Paying for gardener / cleaner / ironing!

RiftAmps

We have a cleaner come once a month for £20 to deep clean the kitchen and bathroom and we just keep on top of the tidying etc.

underdog

The biggest eye opener from this thread is that people still "do ironing". I remember my mam use to spend Sunday afternoon with a big pile of clothes and ironing all of them, what's the point? Just iron what you're putting on. Wash, dry and hang up and a lot of things won't need to be ironed by the time you want them.

randella

thomasross20 said:

I used to think this sort of thing was for rich folk but stuff it lol.

If you can afford to pay someone else a fair wage to do jobs that you haven't time or inclination to do yourself, I'm fairly certain they'll happily take your money and spend it in the economy.  You're doing your bit for us all!

I used to think the same - now I look at my hall, stairs, and landing and think No way in hell am I decorating that.  I can pay someone with the proper tools to do a better job far more quickly.

Simon_M

Underdog said:

The biggest eye opener from this thread is that people still "do ironing". I remember my mam use to spend Sunday afternoon with a big pile of clothes and ironing all of them, what's the point? Just iron what you're putting on. Wash, dry and hang up and a lot of things won't need to be ironed by the time you want them.

This surprised me too. But I live in t-shirt and jeans so irons aren’t really necessary for me. 

underdog

Simon_M said:

Underdog said:

The biggest eye opener from this thread is that people still "do ironing". I remember my mam use to spend Sunday afternoon with a big pile of clothes and ironing all of them, what's the point? Just iron what you're putting on. Wash, dry and hang up and a lot of things won't need to be ironed by the time you want them.

This surprised me too. But I live in t-shirt and jeans so irons aren’t really necessary for me. 

Maybe that's it for me, I mean yesterday my works clothes were jeans and a t shirt with "Biffy f**king clyro" written on it.

Thought I do still have school uniforms for the kids etc, I just do then as needed, takes couple of minutes in the morning.

carlos

I was in your camp but then realised that I sell my time to my employer and it's okay to buy some time back by getting other people to do my chores. I do my own mowing because that's one hour every two weeks and I think it's fun, but housecleaning is not fun so I pay someone else to do it for me. It's just transactions.

spark240

Gardening / car wash / DIY - Yes - I enjoy it.

Decorating definitely not.....I have my pals saying....got to wallpaper the hall , stairs and landing this weekend !

what !....no way.

djspecialist

carlos said:

I was in your camp but then realised that I sell my time to my employer and it's okay to buy some time back by getting other people to do my chores. I do my own mowing because that's one hour every two weeks and I think it's fun, but housecleaning is not fun so I pay someone else to do it for me. It's just transactions.

This, 100%.

ESBlonde

Herself quite likes a mundane task to rest her brain, ironing fulfils that need, she says she enjoys it. She also took retirement this spring, but continues to iron regularly.

Gardening, we both enjoy but planning gets the right tasks done at the right time most efficiently. My own garden is small but I also cut the small lawns for 4 ladies in the cul du sac as well as along the footpath running along the rear or our properties, mostly ignored by the council these days.

I have a desk job and am aware that i need to be mobile/active on a regular basis. I could drive to the gym, get swetty doing repetative unproductive physical effort and catch everyones germs, OR I can get fresh air, be sociable, get exercise, be productive and make a contribution to society.

DIY, yes I enjoy it, but I'm getting older so enjoy ladder work and lots of bending less. Some tasks are best paid for as and when. The rest I'll tackle.

BUT neither of us particularly enjoy housework/cleaning. The place gets attended to as and when rather than in a systamatic way. I think we'll be a lot older before we farm that out though.

ewal

The only thing I wear which might need ironing are my work shirts (if you hang them up when drying it's not really necessary). So I try not to wear work shirts too often,.taking advantage of relaxed approach to dress code at my work.

Cleaning the house - I take a little but often approach - a couple of minutes a day hoovering, a couple of minutes a day cleaning the bathroom. Other stuff when my tea's cooking etc.

