[Closed] Hiring a cleaner for your house?

JulianA - Member

Ours is absolutely brilliant. Lovely person and becoming a friend as well.

Our cleaner "Mary" is a good companion to my wife who due to her MS is unable to even stand up, she also does our ironing. she only charges £20 for about 3 hours cleaning or £10 for a silly amount of ironing.

She was recommended by a friend, the only thing shes not great at is high cobwebs (that is my job being tall)

CG don't be so judgmental I work/cook/shop/care I just don't have time for the remaining stuff

You know how sometimes it doesn't matter how right you are, you are still wrong?

Arrange a cleaner- at least you will be wrong in a clean house.

Mr O, you're a carer for 99% of the time you're not working.

You deserve a bloody cleaner.
And a rest.
😀

MrOvershoot - of course this would not apply to you, I can not imagine how challenging and exhausting your life must be. As Rusty states, you deserve a cleaner and a rest. No offence was intended with my post and I apologise to you.

Cha****ng - I wondered where she's been the last week!

Cranberry - I have a cunning plan when she goes full time next month...

Spent 4 hours the other day cleaning. First free day I've had since we started putting mini squirrel into nursery and, for now, it's a novelty.

I'm sure it'll wear off eventually but tbh I don't mind doing a couple of hours a couple of times a week if it means I get to live in a clean house. (ironing is still a foreign concept, screw that)

so I make sure she's got a warm cup of soup inside her before she goes home.

Is that a euphemism?

CG don't worry I wasn't offended, other peoples lives can seem odd to any of us!

Rusty I had a good bit of news last week the my wife can go for up to 8 weeks of respite care, so I can actually get a rest as I know its taking its toll on my health, both physical & mental.

Excellent news nige!

Mr O - excellent news.
Respite is a lifesaver.

You can't look after someone else when you're exhausted.

Any plans?

I've a few things planned, but will probably start a thread on "Ideas for days out"

Just been talking to the sister in law who is a district nurse and she said I must use the service as she can tell I'm starting to struggle.

Rich I knew you would be lurking on a thread about domestic help 😉

Good stuff.

Spare room over here if you fancy a few days in Burnley.
🙂

Drop us a line if it appeals.

cinnamon_girl - Member
Jeez, there's some right lazy beggars on here!

How do you work out they are lazy buggers? I don't have a cleaner but I don't see how it makes you lazy if you do. I fix my own car 90% of the time, do I get to call all people who have the knowledge to but don't fix their car lazy?

My wife works full time, she uses the weekend to cook, clean and massage my aching body after a tough week dragging my balls around. 8)

I don't know CG but I do believe her remark was said in good humour.

We had a couple of different ones for a while but ended up getting tired of trying to guess where they'd put stuff away. We did try to stress it's cleaning we're after and not tidying, but just gave up and carry on ourselves now.

We paid £25 and £30 for 2 hrs respectively.

Our house is kept tidy by us so we know where things are but gets cleaned weekly for us.

Same couple have cleaned for us for over 10 years now.

And yes I happily embrace my middleclassness.

Pete I may just call in on you & your good lady 🙂

Please don't pick on CG she's one of life's good people. We often say the wrong thing without realising it, I know I often do

Best bit of advice my friend gave me is yes have a cleaner, but never ever get them doing the ironing.

If you need ironing doing take it to a specialist!

If you want ideas for days out, you can always pop round here and tidy up a bit...

How idle are you that you cant clean up after yourself?

Not idle - just spend my waking hours on here!

Don't think of it as idleness. Think of it as paying a small amount to make your life much more fun.
It's made our life so much more enjoyable.

More free time, less hassle, less drudge.

Rich I'm not keen on your sticky socks

Oh and with 3 children I don't think you can call him idle Hora

Getting a cleaner was one of the best things we did. Wife and I both work weekends regularly as well as weeks and quite frankly spending your spare time cleaning the house isn't as much fun as spending time with the kids and the wife.

Had the same cleaner for a few years now and she does quite a few local houses, part time work suits her as she is a single mum and at about £10 an hour pays better than retail etc. She does a good job of the basics and means we can find the time to do enough on top to keep the place looking presentable.

We got ours through an agency and unless you can get a personal recommendation is probably the best place to start.

Even got my mum a cleaner as at nearly 80 she was struggling to manage. Think the cleaner spends more time talking to my mum than cleaning but hey that is also a good thing.

3x£10 a week isnt a massive amount but being cleaner, making an effort as a bloke is more important. Doing your bit. That is more important. Having a cleaner is a modern day cop out.

We have a cleaner for 2 hours a week and deem it well worth the money. We both work long hours so having someone in to help out means we get to enjoy what little down time we get.

We keep the place pretty damned clean (kitchen, living room etc) so the cleaner comes in and does the bathroom (something I hate doing), mops the kitchen floor, does the hovering as well as any non regular jobs like windows, back of the cooker, etc etc.

Yup we have one - just a couple of hours every two weeks to keep on top of things for us.

[i]Both me and my wife work in the finance sector; well, I say work but I'm not quite sure what it is I actually do?!

I'm contracted to 40 hours per week, but I often do 70. I'd say I live to work; my job's my life. When I'm not at work, I struggle to think or talk about much else other than work. Infact, I'd go as far as to say it's the only thing I know or feel comfortable doing. Cleaning a house is an alien concept to me; I wouldn't know where to start. The last thing I want to do after a long week at work is try and figure out how to use a vacuum cleaner!

Thankfully, my job pays well. So well infact, that things like cleaning/cutting the lawn/shopping/looking after the kids/life I don't have to bother doing; I can pay someone to do them for me.

Our cleaner costs £12 per hour through an agency. Not alot I know, and I dread to think what her wage is. I've often thought about tipping her, but I think she'd just spend it on heroin, so I make sure she's got a warm cup of soup inside her before she goes home.[/i]

This whole post is a joke right, some sort of John Cooper Clarkesque poem to a dire middle class existence?

looking after the kids

With so many illegal immigrants literally dying to get into the country, it seems daft not to exploit them. You can pay them in out of date food, or by letting them sleep in a ditch at the bottom of your garden. And I find they're additionally grateful if I don't beat them. And most of the time I don't, except when I'm in a particularly bad mood. And if they do get uppity about the beatings, just report them to the authorities, and they deport them for you

[i]Having a cleaner is a modern day cop out.[/i]

Or...

There is something that needs to be done, that both my wife and I are perfectly capable of doing, but we'd rather do other things. We are fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay someone else to do it. We get the thing done, they make a living*, everyone wins. See also, depending on your personal preference, painting and decorating, gardening, bike servicing, car servicing etc etc.

we recently got a cleaner in, we have twin daughters, toddling, and that's a tough enough job for the mrs never mind a cleaner. We decided that my wife would bring up the kids rather than farming them out to a nursery and do it for as long as we could, so a cleaner has taken some of the pressure off my wife.

She will happily iron shirts too but usually that's more time, so I just make sure I have lots of shirts and can last three weeks inbetween irons. job done.

We found her by recommendation from a friend, she's been her cleaner for four years. She speaks little English and is Portuguese. I rarely even see her as I'm at work.

its a no brainer for us. Gives us more time with our two girls.

Lol @ Binners.

Mrs K has agreed to a twice a month cleaner, as long as she's old, out of shape and not in the least good looking (I work from home, Mrs K doesn't 😀 ).

I'd sourced one already but she got upset at her CV photo:

[img] [/img]

making an effort as a bloke is more important. Doing your bit. That is more important. Having a cleaner is a modern day cop out.

[img] [/img]