left at home, and he is as self-reliant as I have managed to make him.
Maybe I’ll like everyone better when they aren’t around as much. And maybe I’ll have the will to get rid of the clutter & grime that regularly bring me down.
Clutter is the biggest devil. You can’t clean it, and it is mentally wearing in a way that grime is not.
Thank you for this post. Truly. Thank you.
Lots of similar thought/feelings/resentments about home duties! Not giving advice but just musing/commiserating from the other side of the screen. Having routines and doling out expectations regularly has helped our home cleaning situation slightly. At least on Sundays I remind everyone to clean their room/bathroom, including prompting my spouse about it. I also slather on lots of reminders that day that no one person (me) should do everything! I still feel annoyed that **I** have to be the one to set up the expectation and enforce it. Also there are a lot of daily tasks for which expectations/rules need to be mandated for things are not currently being done consistently by family members. Some things I just stopped doing all together out of annoyance and my spouse has picked up the tasks – cleaning the litter boxes and doing the evening dishes. It’s a work in progress for sure.
I have never uttered these thought out loud but yet I often wonder what value my husband brings to my life – when he travels there is less mess, he only watched the kids grudgingly and with much whining, and he can be grumpy. If we divorced he’d be legally obligated to give me every other weekend off and maybe a few evenings, I wouldn’t have to pick up after him, and as I am the primary breadwinner his financial situation would get worse, but me not so much. He apparently hasn’t made the same calculation or else hed maybe act less entitled.
I mean I like having him around, but jeez it’s a lot of work.
I think about this when I see later-in-life divorces among famous people. When the Gores divorced, I thought, “But you’ve made it so far!” and then after a while I started wondering if she’d thought, “I’ve put up with this for 30 years, and now I want 30 years without this shirt.” Because I could understand that, even though my husband is a nice guy. And also work.
As a single parent I’d just like to say…yes. once I was through the heartbreak of the end of what I thought would last forever, it is so.much.easier.omg. Sometimes it’s exhausting not having another adult to tag in, but after talking to all my married friends about the last year I think I’ve had it easier. Less mess. Less bullshit.
Yes. I got married in my mid-30s after living alone for 15 years. He is a lovely person and my best friend. I don’t want to gloss over the challenges of living alone during times of illness or injury, for example when I broke my elbow and had to figure out how to get to the doctor when I couldn’t drive, or grieving alone. But. There is SO MUCH more housework. We both have demanding full-time jobs and long commutes, and we went into marriage with good plans for dividing the household chores. He cheerfully participates in family “chore hour” on Saturdays when we each do our tasks, and he does all his own laundry. But all of the daily tasks, errands, cooking, maintenance coordination, and planning fall to me. I have all of the responsibilities that I had when living alone, plus the work of coordinating with another person. I honestly don’t know how to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks. I wonder if marriage would be easier if I had married young, before I knew how lovely it can be to live alone. Thanks for creating spaces to talk about this.
Honestly two of the three women I know who are divorced reached this same conclusion: their lives were easier without a husband. To be fair their relationships had other issues, but at least one consideration was that their husbands were not only not helping with kids etc but actively making their lives more difficult.
After I got divorced (as the first of my friends), many asked me if it was better or worse. Sure, I missed his company, but practically speaking? I had to cook for myself (or resort to eating sandwiches for dinner, which I don’t mind), but other than that, it was LESS than half of the amount of housework I did before. I am not a slob by any standards, but now that I was no longer living with someone allergic to our cats, I didn’t have to vacuum, mop, and wet-clean the entire house every freaking week. Suddenly I had SO MUCH SPARE TIME. And I assume he was missing my company too (or so he said), so it’s not like I had to “pay” for enjoying his company by doing all the work…
There is no question in my mind that my husband and I will stay together “until death do us part” unless something changes in a really drastic and unforeseeable way, but I am quite certain that if he goes first (and our family genes suggest this is likely) I’ll never remarry, nor live with a man again. I have visions of living blissfully alone in a decorated-and-furnished-to-my-taste apartment, condo, or even a tiny house near my daughter someday during the warm months, and spending winters in a retirement community somewhere with a milder climate than where I currently live.
We are currently considering hiring a housecleaner and this post has startled me. Perspective shift, indeed.
SO many thoughts on this post that I can’t say out loud!
Instead, I will just say Thank You to Swistle and to everyone in the Comments Lounge for making me feel less alone. ❤️
Since when can’t you say something out loud here in Swistleland?
Hmmm. I have a housecleaner once a month, and she DEFINITELY does a better job than I do on 90% of the things. So am I a particularly crappy cleaner (possible), or is she amazing (I think more possible?)?
