alt=""/> How often should the cleaner come? The best way is to leave it flexible. Most cleaners come weekly, but I’ve found that I sometimes don’t need it that often, because we are away, or I’ve done some cleaning myself. We’re not so dirty and untidy that I need her more than once a week, I’m happy to say!
How proud are you? Here’s what I do: the evening before my cleaner comes I spend about an hour tidying up, putting away the washing and sometimes even giving the bath and kitchen sink a quick wash. Before my cleaner comes! A good friend recently admitted that she does the same thing, and for both of us it’s a question of pride. I know I pay my cleaner to clean my dirt, but I don’t want her to see how messy and grubby it has become since the last time she came. She’d think we were a family of pigs! This is very common, so don’t feel silly if you give your house a quick once-over before she comes—it shows you have some pride left after all. Just don’t spend hours or it defeats the object.
Trust. You have to trust your cleaner one hundred per cent as she may well have access to your house keys, which means access to everything inside as well. If you find the change you dropped down the back of the sofa neatly put to one side, you are probably quite safe.
Tough talk. Becoming friendly with your cleaner is essential, because you want her to like your home and so clean it as well as she can, not chip the paint on the skirting board with the hoover nozzle or try on your jewellery while you’re out. But you also need to maintain some kind of distance, because at the end of the day you are her employer, not her best mate, and you may need to have the occasional quiet word if standards are starting to slip, as they might do over time. It’s a fine balance, but you need to be able to tell her when she’s not cleaning behind the taps properly or never empties the upstairs bins any more, without blushing or feeling rotten about it. If you’re on good terms she won’t mind being told this at all—it’s better to say so than spend money and still have a dirty house!
In or out? I am usually in when my cleaner comes, because I work from home and she comes on one of my ‘work’ days. This has its benefits: I know that she does the full two hours, she can let me know when we’re running low on products and we can have a friendly chat before and afterwards. If you’re always out when your cleaner comes it’s hard to tell just how much time you are getting for your money, and it also means you have to trust her with a key to get in.
Doing it yourself. I sometimes give my cleaner a rest for a few months, if the cash isn’t flowing quite as it might, or if I just fancy doing it myself for a while. Housework is fantastic exercise (I work up a huge sweat and ache for days after a big three-hour cleaning session) and I do all the bits that she misses. It’s also a great way to do a lot of sorting out, because you’ll come across all sorts of odds and ends that needing fixing, organising or throwing out as you whiz about the place with the polish. Finally, doing it yourself means you save a lot of money, so you can treat your family to something special after a few weeks—drinks are on me!
Keeping it quiet. Not everybody feels comfortable with the idea of having a cleaner. I still find it quite embarrassing—it’s like having staff or something, and I feel like a posh lady of the manor when I say I have one. This is mainly because I live in a very un-showy area where being down-to-earth is admired and giving yourself airs and graces is detested—which is how I like it. But if you want a cleaner, or feel you need one, then go for it. Don’t be ashamed or feel you’re being pathetic by not doing all the housework yourself: you’ll probably find everyone else either has one already or follows suit very soon, when they see how relaxed you are in your gleaming home!
Bluffer’s guide
If you are having friends round and your house needs a quick tidy up or clean, then here are some one-minute wonders to fool the keenest eyes:
Clear surfaces. It doesn’t mater where you hide the junk, but clear, tidy sideboards, shelves, coffee tables and tables give an immediate sensation of cleanliness and order. Find a cupboard and chuck it all in, then sort it out properly when the visitors have gone. Similarly a pile of dishes drying on the draining board looks messy, so quickly put it away and give the draining board a wipe to make it gleam: ta da!—a clean kitchen.
Middle of the floor. Don’t bother about the corners and edges, just whiz the hoover over the central bit and you’ll have what looks like a clean house in minutes.
Smell. Light a candle for a few minutes or make some fresh coffee before they come, or open some windows and doors to let some fresh air in—you don’t notice how stuffy a house becomes when you’re in it, but an incomer will.
Fresh flowers. You don’t need to spend money buying a gorgeous bouquet: just some pretty branches or blooms from your garden will do to make the place look fresh and loved. Try to do this regularly even when you don’t have visitors—you deserve it too!
Meter Beaters: Reducing the household bills
Running a family is an expensive business. So expensive, in fact, that many people decide not to have a family at all, because they don’t think they can afford it. This is extremely sad—unless, of course, they are mean, ugly, child-hating bastards who would rather spend their pennies on spa-breaks and a wine cellar, thus making the rest of us jealous.
There are two facts about the average amount of money families in the developed world spend every month of which I am certain: one, it is colossal; and two, it doesn’t need to be.
If you need confirmation of either of these facts and have nothing better to do on a Saturday morning then pop down to your local Big Supermarket and take a look at the trolleys being pushed by puffing, panting, frowning parents towards the extra-large parking spaces reserved for those unsexy, environmentally catastrophic family cars. You will notice that these trolleys are piled far higher than can be deemed even remotely safe or elegant, with plastic bags literally bursting at the seams with stuff. Food, drink, clothing, electrical goods, garden tools, hoover bags, hair accessories, cleaning products, DVDs and nappies all fight for space before being loaded into the aforementioned Family Transportation Vehicles and ultimately consumed by starving and needy family members back at home.
And that’s just the supermarket. It’s a similar story in toyshops, clothing shops, DIY stores and—my personal favourite—interiors shops. Just look at all the stuff people are buying to keep every member of the family happy! It’s shocking, fairly sickening and it makes one wonder just how people survived before they were able to buy themselves into £30,000 worth of credit-card debt. Poor them.
No: poor, stupid us. We have somehow convinced ourselves that not having everything we desire is tantamount to failure and that a family without
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