QOTD #27: Have you ever hired domestic help?

We have a house cleaner come in for 3 hrs a week.

My wife works, she has a spinal fusion that makes bending & stretching difficult, and this is what works for us.

Nothing wrong with a stay at home mom; but it isn't the norm these days. Dual income families usually need some sort of help.

 

Regularly, no. When I was a military wife (a long time ago and far, far away), we hired maids to clean for the final inspection before we moved out of base housing. Eden & I have a friend that's deep-cleaned our house a few times, and it was awesome.

If I could support myself being a nanny, I'd be all over it. I wouldn't be able to compete with local daycare prices, unfortunately. My closest friends down here have an almost-one-year-old, and I've let it be known that I'd be thrilled to watch him regularly. They're happy with daycare right now, but have told me I'm first on the list (after their parents) for babysitting, and things may change, daycare-wise, when he's older.

--- merged: Nov 5, 2015 at 12:02 PM ---


Well, that was certainly timely. Another friend of ours just posted on faceyspace that she'll clean houses for reasonable rates. We're contemplating having her come out every couple weeks to dust, sweep, and mop.

 

No. Not for ethical reasons. Spare money (lack of) has been an issue pretty much all of my life. Even when it wasn't, it actually was because we weren't rolling in money.

I once paid a local guy to help me do some yardwork. I didn't need the help, and he was the one who asked. He was living in a nearby motel where the rent could be paid weekly (I've previously mentioned the neighbor"hood" where we live) and had his daughter coming for a visit.

 

We used to have a cleaning lady, but that was years ago.

 

we hired a friend of my wifes to clean out house once, she did a great job. but I kinds felt awkard having someone else clean my house

 

We live in a rural area with a subset of the population that has high incomes.
The nannies here get paid extremely well and good ones are sought after.
You should look into it; well off families will pay much more for a good nanny than anyone will pay for daycare. The value of the service provided justifies it.

 

We need to work out a deal wherein I mow your grass in exchange for beer and Stanley Time.

 

We have a cleaning lady who comes every other week (we'd have her every week, or even twice a week, if we could afford it). We regularly hire babysitters (like, 2-3 times a week) to give us coverage when Mrs. Levite and I are both working (like Friday nights and Sunday mornings, busy times for rabbis-- fortunately, Mrs. Levite's congregation is too old-school Reform to have Saturday morning services). And we have a landscaping service that cuts our lawn and does some basic gardening care in Spring and Summer, blows leaves in Fall, and shovels snow in Winter).

We had zero fucking moral debate about it. We pay them well, we tip well, we relate to them respectfully as human beings doing important work on our behalf.

These people are making their living doing this, and they take pride in their work. We hire them both because we aren't good at a lot of those things, and because we don't want to do some of those things, and because we don't have the time and energy to do most of those things. We are grateful for these skilled individuals whose profession makes our lives easier and smoother, and we are happy to pay them as generously as we can afford to do so.

In terms of cleaning and landscaping we staunchly reject the notion that just because it's manual labor, there is a stigma of unworthiness attached to it. Our cleaning lady is amazing: she gets our house way cleaner than we could, even if we had the time and the inclination to try and do so. That's not unworthy and it's not "unskilled labor:" what she does takes skills-- skills we don't have. Same with the landscapers: they keep our yard looking good and growing well, which we wouldn't have the first idea how to do, even if we had the time and inclination to try and do so-- and their service saves us the cost of having to own things like a lawn mower, leaf blower, snow blower, rakes, shovels, etc. Their labor is skilled and entirely worthy, and we appreciate it.

These are people who have awesome work ethics, and rightly regard their work with pride of accomplishment. We respect them for it, and try to let them know.

And as for our babysitters, they are highly experienced women, who have done professional child care and nannying, and both have ECE hours and training. They're not just teenagers picking up some extra spending money, they are incredibly skilled caregivers, and we treat them as such. We don't have any moral qualms about retaining their services-- their coverage of child care lets us do our jobs and support our family.

Our lives are way better for hiring people to do the things we can't or don't wish to do. No question. 150% worth it.

 

The landscaping service we use is a legal and registered business: we make checks out to their company (which I think employs like five or six guys) and that's that.

Our housekeeper and our babysitters are probably technically casual employment, not permanent and ongoing, though we see them regularly. But FWIW, both cleaning lady and babysitters asked for cash up front. With the former, we make checks out to her personally. With the latter, we pay them via PayPal.

 

We've always considered them to be an independant contractor.

We're likely under the maximum; but close.

 

Our first nanny worked 30 or more hours a week. She made close to 40K a year.
A young woman, also starting a family. She was ambivalent about it but I insisted we pay her fully above board. I knew she was going to need a documented employment history to get a mortgage and for future employment.
NY state made sure I regretted that decision in as many ways possible. Interminable paperwork from a multitude of different agencies, with no clear guidance on how to do it right. They seemed to assume we had an attorney and an accountant on staff here at home.
Thankfully we're past that now.

 

We have a live in helper. She has worked for us for about nine years now.

In Singapore live in help is pretty standard.

When we first moved here, we were reluctant to hire a helper. Both of us work and we needed someone to take our daughter to school and pick her up. When we looked into the cost of hiring someone to do that it was much more costly than having someone full time in your house. We had used cleaning help on occasion when we were in Toronto, but this was different.

It took a while to get used to it, but it absolutely changed our lives.

No stress about who's making dinner. No stress about keeping the house clean (or coming home to a dirty house). All of that is handled. The other upside was getting our social life back. Having a permanent sitter let us go out for dinner, the movies, whatever. It was amazing.

Our daughter is now 13, she doesn't need to be babysat, but we are not about to give up the luxury of having someone keep our house in order.

I don't think I will ever be able to move back to Canada.