Swistle, I’d put the word out among your local friends/coworkers that you’re looking for a new cleaner. If you’re going to pay someone, I think they should do at LEAST as good a job as you do!
(And yes, I also get extremely stressed the day before my cleaner arrives, and yes, I treat her like GOLD. High pay, holiday bonuses, a sick day — she is worth it!)
YES!!!!!!
Ugh. I hear you. But I suppose another way of looking at it is that it saves you the emotional load of organising them, cajoling them, begging them, bribing them to do their share (no idea how many of those are accurate, all of them in my house…) and frees up physical time but also headspace for you?
If I have to ever go back to the office full-time (please God, don’t let that happen!) – I am seriously considering getting a housecleaner. It’s one thing to be working from the dining room table and be able to take 15 minutes to clean a bathroom, or unload the dishwasher, or fold the clothes or whatever. It’s a WHOLE ‘nother thing to spend a HUGE chunk of my weekend handling these kinds of chores. The Husband generally will pitch in…if asked…that’s the key – why should I have to ask?!
THE CRITICAL QUESTION, GIGI. Mine will do anything asked, also – but he knows that dinner must get eaten every night, and children picked up from school every day, and trash taken out every week. Why must one ask.
See also: “just give me a list and I’ll go to the store!” And also bring home 9000 extra items for me to figure out how to store and prepare. Helpful.
When I was still married, we had a list of all the chores that needed to happen and how often (daily, weekly, etc.), with points assigned. Whoever did the chore, got the points. Once a week we added them up and calculated the difference. Once the difference would get beyond a certain point (say, 300), the one with the extra points was entitled to ask the other for either a gift or organize an outing (dinner or excursion).
No surprise that I was constantly getting gifts and dinners, but at least it was something.
Funny thing: when we got divorced, my ex-husband complained about the points system, because (catch this) “it made him feel bad that he was always so far behind in points.” DO A FEW MORE CHORES, MY LOVE, AND YOUR POINTS WILL MAGICALLY APPEAR. Oh, and did I mention that I had one full-time and one part-time job outside of the house and he was doing his PhD from home?
Ah, the “you have made me face the fact that I am lazy in this regard! That is so mean of you to make me aware of reality!” complaint. I mean, to be fair: it *is* unpleasant and could be annoying. But also: do things differently and the reality you will be facing is less wounding to your self-esteem? Or negotiate for a different system with caps, if you do not feel that all the chores that exist are necessary?
We even made the list together & decided on the number of points for each chore together… and many of the chores were there only because HE had a sensitivity to dust and cat hair, so yeah… but like you say, I think his self-esteem couldn’t handle it, especially because he called himself a feminist and this was clear proof that was some theoretical non-applied feminism right there!
Ah yes the “you make me feel guilty” complaint. My husband is not guilty of this but an ex-boyfriend is not currently in the husband role partly because of this tendency, and the personality that went with it. I always answered that if he didn’t want to feel guilty about something then he shouldn’t do the things I’m “making” him feel guilty about.
I had known for years that married heterosexual men live longer than single heterosexual men but just found out this week that single heterosexual women live longer than married heyerosexual women. That tracks, I thought. That makes absolutely fucking perfect sense.
I feel like my house cleaner does the same job I do but for some reason it lasts longer. I had her coming once a month and will probably restart soon because I’m finally fully vaccinated as of today! I don’t mind some upkeep during the month but I hate spending 1.5 hours each week cleaning. I have to give my husband points in that he has done his weekly share of cleaning but as someone else pointed out upthread, everything else (laundry, shopping, bills, litter box upkeep) falls on me.
“Thoughts on the first housecleaner visit after a year of “doing it ourselves”:
• I do it better”
Swistle, I feel like you might have explained this before, and I missed it. Is there a reason all the kids aren’t doing chores? I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s-and times were different of course-but we had chores that changed weekly on a rotating schedule. Parents had no chores, only the kids. We had to have the chores done by 5:00-none were too tough. Clean the bathrooms (if done every day, not a big deal), vacuum, do dinner dishes, mop floors. Honestly nothing took more than a half hour daily, and that is probably exaggerating the time. We all knew we had to pitch in (there were 5 kids) and there was no feeling like we were being put upon, we were part of a family and we all worked in our own way to contribute. We didn’t like doing it, but we did it!
Long story short, after my parents divorced chores changed. Older kids did the laundry, I took over the cooking (Dad had custody), but feeling a part of the team was a valuable feeling for us.
