I want to come clean and hold my hands up and say that we’ve acquired the quintessential lower upper middle class status symbol – a cleaner.
She comes once a week for 2 hours, I presume she pays her taxes and she cleans our house. Yet I feel guilty about it, and I don’t, and I know why.
First things first, we both work and work from home. Furthermore, like many couples, the Lady and I have different interpretations of what clean & tidy means. She has opened my eyes to new concepts like – did you know that you need to clean an oven? And flushing a toilet is not enough. Do you need to clean that, too? And hoovers need to not just be used but emptied too – it’s pretty radical.
(My forthcoming Edinburgh Festival show will have more zingers like those jokes).
But the serious message is that I don’t like cleaning and I don’t see the point in it. Some things, like cleaning the dishes or clothes make sense – you need clean clothes and plates. But at what point does a lampshade need a deepdive?
I’m not a total slob though and I do the majority of the washing in our home, along with the cooking.
But, on my own, I was a slob, and I’m letting the side down; if teamwork makes the dream work.
Spending money on a cleaner is a surefire way to set you back from our Financial Independence dreams (or plans).
Before the Cleaner
What we ended up doing was spending a couple of hours on a Saturday or Sunday tidying the house. I’m talking about putting toys away, cleaning surfaces, vacuuming, mopping floors, wiping down the surfaces
and throwing out rubbish that somehow found its way into our house in the first place.
All pretty normal stuff eh? Except, I don’t work all week to spend my free time doing something I hate. And the Lady (who is more enthusiastic about cleaning) works too and shouldn’t have to do the same.
The Solution
Over time, we found out from our ranks of thoroughly middle-classfriends that some (or maybe all) of them had cleaners. And through a friend’s recommendation, we get a cleaner. She comes once a week for two hours and does a decent job. She’s been here for about 18 months I reckon. She’s a local of where we live and is a good source of local wit & wisdom. She’s friendly, reliable and charges us barely more than the NMW.
What We Are Getting
In return for the cleaner, we get our weekend’s back. No nagging feeling that we should clean the house. It frees up our free time for what we want to do instead of the dread I’m sure you know.
She is local to where live and is helpful for things that you can’t Google.
What It Costs
Originally, we laid £12/h or £24, bit earlier this year I gave her a payrise to £15/£30. We’ve had her about 2 years now.
The total cost it’s about £1,200 a year (since she’s sometimes off or we are) and that’s about 2% of our family budget. It’s relatively cheap, I think – considering we spend several times that on say eating out.
Rationalising It
Another way to look at it, is how much do I value my free time? If I spend lose 2 hours of my weekend cleaning the house (against my will) then – since my time is finite and not all mine – that’s a big bite of my time-pie. £1,000 a year seems like a bargain.
Then there’s the fact that what I pay for the cleaner, I can earn in about 30 minutes of work – after taxes. If the choice is working an extra 30 minutes a week to afford the cleaner vs. 2 hours of my work – I’m happy to pay the money and win back the time.
Finally, compared to getting takeaway – a similar timesaving, money wasting activity – the cleaner is cheap. As a family, we spend more on takeaways than the cleaner costs – since our average takeaway is about £40/£60 and we probably get it once a week on average (sometimes more, sometimes less).
It’s broadly comparable to outsource your food and cleaning. I enjoy cooking more than cleaning, too – and we pay a lot more over the year on takeaways or eating out (and eating out with kids can be simultaneously a gastronomical letdown and a stressful experience with no reward of bonhomie.
My car is 10 years old now, and if I were to get a new one, it would probably cost me an extra £1,000 a year easily (depreciation and finance/opportunity cost).
In the case of the SHYF?
If,.heaven forbid, we went from a Two Earners, Really Komfortable Enjoyng Riskfree Schoolchildren (Twerkers) and one of us lost their job, and became a Single Income, Two Choldren, Oppressive Mortgage (SITCOM), then she would be one of the first cuts we’d make.
Costwise, the £30/week would make anyone’s SWR look more achievable! At 4% it does have an estimated cost of £30,000 – which seems quite reasonable.
How it Sits With Me
I know that I could save £1,000 a year and invest that money and retire rich. But, I’d rather not. We are already wealthy enough, and the cleaner may add to another layer of spending to our Family Finances, it’s relatively cheap, saves us time, and I can’t see us
going back to not having a cleaner – whilst I’m still in work.
It might be a sign that we’re now properly lower upper middle class – and it’s nice to live in a clean house (1 day a week). It could be seen as a frugal failing, but honestly, the guilt is lifting off my shoulders.
So, do you have a cleaner or outsource other jobs in your life that you could do but don’t want to? Let me know.
Thanks, GFF.