Laundry - hanging up washing is a ball ache but unavoidable (don't want a tumble drier).

Garden - relaxed approach to lawn management - daisies look nice, the bees like the clover. Mow once every 2 weeks, strim every second mow. Weeding - only when absolutely necessary. Hedge and shrub trimming - once a year.

As long as the chores eat in to my wasted time sitting staring at my phone rather than genuine leisure time then I don't mind.

SouthpawMark

Cleaner does 3 hours a week. Ironing lady takes ironing away every Tuesday and returns on Thursday. I do the gardening, as I like to make stripes on the lawn. MIL does all the boring gardening stuff such as weeding and planting stuff.

Blueingreen

A guy who was a bit senior to me in my first proper job had a cleaner.  I must have looked like I thought it was a bit extravagant, and he said, "look I can come into the office on a Saturday morning, work for an hour's overtime, and earn enough to pay for a cleaner to come for 4 hours.  So instead of doing something that's tedious and I'm not very good at for four hours on a Saturday, I can spend 1 hour in the office, 3 doing what I please, and pay someone to do a much better job of cleaning my flat.  It's a no-brainer."

I've never totally shaken off the slight guilt at having someone clean for us, but it just so obviously makes economic sense that we do it anyway.

AustrianJohn

Lawn robots are great. Lawn always looks good and no effort. 

PhilW1

I've had this chat a few times with my wife, why pay some-one to do her hobbies? I don't play anyone to laze around(her words) playing guitar.

It never ends well, usually with dirty clothes, lop-sided collars and crap food. Gotta learn to keep my mouth shut or as She says '' help out more''

pmbomb

grass is precious, we live in a surfaced world. let it grow.

Danny1969

I don't pay anyone to do anything if I can help it. Vans just failed it's MOT so I've spent the last hour led under it doing the brakes. I have a huge harden, 150 foot long by 70 wide and it's a 2 hour job to mow the lawn and bag all the grass. Then the grass has to go down the tip. Then I gotta strim the edges. Then I have all the front and rear hedges to trim, about 250 foot of them. 
I quite enjoy it though, you can get a nice tan while doing it in the summer and have a cold beer on the job. 

I got no problem with housework either. The washing machines automatic. You chuck the stuff in along with a tablet and 40 mins later you hang it on the line. If you put your shirts on a hanger and then hang that on the line they will barely need ironing. Once dried I hang things up rather than create a huge pile of ironing that never gets done (why do people do that ? ) Anything that needs ironing after being hung gets a quick one before I put it on. It takes less than an hour every morning to do the washing, the hoovering and the washing up etc. It's not the all day consuming thing that some people seem to think it is . 

Iamnobody

Danny1969 said:

I have a huge harden...

There’s no need to boast! 

randella

There's a salutary lesson here - I mowed my lawn at the weekend.  I don't mind, it's a nice enough job and only takes about 20 minutes.  Anyway because of all the rain I've not had chance and it looked like a meadow beforehand.

It was lovely and neat after I finished, for about the time it took me to drink a cup of tea and survey my handiwork.  Then the squirrels realised that they could get at their winter haul again and now the turf looks like the surface of the moon.

Starting to wish I'd never bothered.

thomasross20

Got a quote £60 for first cut. 

Then £15 an hour after that, maybe two hours every 3 weeks. 

It'll do until I decide what else could be done with it. 

PhilW1

randella said:

There's a salutary lesson here - I mowed my lawn at the weekend.  I don't mind, it's a nice enough job and only takes about 20 minutes.  Anyway because of all the rain I've not had chance and it looked like a meadow beforehand.

It was lovely and neat after I finished, for about the time it took me to drink a cup of tea and survey my handiwork.  Then the squirrels realised that they could get at their winter haul again and now the turf looks like the surface of the moon.

Starting to wish I'd never bothered.

Fuckin' hate squirrels-bushy tailed vermin!