I apologize if I haven’t gotten the story straight, but it seems like you have able bodied people to help out. Especially if you aren’t a person that needs perfection, because I’m sure as kids we weren’t great house cleaners.
I want to say, I’m not a person who avoids confrontation, and my parents certainly weren’t-so that might help? My own daughter did chores, but we have a small place and it was only the three of us. We don’t have a dishwasher so as soon as my daughter could do dishes, we all did our own. Although she used to keep plenty in her room, then do a big cleanse.
Now if I could only teach the cat how to vacuum!
The children absolutely do chores (older ones do their own laundry; there’s a rotating schedule for emptying the dishwasher, wiping counters, sweeping floors, taking out trash), though not to the extent you describe. I don’t always mention these things, partly because they have to do them whether or not we have a paid housecleaner. They’re SUPPOSED to also be doing an extra, we-have-no-housecleaner-based chore every single day during the pandemic, but that has taken more nagging/yelling than I want to put into it, which makes me almost as resentful as if I did the chores myself. I don’t know how parents of the ’60s and ’70s made it happen, but I personally do not seem to be able to. But ha, yes, I think you can be confident that as a grown woman in her right mind I am aware that children are able to do chores.
So, my mom was a parent of the 70s (well, technically my dad too but please rest assured that making the kids do chores was not, um, one of his chores. Neither was anything else, but I digress…) and I was a kid of the 70s though maybe more the 80s (by the time I was the age Swistle’s kids are now, it was the 80s) and I can tell you that in my experience, mostly my mom nagged us ceaselessly and … we did not respond productively. To the extent that I remember actually doing chores, they were largely those that were discrete and time-specific either because there arrived a particular moment when they needed to be done (take out the trash) or they needed to be done at a specific time (feed the dog, lay the table for dinner). And those we actually did were pretty binary — the dog has been fed or not, the table has been set or not — not open to interpretation as to whether e.g. we actually got the counters or the floors clean “enough.” And even then, I’m pretty sure we needed to be reminded/nudged/instructed to do the chores at the relevant moment.
As I remember my teenage years they were largely a single long unpleasant conversation between my mother telling me I had better clean my room or else and me not cleaning my room.
I don’t think this was any better for my mom than it was for me (perhaps worse, though in truth my dirty room was so low on her list of problems, most of which centered around some of my dad’s behaviors like taking on massive unsecured debt unbeknownst to my mom, that it was trivial. And yes, she did later divorce him and yes, as adults, she and I are close and have a good relationship) but, the point is — not so clear that children-do-chores thing this was managed better in the past, even if we remember it as such.
This resonates so much. For years as a full-time worker, I expected the two adult children who live with me to do set tasks (bathrooms, vacuum). And they…kind of didn’t, or so infrequently we were at risk of being closed down as a health hazard. Much as I longed for a cleaner I just could not bring myself to pay someone else to come in and do THEIR chores.
But now, glory be, both children are in full time work! So we have a cleaner AND we split the cost three ways. You won’t clean, kids? Then you can pay.
I have been single now for three years or so, and I’m in my 60s. I have absolutely NO desire to ever again have to fit my life around anyone’s requirements for a housekeeper/bed warmer/nursemaid/bank. I love being able to make decisions with only my input!
Oh yes, you are hiring them to do the part of the others. I remember sharing an apartment with some random guy who didn’t know how to clean but had a cleaner coming in every two weeks. She also wasn’t doing a great job, but at least the toilet was getting scrubbed and the floors were getting mopped. I started doing everything else. After a few months, he told me he expected me to pay half of the costs of the cleaner. I told him I *was* the other half of the cleaner, and that she was only doing his part. He never agreed but refused to pay (and never did).
* but I refused to pay
It’s my anniversary and I have never more wanted a divorce than after reading these comments! That’s a jest but also…not? I have 4 kids so yes, as a boomer commenter pointed out, they could totally be pulling their weight but they aren’t, and they don’t, without constant nagging on my part so it’s way easier to do It all myself than to constantly fight with them about taking out the trash or cleaning the foyer or putting away laundry or whatever. My husband works full time and I don’t, for multiple reasons, but essentially everything house/kid related falls to me including but not limited to doctors appointments, cleaning, scheduling, school stuff, laundry, cooking, shopping, family gift giving and thank-you-noting (or nagging), and also we live overseas so there is a whole extra level of somehow it became my job to learn (kind of) the language and deal with anything involving people who live here while he gets to go to work and…not deal with that. Or have staff do it, if he deems necessary.
So anyway, thanks for letting me vent; I’m gonna post this anonymously for a lot of reasons. ha!
Also, where I live you’d THINK it would be inexpensive to have a cleaner come but I don’t think it is? I’m not sure of pricing stateside, but it just makes more sense to do it myself and be jealous of all my friends who prioritize outsourcing that kind of thing. I definitely agree with the commenter who said if it’s not worth it then you need to scope out someone who is, because I feel like it can completely be worth the cost if you have the right set up.
Reading the comments, I’m reminded of a Berenstain Bears book my daughter has. While hopelessly heteronormative and gendered, it tells of Mama Bear getting tired of nagging everyone, so deciding to do everything herself. Then she gets tired of that and effectively goes on strike. She starts doing things she enjoys and lets the dust, dishes, and wet towels build up. One day she’s out and Papa Bear and the kids get tired of the mess and clean up, and then absolutely expect a medal when Mama returns. Like a badass, she pretends not to notice until they ask (this is my favorite part) and then just gives them all a hug. The end.
I’d note that some portion of the chores we feel Must Be Done are chores that 90% of single guys would simply… not do…. most of the time. Toilet cleaning? Stovetop cleaning? That’s just for move-out. (based on evidence of their living situations) *BUT* – and this is a big but – if women are married, the women are the ones judged on whether their home meets standards, not the men, and external expectations/standards are somehow higher for a home that has a woman in it vs. not.
(Husband, who was actually pretty-well educated feminism-wise, was surprised by this, but then also thought about it and acknowledged that yes, it is true. But I would bet the average guy would be like “what? no, it’s *fine* for things to be grody, no one cares.”)
I once heard/read that you can determine a man’s cleanliness standard by the state of his “bachelor pad.” That is the level of clean he is willing to maintain/tolerate, and it will not change. He will keep any home you share with him in the future exactly that clean.
I have found this to be true in my own life. My husband’s apartment was *neat* but not *clean* before we were married. As long as the house is uncluttered and tidy, he thinks it’s *clean.*
Reader, it is not clean unless it is cleansed by me.
This is absolutely true in my experience. My husband will invite people over and not give a second thought to the dirty kitchen or bathroom, or the fact that the floors need swept. It either does not occur to him that these things should be done before you have company, or he just doesn’t care because he knows the person they’ll be judging is me. That’s extra annoying to me, because they’re his whiskers in the bathroom sink!
I can’t decide if I’m really glad to be gay or if my wife is just extra lovely. We both do (what feels like) way more than our fair share of chores, but it’s because we have a tiny toddler tornado. I’d still love to get a housecleaner some day, mostly so somebody else would have to do the tasks that both of us hate (folding laundry and cleaning the bathrooms).
What is it about folding laundry? I hate it so much, but I love having folded Kondo-style drawers full of clean clothes.
My kids do the chores I assign, but there seems to be nothing I can do to get the youngest to clean up after themselves in the kitchen. They made a cake today. Hooray. When they got started around 4, I said I need the kitchen clean by 5 so I can make dinner. Around 4:30 I see them out of the kitchen and ask if it’s clean, they say no and clean up a little. I check it out and say the sink is full of eggshells and a pan and a spatula, etc. You are not done. Rinse, lather, repeat. It’s exhausting.
The EXACT same thing happened to me yesterday. My youngest (who is not very young, he’s 13) made banana bread. I love banana bread and am glad he can make it alone. when I went in later literally everything was out. Eggs in the egg carton. Shells. Banana peels. Dirty bowls and pans. Every ingredient, still open (flour, sugar, etc.) Like… what? It was as if he’d had a stroke or been raptured in the middle of making the stuff.
My answer to the house cleaning dilemma is to sit down with the family and watch Hoarders. It’s truly the best motivator. My son actually woke us at 5 AM two days ago because he was vacuuming his room. His room is upstairs above our room. Yes, he woke us up and I thought about making him stop, but then I realized, hell, if he’s motivated at 5 AM to vacuum, God Bless! Mona
I like this idea!
When two of my SO’s younger siblings moved back in with the parents for a bit after college, their mom decreed that they were getting a cleaning service and everyone was required to chip in x amount.
As the kids get older, maybe that’s an option- you can give each person a choice of doing specific chores every week or chipping in a certain amount for cleaners from their summer job money- they can fund their own not-having-to-do-their-share.
Oh, I just duplicated your comment, Sarah! #greatminds
Ooh, I just had a vision of a housecleaning surcharge: divided by 7, due on day of cleaning unless they do the chore themselves. This is the sort of thing I delight to offer other people and would probably never do in real life. Because psychology. But a tempting fantasy nevertheless! I have a 7 year old, so my situation is completely different.